How to live off the grid without anything!

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXSQWQP4tmw[/youtube]

what a carefree existence!

Sometimes I think about how nice it would be to live out in nature, without medication or electronic stimuli. I would do it, but I don't want to live apart from my family, and I'm not sure how well I could cope with such a drastic lifestyle change. After all, I am part of a generation who was raised with technology and can't imagine what life would be like without it. It almost feels like I'm addicted to it.

I'd like to be off the grid, but more balanced with modern technology AND nature, as opposed to shunning one.

You know, solar/wind power, geothermal heating, composting toilets, superinsulated sustainable home with very lower power usage and natural cold storage, near (or right on) a good aquifer for permanent water (hopefully non-polluted, which is why technology can be useful for high-end filtering!)

No need to be a total hippie about it... to commune with nature, be a part of the cycle, but goofy-girl choosing to live without a walled home and poop in the bushes??? That's just foolish! Between inclement weather and insects/animals that WILL consume you, a more sturdy home just makes sense.

I'm pretty much off the grid, even if there's power and some people know of me (no water and all that, of course).

I eat groceries though because I'm not aboriginal and can't legally eat the native animals (not enough feral stuff).

Sounds idyllic, but something seems a bit odd about this film, she says she is living alone for 5 years in just an empty hut with no possessions and walking around naked, then we notice not 20 feet away a house with rooms and windows and kids running all over the place, wonder where she keeps her earings.

You would think if she owns all that land she would have built her own dwelling a bit further away from that neighbouring property, unless that is also her property and that was just a geezebo in her garden?

That goes for me as well.

Better to live near nature and live in home with electricity.

if i had to live in her "house" i would be climbing the walls in boredom and then nursing my broken ribs because there are no walls. her "house" is totally exposed to the elements. in driving rain, even if her roof was waterproof, the whole deck would be wet.

the wind and the rain and the inevitable abundance of insects (including spiders and ants and mosquitoes) would render her habitat completely unsuitable for all but the most austere and spartan people. there was a building in the background nearby that was made of conventional materials, and it looked vastly more habitable than her barren rotunda.

it would be difficult to believe that on a cold night (she lives at an elevated altitude) when the rain is blowing in, and she is eaten alive by mosquitoes, that she would refuse to take shelter in the building in the background, and if she did refuse to take shelter in it, then i suspect she has some mental issues (self punishment).

her conversation was boring and not at all captivating of my sense of novelty or adventure or spirituality (what little of that sense i have).

she seems like a nut to me. she did not exude happiness or contentment. she merely described the spiritual things in a way that seemed labored. some of her comments seemed mildly psychotic to me.

the feral producer of the clip (who's hair looked like it had not been washed in years) was not well considered when the children wanted to be included in the clip. he just fobbed them off as if they may undermine the theme of his video that was ostensibly a woman who lived apart from, and free of the shackles of technology and society.

he should have filmed it from a different angle if he wished to convey a sense of separation and liberation from society.

her rotunda has no bedding at all. am i supposed to believe she lies on the hard floor of her deck when she sleeps? even birds make nests that soften their place of rest.

even primitive amazon tribes raise their beds from the floor so they do not get dined upon by insects.

the lawn surrounding her rotunda was mowed by a powered tool it seems, and not by a scythe, as the blades of grass are uniform in their length and there are no clippings laying on the ground.

near the end, a south american man walks past the lens who has a petrol powered edge trimmer in his hand.

i am quite unimpressed by the video, and i find her to be dirty and bankrupt of scintillating ideas.

moreso, the place looked foggy and depressing.

the best part of the video (even though i have no interest in children) was the little boy who smiled in a way i could understand at the end. he seemed like he was just visiting the place with his siblings, and he had a lot more going on in his head than she did.

eating only fruit would have rendered her iron deficient and anemic. she looked unhealthy and the maker of the film also looked feral and the whole lack of brightness and healthiness made it a clip i would never post on a forum in an endorsing manner.

sorry if my appraisal is harsh, but if i do not say what i think, then there is nothing for me to say.

^^^ I thought many of those same things before giving up and eventually skipping through and looking for "good parts".

i wonder what drove her to that extreme?

"The fruit is gathering information from the universe"

"The cold waters use electromagnetism to charge my body"

"I don't use a septic tank, so I'm making my own human manure"

Those were my favorite comments lol. She does seem a bit out there, but it was a pretty interesting video and it is pretty amazing that she appears to live so well on so little. I don't know why she didn't at least put up some walls though, being completely open like that can be dangerous, particularly when a strong storm (or worse yet, hurricane) comes through. Not to mention there's quite a few dangerous critters in Costa Rica that you don't want crawling on your face at night. I have to wonder how she has such good teeth though, if all she eats is fruit and she doesn't use toothpaste...they were perfectly straight and super-white! And fruit is by far one of the worst foods for your teeth with the high sugar content and generally low pH.

And whose house was that directly behind hers? I'm sure they love it when she "air dries in the nude" lol.

*edit* I just read b9's comment, I think that sums it up pretty nicely . And yeah I wasn't even thinking about the mosquitoes but that would be downright miserable.

I watched it after reading all the commentary so I think her claim that she lives just in that space is a lie. As you noted, she's wearing earrings. She's also wearing a necklace and some well cared for clean clothes. Yet there is absolutely no storage space in this empty deck. Then she gestures toward a nearby stream which she says "is also part of my property". We see the children walk back and forth next to the house and then they walk down the path that connects the deck to the house and walk up onto the deck and play around with her and play on the deck.

You are right that this is nothing but the gazebo in her garden. She no more lives there than I live in my backyard when I bring a chair and table outside to have a backyard picnic. She is disingenuous at best and I think just outright lying so as to appear more connected to nature and lives in the house. After all, the walkway connects this deck/gazebo the house and all this property is hers so also the house is hers. She stores her necklace, earrings and clothes in her house.


The existence I am sure she actually lives does look pretty idyllic: a house with a giant gazebo in the garden and your own stream in an unspoiled part of the world. That looks great. I wouldn't want to live the way she claims to live but I am absolutely sure she doesn't actually live that way either. She has just mistaken hanging out on the deck when the weather is nice for actually living on the deck.

However I would never be a vegan, like her. The way she describes eating- five to eight meals a day consisting of only one plant per meal- is the way herbivores eat. But she's an omnivore even if she won't admit it. The natural way for a human omnivore to eat entirely at one with nature would be to go down to that stream and eat whatever fish and crustaceans are in it. She could do that- and I sure would if I lived there- but she won't because she has mistaken herself for an herbivore.

so would it be charitable to say that she nominally is expressing the ideal of how she MIGHT want to live?

I would worry about jaguars!

I'd be worried about a neighbor crawling in thru those open windows.
Mosquito netting would help.
Hope she doesn't find a Fer de Lance in her bed.