A large metal watering can equipped with a rechargeable submersible pump is our shower. I have no wifi or cell service and the devices which we own that do not own us, are charged via a small solar powered inverter. We’ve lived sufficiently over a year with a single 100 watt solar panel. Oftentimes when people come to visit, they tell us that we need this or that, perceiving what they, themselves would want living in our more-than-sufficient-enough-for-us circumstances. It is a challenge for some to understand that some things we are just simply not interested in. The circumstances we are living, are of our own choosing. We choose to live as simply as we do. And the things that we may really be in need of are already on our radar. We simply chose to take our time in each step we take to creating the life we wish to live, carefully weighing any decision of any potential acquisitions.

Open windows and the shade of trees outdoors is our natural air conditioning in summer. Some days and nights are simply too hot to sleep indoors, so then, under the stars and upon the earth we may sleep. The invitation of forest air through open windows act too, as our air fresheners when things get a bit stuffy. In wintertime, additional layers and blankets make up the times when our small solar powered furnace runs out, which is often. In fact we try to enjoy and expose ourselves to the chilling outdoors as much as possible in winter, which we find helps us to adapt better to the cold months. What may seem extreme and absurd to others is to us a fun and challenging necessity. Rolling around in the snow and taking cold water soaks last winter really made the cold months bearable. Continuing to push ourselves to our limits in these ways has become a fun and challenging pastime for us. Showing us just how much we can handle, and how much we can truly live without.

To be clear, we do intend on building a simple mud home in the near future. But also intend on not allowing it to become an invitation of the things we’ve learned we can easily live without.
In the years leading up to moving here, I spent nearly six months backpacking living solely on what I could carry on my back. So coming into this, I already knew how much I could live without. During those months of backpacking, life never felt richer. Life felt light and endlessly abundant. That is the life I wish to live in the forest.

Many people dream of living in the forest. They dream of a simple and peaceful life surrounded by natural beauty. But often, when they move in to the forest, they end up taking along all that which prevents the very simplicity and peacefulness they seek. They find they cannot live without this and that… and so they attempt to transplant their old existence into the forest: cell service, unnecessary or otherwise excessive possessions, wifi/internet service, electricity, the television set, and so on. The possessions keep them so comfortable they become imprisoned within the walls of their new home and venture out as little as before. In being prisoners of abundance, we often fail to see just how much we actually have and how much is actually enough.

Hooking up to electricity promotes a disturbingly agreeable form of deforestation, whereby swaths of forest are cleared to accommodate the demands for full-time on-grid living, directly defacing the very beauty people originally sought when they wished to move to the forest. Utilities too, bring about oversized beeping maintenance trucks with grumbling engines and the increased risk of forest fires due to power-lines. Power-lines even when in plain sight in the forest become oddly invisible to the eye of most so long as it satisfies humanity’s ongoing need for excessive connectivity and remote consumerism; a way for people to effectively maintain the very lives they thought perhaps they were leaving behind. They end up sitting behind and staring at their screens as the world of the truly living carries on outdoors amongst the trees.

People end up as busy as before, taking emails and zoom calls, streaming their favorite shows and doom-scrolling as the natural world outside carries on the magic of the forest. Too busy to become acquainted with an overlooked form of life, their true neighbors, the inhabitants of the forest.

Barking dogs of not so distance neighbors who fear bears, other forest creatures as well as other unreasonably perceived threats, don’t think twice for disturbing the forest’s otherwise inherent peace and so they allow their dogs to “do their jobs” even if incessantly done so.

Some people go as far as to mow down every piece of vegetation within a broad radius of their new home in the forest, beyond even what is necessary to fire-wise their house. Sometimes, this unnatural manicuring expands throughout the entire piece of forest on which they live. Rather than finding a way to nestle themselves into the otherwise pristine sought after natural beauty, they manage instead to do away with it altogether. They take all their noisy lawn maintenance equipment which they then need fuel and/or electricity to maintain. Many go even further still and promote the clearing of forests altogether, a land management strategy called forest thinning another accepted form of deforestation, for fear of any and all wildfires. What forest then, have they moved to?

This hacking of forests becomes an invitation to noisy ATV’s thanks to an excessive clearance of understory and forest trees, deliveries of Amazon packages and other things which undo the great justification of forest living. All becomes a facade. An illusion of true forest living.

In these ways, people do not live in the forest but simply moved into another neighborhood of bustling maintenance trucks, wifi hotspots, trash services and barking dogs, carrying out menial busied tasks perceived as necessary such as “lawn” maintenance. The forest becomes to them just another parcel of property to manipulate and keep up with the Joneses, which is to say keep up with the even changing newest and latest. The continuation of the ecological interference is on-par with city living. Maintaining the modern world of endless consumption which ultimately undermines the natural spaces of forests in supporting the pollution of commerce.

I feel grateful to abide in a space that provides peace (mostly). Where zipping hummingbirds cut through space in search of beloved life-sustaining wildflowers. Where towering ponderosas offer their limbs to migrating birds and rambunctious scrub-jays. Whereby even despite the multi-year drought we’re facing I discover newly emerging wildflowers. Nature’s way of proving her resilience. Where we are happy in supporting Nature’s wild unfolding which would otherwise be hindered if perhaps we had chosen to disrupt the forest’s integrity with modern intrusions, like so many of our neighbors do. That this space we are allowed to occupy still acts as an invitation of wildlife who deserve to be there.

If you wish to live in the forest, then live in the forest. What does that mean?

To live in the forest is to live in simplicity and in peace; in acquiescence with Nature rather than in destruction and to live an honorable livelihood oriented towards Life rather than commodity.

The idea I present here can be applied to wherever you live. You can effectively strip down to the barest of essentials whether you live in a small town or in the big city. You can essentially chose to live in the forest where you are. How? Slow down, find and savor the beauty of the present. Deny adding to the cacophony of consumerism and toxic media. Say no to mere “stuff” which literally ends up just cluttering our lives. Limit your use of wifi and internet in exchange for becoming acquainted with the spirit of Life and Nature around you. Make taking a walk/hike in the park, a nature reserve or in woods or wild spaces near you a regular activity. Reading books instead of only online articles. Use any electricity as minimally as possible or at least as mindfully as possible. Favor vegetable, wildlife or pollinator gardening as opposed to overly tailored lawns maintained with noisy equipment and chemicals. Instead, why not opt for using tried-and-true hand tools, rather than said noisy lawn equipment.

There are endless ways we can live accordance with the spirit of life. We all can live in the preverbal peaceful forest, serene mountains or mystical desert.

While off-grid, I simply use the time while in town or at the library to check my emails or text messages or publish a pre-written post. I have learned some people living this cities are even doing this. Opting to do away with internet or wifi services in their homes and simply “checking in on things” while in town, transforming their home into a sacred space where they can lead their lives with mindful agency. Simply minimizing the use of a smart phone can be a figurative form of forest living. You can orient more of your attention to the real sacredness of Life and Nature that exists around you now, in your neighborhood, rather than engage in the endless fake glittery states of reality expressed via our devices. Life, I assure you, is an all pervasive force. If you stop to look, you can and will find it.

To live in the forest is a mindset, a conscious livelihood, unimpeded by the incessant technological coercions many of us are now shackled with.

We still have a choice.