Off-grid living: How to feel like you are camping year-round

Determined to experience the glories of home ownership, I spent my first night at the new and still unnamed cabin/ranch/lodge/casa. I have been feverishly thinking about what to call the place because it feels rather like an orphaned baby right now, only more needy.

I read a blog on “How to name your farm or ranch or homestead” that had a lot of advice on identifying qualities and characteristics of said new home. They picked things like “leaning birch” and “barn kitten hatchery” then included them in some sort of charming name.

With this in mind, I hauled a weekend’s worth of living supplies up the hill: 14 down comforters, enough food for eight days – which will last my kid until about 3 p.m. after which point she’ll have to go rabbit hunting for sustenance, a number of tools that look useful but I cannot identify by name … and coffee.

For the record, this is approximately what I carry in my Search and Rescue pack, though I try to leave room for an avalanche probe and shovel.

I figured after 48 hours I should be able to experience the “feel” of the place. It would speak to me, and like gospel being sung from heavenly angels, the Truth would pour forth from my lips.

But the pipes were frozen in the kitchen and I’m pretty sure angels don’t swear. Also, it is hard to get signs made with all those ?!#%!& characters in them. If you name a place, it has to have a sign too, or it doesn’t count.

I have been emotionally prepared for freezing pipes all along. I grew up with freezing pipes and though I do not remember the inconvenience of wet rag baths, I do recall the cursing tirades of my father. You could hear him through the floorboards as he crawled under the house to criticize the plumber who had left pipes exposed (also known as Dad, since he built the place himself).

Heating frozen pipes in a straw bale house is like trying to gently coax a woman to go into labor. Some mix of unknown things must occur in the right order, then she’ll go when she damn well pleases and you better be ready. Also, it apparently may take nine months. By late June, I’m expecting to have water in the kitchen again.

Undeterred by this minor inconvenience, I was thrilled to see that turning my bathroom into an equatorial climate with a propane heater did actually thaw the pipes there and the shower came exploding to life. This was celebrated by cleaning the spiders out of the tub, only to discover it was not draining. Apparently the drain is frozen too.

I comforted myself with the knowledge that I could at least have warm water to wash dishes in the bathroom sink. And the toilet flushed. Having grown up with an outhouse positioned approximately a half-day’s hike from the house, indoor plumbing still feels like a luxury.

As the house heated, I did things one does in backwoods living. I chopped kindling, which retained a sort of productive quaintness and was easier than chopping firewood. I was so pleased with my kindling-making skills, I accumulated quite the stock pile only to realize the fire was going out. Then I burned most of the kindling trying to get it going again.

The house warming inspired a hatching of bugs that turned the upstairs into a sort of Valhalla for lizards. In fact, I considered getting one just to keep the stink bug population down. Stink bugs are sneaky little things. I can clear the premises of them and by the time I’ve put the vacuum away, there are another dozen marching slowly toward my bed.

I know this is the goal of the stink bug nation: To silently persevere toward me while I am sleeping so I will wake up with hundreds of them waving their creepy little tentacles at me in a slow-motion attack.

I did not sleep that first night.

In the morning, my person brought my first-cup-of-morning-coffee-in-the-new-house to me in bed. No bugs were on me, but I could see a few in the corner waiting for me to forget their presence. I vacuumed them up. More appeared. I fear the army accumulating in my vacuum is plotting their escape while surviving on dead houseflies. I envision them with tiny maps and tiny military hats and one especially stinky general. I plug the tube with a paper towel just in case.

Tired but determined, I worked on house things. At least I had warm water in the bathroom and a stove to heat my coffee.

Then the propane ran out. I washed dishes in cold water in a shallow bathroom sink. I warmed my coffee on the wood stove. I went out to change the tanks but I didn’t have the unidentifiable tool I needed to do this.

Defeated, I sat next to the wood stove with my coffee and wondered if it was time to return to the city where my house warmed at the turn of a knob.

Outside I saw B stacking snow cubes. She had been out there for hours gathering miscellaneous pieces of discarded junk to employ in the construction of a snow fortress. I noted she did not have a bug problem. She appeared so industrious and pleased.

I remembered why we had begun this new adventure in the first place, grabbed my vacuum, and got back to work. Because no matter what, I am not naming this place Pine Beetle Lodge.