We lived for five years off grid in the mountains of southern Oregon’s coastal range. Our house was a yurt, our power from the sun, our road often impassable, our connectivity from a satellite, our schooling by doing, and our community fiercely independent.
Not much came easy those first months before we were able to mature our infrastructure. 
Power was from 30 year old discarded solar panels, a 12v car battery, and a modified wave inverter bought from Love’s truck stop – when it rained, which was most of the winter, we pulled a tarp over the electronics sitting in the field where a couple hours of sun sometimes fell. 
We drew water from a pipe whose end sat in a stream bed up the hill, weighted down with rocks and covered with a sock and duct tape – we had a number of water outages that first winter due to blockages, displacement, and frozen pipes. We heated water and the yurt with a wood stove that would glow red hot in the early hours of the morning when the chock full fire box would finally all combust, greedily sucking air in through the leaks in the stove. 
To provide wood for the stove that first winter, I ranged far and wide and cut every standing dead tree I could find – it was our constant weekend occupation, always barely staying ahead of our consumption. 
To take a bath, we dipped hot water from the pot on the stove and mixed it with cold water in a 5 gallon bucket and took our cleansing reservoir to a bathtub propped up over the stream bed outside – in the summer we used solar water bags that we’d hoist up onto a brace of 16p nails lodged into a cedar tree that grew out of the bank. Our cold food storage was a motley collection of old coolers – we’d always buy block ice from the store with our groceries to keep the coolers cold.
When the rain would fall for more than a day or two on end, the stream below the yurt would swell into a torrent – since our road passed through the stream, we’d have to park on the other side and tote our bags, equipment, and groceries almost a quarter mile in the dark and in the rain across a dangerously dilapidated foot bridge.
Essential personal equipment boiled down to rubber boots, a head lamp, and a water proof jacket. 
A head lamp was necessary for any activities after 5pm, or on any visit to a neighbor or town after 12pm. 
Essential household equipment boiled down to a chainsaw, matches, firewood, propane, and food. Town, and the closest postal service, was a 45 minute drive, 
and sometimes during the winter the mountain road was impassable due to ice and snow- many vehicular rescues have been made over the years when residents, desperate to restock on propane or food, make a failed attempt at accessing civilization.
We learned our lessons quickly and, one by one, we replaced desperate situations with a level of sustainability. A power shed replaced the tarp,
gravel mined from our quarry covered mud tire tracks,
a loft and walls created sleeping/living space delineation in the yurt, 
tire chains expanded passable road conditions, a new bridge made the walk across the stream safe,
an on demand hot water heater and bathroom revolutionized hygiene, 
a home brewed cell phone tower made business calls possible, a porch kept the mud out of the yurt, 
buried water pipes and storage tanks all but eradicated water outages, 
an airtight wood stove kept the yurt warm (and safe) all night long, 
and many other small and large tweaks allowed our existence to emerge beyond basic survival.
As the years went on, we were able to live a positively blessed life, investing in things like a ping pong table, 
a soccer field, a skate park, a pool, 
a living-roof-covered rocket-stove-heated earthen sitting patio and pizza oven, 
an attached cabin for office and sleeping quarters, 
a guest cottage, an orchard, two awesome dogs,
a herd of goats,
a flock of chickens, backup generators, a tractor, a truck, a trailer, 
a garden, an earthen chapel, 
buried water and power feeds to all structures, annual community events (trail run, fair, firewise), 
a music studio, real drainage for the community road, a buried concrete cellar for mead making, and more. 
Although many aspects of those “pure” early days have been replaced with implements made for convenience, consumption, and production, we still watch our power usage carefully, always carry a headlamp,
are experts at starting fires, keep rubber boots at the ready all winter, look forward to company, and breath the fresh air as deeply as ever.
Looking back on all of the efforts to get established and to maximize the blessing of the land, I can say there were three things that never ceased to be satisfying no matter how often I pondered them:
| 1) Power from the sun – not having a utility bill, and knowing that the power we consumed was as green as it could get was, and is to this day, more satisfying than any economic benefit. It just feels right in every way. |  |
| 2) Using our own trees for building materials – Back Woods Custom Milling (Harvey and Little Joe) have milled many many board feet of rough cut lumber from our trees for our building projects. It is the gift that keeps on giving ever time I look at a structure built from our own trees. Not only is it beautiful, there is some sort of peacefulness about those trees staying close to home, just in a different form. |  |
| 3) Community – working with the other residents living in the area to improve living conditions for everyone, and sharing a glass of home brewed wine or mead at a get together in one of the many eclectic homes in the hills, gives me glimpses of what an ideal society could look like. |  |
The journey isn’t over in those hills, but a chapter has been written!
