ben fogle lives in the wild.
- Thread starter petrochemicals
- Start date
-
Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
Without having watched either this particular series or any other, similar one, I keep wondering what the people I grew up with, meaning my parents, grandparents and other relatives (all gone now) would have thought about folks like that and what they were doing or trying to do. All of my relatives grew up "off the grid," in a manner of speaking. In fact, the grid isn't that old in some places. While I can understand wanting to be independent, mostly I just don't get it.
The main problem is, you're never independent. At some point in your life, no matter where you live, you are dependent on other people, both related and not, even to include some total strangers that you may never even see. Of course, the idea of escaping "modern entanglements" is two thousand years old. Why avoid using electricity if you're going to use propane? Besides, being independent suggest you don't want to have anything to do with other people. That's not the way to live in the country. You should be willing to help others as much as you're able. You have to "stick together." You might need help yourself some day.
There's another side of this that doesn't make good television, of course, and it doesn't require moving to the Yukon or somewhere deep in unexplored and unmapped Northumbria to await the return of the king in all his glory. It's nothing more than simple living and it's the way most of my relatives lived. They had both wood-burning kitchen ranges and coal-burning heating stoves as well as an electric range, yet they didn't have wood-lots. Some raised large gardens which seemed to shrink in size over the years until they finally disappeared. They canned, they made apple butter and kraut. They had chickens, though they didn't hunt (all the game moved to town where people don't hunt). They were thrifty, too. They didn't think they were doing anything particularly special or out of the ordinary.
I don't know if they considered themselves independent or not or how their attitudes may have changed over the decades. For that matter, I don't know what their attitudes ever were, though they all had lived through the depression and the war(none except my father served in the armed forces). One thing, however, when I think about it, that distinguished all of them was that they were self-reliant. They were all working people, meaning they were all engaged in some for of manual labor or craft work. There are still lots of people like that but their lives don't make good television entertainment. Of all those people of that generation, there was an exception. One neighbor, man and wife, were entertainers. They had a local television show. There's always an exception, I suppose.
The main problem is, you're never independent. At some point in your life, no matter where you live, you are dependent on other people, both related and not, even to include some total strangers that you may never even see. Of course, the idea of escaping "modern entanglements" is two thousand years old. Why avoid using electricity if you're going to use propane? Besides, being independent suggest you don't want to have anything to do with other people. That's not the way to live in the country. You should be willing to help others as much as you're able. You have to "stick together." You might need help yourself some day.
There's another side of this that doesn't make good television, of course, and it doesn't require moving to the Yukon or somewhere deep in unexplored and unmapped Northumbria to await the return of the king in all his glory. It's nothing more than simple living and it's the way most of my relatives lived. They had both wood-burning kitchen ranges and coal-burning heating stoves as well as an electric range, yet they didn't have wood-lots. Some raised large gardens which seemed to shrink in size over the years until they finally disappeared. They canned, they made apple butter and kraut. They had chickens, though they didn't hunt (all the game moved to town where people don't hunt). They were thrifty, too. They didn't think they were doing anything particularly special or out of the ordinary.
I don't know if they considered themselves independent or not or how their attitudes may have changed over the decades. For that matter, I don't know what their attitudes ever were, though they all had lived through the depression and the war(none except my father served in the armed forces). One thing, however, when I think about it, that distinguished all of them was that they were self-reliant. They were all working people, meaning they were all engaged in some for of manual labor or craft work. There are still lots of people like that but their lives don't make good television entertainment. Of all those people of that generation, there was an exception. One neighbor, man and wife, were entertainers. They had a local television show. There's always an exception, I suppose.
Last edited:
Blue train
The alaska one linked would suprise even your grandparents. Other than the most hardened mountain men, people did not live as this. That was the point of posting it. Sure my grandparents made jam and apricot and plum plonk, but they did not live in the arctic circle with 2 months of darkness whist growing there own food. If you get up with the sun, you would be in bed for a good while!
The alaska one linked would suprise even your grandparents. Other than the most hardened mountain men, people did not live as this. That was the point of posting it. Sure my grandparents made jam and apricot and plum plonk, but they did not live in the arctic circle with 2 months of darkness whist growing there own food. If you get up with the sun, you would be in bed for a good while!
I couldn't see the video for some reason. I wish I could get up with the sun. It's just about first light now and I'm already at work. It will be dark when I get home, too. But in another week the days get longer.
Similar threads
