Indianuity II

Ray, a gentleman I met in Gitwinksilhkw, northern BC, rigged together this system behind his mom's house. He fishes down by the bank, and loads the fish into what I guess is a Rubbermaid container. Once it's filled up he walks up the stairs he's built, and retrieves the fish-laden container with an old electric winch.

"I got tired of packing the fish up those stairs all the time," he said.

In a world where fish are disappearing from streams, a lot of people would rather enjoy that kind of problem. Still, it's a problem elegantly solved.

See also: Indianuity I

Clamped

If anybody decided to spend lots of time thinking about how I do things, they might comment that I sure do seem to use hose clamps as much as I possibly can.

Above are feed and water bowls fastened with those really long hose clamps. They work quite, though not fantastically well. The army surplus bowls taper slightly which lets them nestle into each other, but makes any fastening a little bit complicated. The most important thing, however, is to avoid the bowls tipping away from the dog and spilling everything outside, which the they rather object to.

Water can be filled from the outside. I've tried feeding from the outside too, but that just turns into a mess except when bones are on the menu. The time you spend opening and closing doors and gates adds up if you have a large team, but now that I've cut down I might as well spend some quality time with the mutts during mealtime.

Modelling this system is Bembo, taking the opportunity to get a nice nap.

To go where no PV panels have gone before

What you see above is a part of NASA's LDEF, "Long Duration Exposure Facility", fibbed from nasaimages.org. The picture is labled "Solar-Array-Materials Passive", which sounds like something I can relate to. For more on the LDEF, and some absolutely stunningly beautiful pictures, see The nonist.

Interior decoration for men

Go anywhere in the world, and there seems to be a recurring theme wherever men do their own interior decoration. They seem to make sure everything is available at all times. but usually filed by no easily understandable system whatsoever.

These samples are pictures I took this spring at Doolan's fish camp on the Nisga'a river, northern BC, Canada.

Essence of things

It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

- Walt Whitman

And now a word from our sponsors

Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of Glacier!

Stamped

All around the forest where I live there are small boxes like this one, courtesy of the Skier's Association. There's a stamp and a stamp pad in each one. The idea is that you ski around with a small notebook, and stamp it every time you get to one of these. That way you can keep track of how far you've skied each season, and where you've been.

When I was a kid, you could hand in your notebook to your PE teacher and get awarded pins in assorted colors, depending on how far you'd skied. I don't think it works this way anymore, I never see kids skiing on their own, except those crazy Mowgli-like mushing girls, and they are way too cool to stop for stamping.

Children, it seems to me, are now indoctrinated to perform that deplorable activity, "exercise". They are fitted out in science fiction-like space suits and made to ski in groups in perfectly manicured tracks at speeds that will optimize their performance in competitions. A young person or two who ventures out on their own would probably be considered very odd and in need of some kind of specialized help.

Whenever I see the organized, skiing Hitlerjugend out in force I remind myself not to whine about kids who choose to spend their lives in front of computers.

I realize "skiing" in English usually means "downhill skiing", while "cross country skiing" has to be qualified, as if it was a weird, deviant sub genre. Here at Accidental Hermit "skiing" means "transport", not "getting pulled uphill by some infernal mechanized contraption".

Battery-powered lights for the off-grid home

Unless you live in a very, very small space, battery-powered lights will not cater to much of your lighting needs. But they can be useful sometimes. (The batteries I'm talking about in this post are made up of those small AAA, AA, C & D cells, the ones you use in flashlights and radios. 12 v batteries powered by wind/sun/hydro or gas is another story.)

These are my experiences:

Bulky camp light with fluorescent tube: These are retro for all the wrong reasons. They weigh a lot, use lots of batteries and supply astonishingly little light. Those key fobs with a single LED give out more light. There are some lights like this one out there with remote control, which is sort of nifty, but the D-sized cells and the fact that they don't really give off much light makes this a no-no, unless you happen to have one lying around anyway.

Traditional wardrobe light: These cost almost nothing, and are sold in just about every hardware store. In my experience, they are cheaply made and the incandescent bulb gives off very little light compared to the amount of batteries consumed.

New-fangled LED wardrobe light: These make quite a lot of sense. Even on the ones I use quite often, in dark corners of the kitchen, only need their batteries replaced every three or four months. They come with a lot of different fastening options, I usually choose velcro.

LED light w/ motion sensor: Motion sensors, it seems, have reached some threshold where they now cost almost nothing for those industrious Chinamen to make. I have several of these on the ceiling of my entrance/shop where they make themselves very useful. Though I say "shop" it's really just a glorified storage place for my tools, and I dip into often but very briefly to pick up some screwdriver or whatever. With these twinkling above, I don't have to don a headlight every time. It seems these lights do not react to Felis, the evil cat.

I have dreamt about hacking some of these to make "game cameras" (not that I'm going hunting anytime soon), but my imagination is better than my extracurricular (or "real", as I think of it) work ethic.

LED work light: These are sold in the kind of stores that sell equipment for cars, and are a real improvement over the traditional type with a fluorescent tube. They come with a 12 v charger, and have a quite good rechargeable battery inside. They give off a lot of light, but you need access to a car/an RE system or "normal" electricity. I have some of these in my doggy kitchen, makes more sense than routing cables all the way out there from the solar panels on the cabin.

I would write about batteries if I had anything to say that hadn't been said very well already.

DIY trailer

Claiming that "everybody in the US has a car" is just another way of saying "I have absolutely no idea about how people live". One educational aspect of bicycle touring in the US is that one gets to know hitch hikers and vagrants of various sorts. Meeting people literally on the road creates a sense of camaraderie and fellowship which I am not going to exaggerate, but which is still noticeable.

Ray (above) was a soft-spoken gentleman I met 2002 on the side of the road in Arizona. He had access to some form of free dental care (which he quite needed) in another town but had access to no motorized vehicle, and there were no public transport alternatives between the place he lived and his dentist. Europeans never believe me when I tell them this, as they are not only convinced that "all Americans have a car" but also have absolute faith that surely "Greyhound of Amtrak" must connect every populated place in the country with every other populated place.

So Ray got around on his bicycle and had made a his own trailer, complete with a beer crate on top for his small terrier mutt.

Yellow peril

This is the wall of a rest room in Inujima ("Dog Island", actually), an island in Japan's Inland Sea which is basically just a big art gallery.

I am the kind of person who takes pictures of what I consider to be interesting walls in rest rooms. That is just how it is.

If you click on it, you can see it describes the connection between toilet-related business and the rest of the world. I am also the kind of person who feels we can never be reminded enough about this.

Below is the rest room itself. Like a lot of things in Japan, I felt it was both impossibly elegant and yet within the boundaries of something I might possibly ape after, given enough time. At least the part with the wooden wall and door.

You ladies out there might not know this, but European urinals often do not extend all the way to the floor, which frankly results in a whole world of unpleasantness. The Japanese system is infinitely better

Today's walk to work

On my way to the train station I pass these sacks of lime which are gradually emptied into the river to make the lake nearby less acidic. This is wonderful and good for the fish, of course. But being of an intrinsically idle bent, I can't help thinking of all the dreadful work that has gone into getting hold of that lime. Horrid mining, big machines, massive packing thingamajigs and transport over insane distances. All this to make up for inconveniences caused by more work, the redirecting and damming of rivers, the creation of factories to produce acidic rain and on and on. If nobody had worked themselves to the bone to mess up, nobody would have needed to spend any effort on cleaning up. And in the end we would have had more fish in the lake.

Sure, sure. A lot of other stuff would have been different.

Here's what looks like a bridge to nowhere. The fog is so thick you can't see the other shore of the lake, which makes it feel as if you're walking on the edge of the known world. I love this.

Though this looks like a snapshot from a vacation in Mordor, it is in fact the minions of the logging company widening the road. The road was originally built in the late 1700's. Logs were first laid in the direction of the road, then more logs were lain perpendicular to the ones below. Then a layer of fir branches was laid on top of it, and a whole lot of sand and gravel on top of that again. All done by muscle power (man and horse, I'm presuming), as there wasn't much choice. Now it's more a matter of putting large rocks in one place and covering it with some kind of membrane, and then top it off with sand and gravel.

I'm not sure why they're widening this part of the road, as they did a small clear cut in this area recently and even then managed to get their vehicles where they wanted them too.

Paying attention

Felis, my evil cat, is easily mesmerized by the lamp above my combined dining table/ workbench.

"Dude," she says. "Look at that lamp. Oh man. Back and fro, back and fro. Wick-ed."

And still people ask if we don't miss television.

Водогонный аппарат

Makeblog and Boing Boing have both featured this delightful man and his water purifier. Fortunately, through my contacts in the military-industrial complex, I have been able to have the original text translated from Russian. (To see the pictures, go to the original site.)

Anton Ivanovich Reznikov is 68 years old and has worked all his life as an engineer and technician. Even as a pensioner he has not abandoned is favourite pastime. In a cramped kitchen in his one room apartment he has made a real water purifier (not to be confused with a distiller). The looming, yet efficient invention transforms polluted tap water to perfectly clean, potable water. The inventor does not keep the details of the apparatus to himself. On the contrary he offers the details to anyone who wishes to construct a similar contraption so that they too forever can bid farewell to dirty water.

Picture 1.

Ioniser. The water passes through a container with silver (in this case some old watches and a couple of silver teeth.) During this phase, the structure of the water is reestablished and the water absorbs the silver's ions. A quartz lamp has been added to improve the effect.

Picture 2.

Magnetic bottle. A plastic bottle with magnets (the originator has used magnets from a refrigerator). Here, metal is removed from the water.

Picture 3.

Coal filter. A plastic container, filled with ball point pens that are, in turn, filled with activated carbon. Carbon is an excellent absorbent and sucks up contaminants.

Picture 4.

Mineral deposits. A five litre container with rocks. Rocks are natural minerals. Anton Ivanovich has transported the rocks himself from a sanatorium. They nourish the water and add a distinguished, natural flavour.

Picture 5

Sound chamber. An old radio-cassette player is taped to the container. The sounds of classical music have positive effects on the water, and improve it's structure.

Picture 6.

Grain container. Funnel made out of a bottle neck, filled with millet. Here, the water absorbs minerals and the aroma of Russian fields, an aroma that can be compared to nothing else.

Picture 7.

Thermal tunnel. A metal shower hose wrapped around a radiator. Here, the water is quickly heated to 70 degrees Celsius (158 F), thus killing all microbes.

Picture 8.

Stratification. Plastic container with layers of different types of soil and sand, with a flower on top.

Picture 9.

Modestly sized pitcher. The water has now passed through all the stages and can be imbibed, preferably cooled.

Monkey see, monkey do

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jane Goodall
www.thedailyshow.com
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Here's an interview with primatologist Jane Goodall. You don't have to watch it. I am posting it here because Goodall, who has done some good stuff for apes and the Jon Stewart who is not entirely insane despite being a talk show host, are probably as close as you are going to get to American household names who might agree with me on some issues.

And this scares the living daylights out of me.

For some reason, the subject they choose to discuss here is "extremists". Some loony vegan nutcases complain about how the candles on Goodalls birthday cake might contain animal products. So the scientist and the talk show host shake their heads, oh those extremists.

I have had enough skirmishes with vegan activists to suspect that some of them might not be on my side. Their motivations and their aims sometimes seem disconcerting to me. I could even claim that most rich businesspeople I know are more friendly and tolerant than the vegans I have encountered.

But I don't buy the idea that "extremists" are poisoning the well, that because of their actions the rest of the environmentalist movement has setbacks. Vegan activists and animal liberation types are too few. The power of those who wish to destroy the earth is astronomically larger.

The sometimes misguided actions of "extremists", like setting out domesticated animals into the wild, is only a problem for other environmentalists if we keep yammering on about it, like here, instead of shifting focus to what the problem really is.

The "extremists" are not the real enemy. They're nothing, compared to the logging industry, the oil industry, compared to almost anything. The ice cream industry is stronger than all the "extremists" combined. I know PETA has Pamela Anderson, but come on.

The apes' habitat has been destroyed by all kinds of human greed and destruction, and yet Goodall and Stewart chose to whine about a handful of "extremists".

In the US, to a larger extent than in Europe, I have been amazed at how often I have been told stories of treehuggers who neglected to clean up their campsites, or of ill-advised "safe zones" for deer that have resulted in overgrazing and starvation and so on. Incredibly, harm on the environment is routinely blamed on the people who make attempts at protecting it.

(I don't think European activists are better or that Europeans are smarter at recognizing flak from corporate media. But mainstream news coverage in the US does seem rather one-sided, seen from the outside.)

Not once during this interview do the two otherwise rather clever participants lean back and say: "But honestly. Who are the real extremists here? Who really wields power?"

Slightly less than ideal conditions for cycling

I always manage to do this. I always make sure I really need to transport a lot of stuff when the road conditions are like this: Slightly too much snow for a bike, but not enough for a sled.

Hopefully this builds character.

Don't fence me in

Here's a typical fence around my parts, made with split pine poles, lashed with willow.

While we all realize the old-timers knew a lot about predicting the weather, tracking animals, butchering, harvesting and so on, I think we easily forget how much time they spent trying to keep the wild creatures on the outside, and the tame animals on the inside.

This kind of fence is known as a "skigard", after the slanted poles which are called "ski". The etymology for this word is actually the same as what you get in "schizophrenia". The poles are cleaved. The soul is cleaved. This is even the same root as in the word "shit". You split up, you part, you cleave, as it were.

Those old indo-europeans sure knew how everything connects to everything else.

Blatant anti-hermit bias in media

The Long family live in South Westland in New Zealand. To get to the nearest road they need to walk for two days.

This documentary about them is interesting on at least two levels. There's the family itself and how they manage. And then there's the other level: The attitude of the team filming them.

The parents are presented as mildly batty, and "the cause", whatever that might be, would perhaps be better served by hermits with better teeth. And obviously, the kids are denied a lot of things that their peers would take for granted.

But in my experience, people who have completely whacko upbringings turn out surprisingly normal as long as the parents have been at least moderately well-balanced, while some of the people I know who inject heroin into their veins have had seemingly normal childhoods.

Not many kids, anywhere, have the level of access to almost completely untouched nature that the Long children grow up in. It's degraded landscapes and landfills for almost everybody else. That can't be right.

End of rig season

We pulled the rig up to my lot the other day. During off-season I keep the rig down by the logging road, parked and secluded in a small opening between some trees that seems almost custom made for the purpose.

There's a pretty small window of opportunity for this. I use the rig as long as I can before freeze-up, but after the first snow I have to pull it up to my place pretty quick, or it becomes horrifically difficult to skid it over the snow and up the cliff. Taking it down at the start of spring also requires some planning, ideally it should be done after most of the snow has melted, but before the bog thaws.

Solan and Mazunte in front, Bibi behind. This was a very short and slow trip, but a good workout for all of us.

Guerilla homesteading

Do it yourself: A lean-to by a lake close by my place. Though quite visible from one side of the lake, it is surprisingly inaccessible. It is also quite well made and is not used for permanent dwelling, which is probably why no one has torn it down.

You don't have to own land to get away from it all. One might even say that not owning land is a prerequisite for true freedom. Squatting in the wild does pose some challenges, though.

I know several people who have lived for years and years in assorted tipis og tarp sheds in the forest and never been bothered by anybody. Half of them have been young, outdoorsy students and/or artist types, the other half have done way too much drugs.

The rules, most places, say you can not camp more than three nights in one spot. So the challenge is either moving around like a real nomad, or staying out of sight.

Most squatting rules were originally implemented to keep poor people from saving money, but now that most of us have been brainwashed to believe we need so many amenities land owners and public areas are no longer in danger of being overrun by the maddening crowds.

Yet.

Siting: Maybe settling down right next to a road or a lake will work for you, but very likely some inquisitive fellow will start asking all the wrong questions. If you are visible from a road or from a lake, you will be very, very vulnerable.

An ideal place would be a south-facing slope quite close to a river and quite far from trails. There are no really dangerous large predators in my area, so the main animal to worry about here is the mosquito.

Housing: Building a small and at least mildly professional looking shed has it's advantages, as most casual walkers that happen to stumble across it will presume it's supposed to be there. On the other hand, if some ranger or land owner makes a fuss you will have a hard time convincing them you've only been there for a couple of days. Also, transporting building materials will get you noticed in the end.

Making a log cabin with trees from the site opens a whole can of legal worms. Only recommended if the chance of being discovered is very, very low.

There are various tipis and large tents on the market. These have the distinct advantage of being portable, and with some ingenuity they can be insulated in winter. The site simplydifferently.org has a wealth of information on these kinds of dwellings.

In my climate one of the best alternatives for stealth living might be a sod-covered igloo. One example is mentioned in an old article in Mother Earth news, another example can be found in that treasure chest of hippie building lore, Lloyd Kahn's Shelter. These are almost invisible, well insulated and don't require transport of loads of building materials.

Heat: A sheet iron wood stove combines efficiency with at least some degree of mobility. Again, for legal reasons, it's probably a good idea to stick to fallen trees, debris from clear cut areas in the vicinity and so forth, rather than chopping down the trees around the site. For making food, camp stoves honestly become sort of fiddly and irritating in the long run. Maybe a rocket stove would be a good idea.

Escape: A guerilla homesteder would be wise in planning her escape well in advance. Strategies are storage spaces kept at a good distance from the dwelling and (this sounds insane in this context) also a "summer home", some simple structure to retreat to in case one's place has been overtaken by the land owner's minions or public park zombies.

The fanzine Dwelling Portably has over the years presented lots of tips on permanent camping and storage ideas for squatters. The issues have now been collected and reissued, heartily recommended reading.

Health: One reason for the "three night rule" that actually makes sense, is that campers can end up making a horrible mess. One of the first things to consider when settling down on the wrong side of law is what to do with one's own feces. I know camping guides traditionally bray on and on about digging a deep hole and covering it all with a stone but you're not going to do this day after day. And digging a hole to make a latrine certainly isn't a good idea in cold, wet climates as rainwater will seep into it and it will all end up smelling horribly.

One option is shitting straight on the ground different places in a large area. Unless you're on antibiotics, you're shit isn't all that much more hideous than any other animal's shit, and they're not digging any holes or covering it up with stones. Your excrements will disappear quickly and feed the earth.

Another possibility is using a bucket and emptying it on a compost heap.

Camouflage: A guy I know built a small shed in the woods where he stayed some years while on heroin. It was so well camouflaged that one day he woke up and found a family sitting around with hot dogs at his camp fire site, ten meters (thirty feet) from where he was sleeping, completely oblivious to the fact that they were right next to an inhabited structure. He was so worried of scaring them that he stayed inside all day, pissing in an old water bottle.

Avoiding straight lines and crazy colors on the structure goes a long way in camouflage, as does sod roof coverings in case one is paranoid about those helicopters. In an area with snow, though, one will leave tracks. That stuff in old adventure books about dragging a large branch while skiing to cover over one's tracks does work, but man, it's a pain.

Keeping the area tidy is perhaps the best way to avoid trouble. A place with lots of junk registers much easier, and in a much more unfortunate way, than just a pleasant little home.

What you can't do: You can't wash your clothes unless you really make an insane effort. Unless you're living as a gatherer-hunter you're going to go to town anyway. So do your laundry at laundromats or a friends'. Also, you need some "real" address. Most governments do not accept post box addresses or even employers' addresses, precisely to avoid people going off into the wild like you.

Quality of life: Woodland squatting is rough stuff, even by my standards. But it will force a strict limit on the number of possessions, which most describe as very liberating.

Also, what is "rough"? I live in a cabin without running water or mains electricity, and often feel I am the one who's taken the easy way out. If I didn't have a mortage, things would be even easier. But it would be hard to keep animals.

The ones I know who have done this have all chosen sites that were very close to public transport, but still completely out of view. Typically the areas close to railway tracks or roads are not considered very interesting by land owners or hikers or skiers or bicyclists or whatever. Weekend warriors will start off from defined nodes like bus/ train stations or parking lots, and fan outwards from there. The areas close by that are in the "shade" of these triangles are pretty safe, though perhaps not as idyllic as one would like.

Self-sufficiency in Russia

I am currently reading Steinar Wikans "Kola", about the Kola peninsula in Northwestern Russia. While hunting in 1992, the author stumbles over a small cabin, thirty kilometers (twenty miles) from the closest road, inhabited by Gennadij (64) and Faina (65). When the Soviet Union fell apart, so did their plans about retiring to Fainas apartment in Latvia, which the Latvian government gave to somebody else. And Gennadij got ill from inhaling the fumes in the industrial arctic town where they lived. They did what it seems quite a few Russians are doing, they built themselves a small cabin and lived mostly from what they could fish, hunt, gather and grow. Bear in mind that this is close to 70 degrees North.

They had an old russian Buran snowmobile and a generator to power some lights, but no chain saw. Wikan had dropped by some years later, and learned that Gennadij had drowned while fishing, but Faina was still living there. (Both photos by Steinar Wikan.)

Awesome pics of nature must go

Skiing season is here. You would never know by the weather here in the lowlands, but you can tell by looking at all the advertisement for winter sports gear.

Invariably, these ads will depict some incredibly cool dude or dudess doing something unbelievable in some impossibly pristine area. And maybe it's a sign of the velocity at which I am approaching that stage of life known as being a really grumpy old fart, but those beautiful pictures give me the same feeling as somebody scratching their fingernails down a blackboard.

For one thing, I am beginning to feel that nature that looks that friggin' good should perhaps be left alone. Yes, I know, getting a glimpse of spectacular nature will trigger us into protecting it.

Ok. Maybe.

But then there's the unintended propaganda effect. These pictures tell us that the only beautiful nature out there is one which is unfit for human habitation anyway, places that can be used for nothing except as recreational areas. As long as we preserve the mountain tops and the deserts for their pure awesomeness, maybe we won't notice what an awful mess we're making of the rest of this planet.

Why does middle-class "fun" today equate with "going somewhere previously unspoilt"? I am highly guilty of this mind-set myself. But gradually, the vision of packs of dreadlocked ski-bums in garish, plastic clothing chartering helicopters to get to those really remote off-piste places is starting to seem less and less innocent to me. We mushers have a lot of explaining to do too, for that matter.

Ideally, we would all live in really, really nice places. Places where we could go bicycling or skiing or surfing or maybe somebody could develop some real high-adrenaline gardening. We could live in places we didn't feel we ever had to escape from. And maybe this could even work in reverse, we could all simply decide to do fun things right where we live, even if the place we live in doesn't look all that great.

Sure, a change of scenery is nice. But the Great Spectacular Nature Show put on by advertising companies does end up being read as "everything cool is somewhere else", which can not possibly be a healthy message in the long run.

Whine, whine, whine.

Good advice and the art of battery maintenance

Well, here I am, trying to take a photograph of what it looks like when doing routine battery maintenance. A word about battery maintenance: This is perhaps not an ideal situation in which to pick up a mating partner unless, of course, you stumble across a prospective companion who is turned on by protective eye wear, rubber gloves and a headlight.

That headlight thing is to be able to peak into the holes of each cell to see how much water you need to add.

"Battery maintenance" involves mostly adding completely sterile water in each little cell, and occasionally rubbing the knobs where wires are attached with a little petroleum jelly. This is not something I've discovered myself, of course. I've just read a million times that this prolongs the life of the batteries, and in general makes them work better. Not only solar power weirdos say so, but car people too. Millions and millions of grease monkeys and shop owners and automobile fanatics. So I'm taking a wild chance that all these people know something I don't.

This is, however, one of those things you can never, ever suggest anybody else should do. I know a number of people with small solar systems in summer houses or remote skiing cabins, and usually they have spent weeks and weeks of wages on a system that ends up powering two measly small lamps a couple of weekends a year.

And they have never, ever added water to the battery. Usually they seem to never even have heard of the concept, which is interesting as almost all of them have cars.

I am not such a genius when it comes to taking heed of advice myself. This is probably an evolved chimp-thing, a trait most of us share. We will all run around with scissors and jump into the water straight after eating until it kills us.

If sloshing water into the cells does not feel right for you, go for sealed batteries, which are actually, and incredibly, just about as maintenance-free as the people who make them claim. But if you, like me, go for the batteries that look sort of like car batteries, fill them up every now and then, until the liquid almost reaches the bottom of the vent well. It's hard to say how often this should be done. I haven't done it for half a year and boy, I should have done this a lot earlier. And only use absolutely sterile water, and (not shown) an absolutely clean funnel.

There are automated systems for watering batteries, too. This can make some sense, but also looks suspiciously much like just yet another doo-dad.

Update: Read the comments. Turns out rubber gloves and distilled water are more optional than I thought.

Tying the knot

Finally got a copy of "Ashley's Book of Knots" today. What an insanely beautiful book this is. And how on earth it was edited, what with all those illustrations and cross-references before the advent of the computer, I can not even start to think about.

I will spend the rest of the week with stumps of rope learning, and promptly forgetting, all types of important, useful and simply strange knots.

On the edge

Look at it: It seams recognizable...

This is not my home. It's Ted Kaczynki's place. Or rather his former place. He's in prison now, of course.

Ted Kaczynski is perhaps better known as the Unabomber. If I had lived in a culture where he was better known than the one I'm in, I think he would have cropped up quite often in conversations when it dawns on people how I live.

And I have to say, I wouldn't have blamed them.

Even though I don't share his politics, there are some common denominators when it comes to preferences in real estate and interior decoration.

Just look at it: For chrissake.

Supposedly a news report, just following his arrest, went like this:

On-site reporter: Apparently, the Unabomber, now revealed to be former professor Ted Kaczynski, lived in this remote cabin without electricity or running water.

Anchorwoman: And still no suspicions were raised?

I am thinking about Kaczynski now, because I am reading a book called "What We Leave Behind" by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. They are this close to suggesting their readers blow something up. Their premise is that civilization is just flat out unsustainable, and any attempts to jerry rig solutions are going to fail.

This is bleak stuff.

Mostly, I find it pretty good, too. It fits well with what I think and believe, those rare instances where I don't sensor myself. I've developed quite a knack for sounding slightly less insane in polite company than I really am. It's a survival thing.

But it's become a habit. Now I hardly even whisper to myself how worried I am, how unsure I am that we will be able to tidy things up.

Some parts of the book make me cringe a bit. I find it hard to accept the way environmentalists lump together American Indians as if they were one homogeneous group. Some of them had (and have) very admirable cultures, others less so. Anything else would be crazy. They're not übermensch, those Indians.

Surprisingly, the chapter about aborigines and magic is quite readable. The authors manage to show respect while avoiding the new-agey baloney that normally surrounds this topic.

Kevin Kelly of Cool Tools fame has a kind of response to the kind of thinking held by Jensen and (to some extent) Ted Kaczynski. That's were I found the pictures here, too.

Loo tech

Stored like nice wine: My friend K. separates number one from number two, and stores the solids while they slowly turn into something useful.

Having spent most of my adult life in various decrepit cabins, I have actually lived without a wc for almost fifteen years. This is what I've learned:

Keep it simple: Any moving parts, anything that involves electricity, heating, freezing, wrapping or tumbling will break down, and you will have to fix it. And those chemicals you can buy are absolute madness. A bucket needs only very, very limited maintenance.

Use non-recycled paper: This is counter-intuitive. If you're grooving to that nice, green vibe, why would you want to buy that luxurious white paper? Because it composts.

Expose your stuff: The smell we associate with human waste is actually the smell of human waste in water. Exposed to air, the smell disappears almost instantly. The way to expose it to air is to...

... add carbon: Grass clippings are perhaps the best thing you can use. I use wood shavings, which has a poor reputation since it doesn't make wonderful compost. But I let the compost alone for years and years.

Improving on my system: Swedish Separett have a thingamajig you can put into your loo to separate the solids from the liquids. This has a lot going for it, the golden drops can be diluted into water and used for adding nitrogen to those crops that like that stuff, and the composting of the rest is even less smelly or scary than it would be otherwise. Using this, you could keep your compost anywhere and nobody would ever know, so I would absolutely have gone this route if I had neighbors close by.

Another thing I would do if I had better control over my life would be to build insulated composting bins instead of that log-cabin themed frame I use now. In my experience, only insulated bins will create good enough conditions in this climate for the thermophilic bacteria that really mean business when it comes to composting. The illustration below gives the idea. For insulation, use polystyrene. The polystyrene can be wrapped in cloth, not as disgusting as it sounds. Building the compost bins like an insulated house with double walls is just overkill. An important detail here is the inner lid, which rests on the compost so the heat is not wasted in empty space.

A good source of information for stuff like this is the book Humanure by Joseph Jenkins.

The smell of man

The nifty toilet above is lifted from Curious Goods, and pasted here simply because I needed something to illustrate a subject that bugs me a lot.

I'm getting to the toilet part after a while. Just bear with me:

There are showers in the basement at the office where I work. They are spanking new, and incredibly convenient for those of us who bike or run to work. There are wardrobes and there is even a sauna.

But it smells awful down there. "Something with the pipes," as we are trained to tell each other here in civilization.

More specifically, it smells of human refuse disintegrating anaerobically in water.

Listen to me. At home I shit in a bucket, a bucket I often keep in the room next to where I sleep so I don't have to put on boots and tie my shoelaces to go outside every single time I have to take a dump. I add some wood chips or pine needles or whatever, and empty it all on my compost heap every now and then.

The office building where I work, on the other hand, is less than six months old and equipped with what is presumably advanced plumbing, all done to code.

So how come I never smell shit at home, but always smell shit here?

In part, of course, because at home my feces are not submerged in water, an idiotic practice where perfectly usable fertilizer is instead used to pollute water. I guess there's also a question of scale. A composting toilet system for an office with hundreds of people would require a lot of work and engineering. But surely not more than has already gone into the obviously defect plumbing?

Man, I am so sick of this.

Fending for oneself

One of the sites I visit compulsively is Bikehacks, a review of all things weird and wonderful in the world of self-propelled transport.

Occasionally I whip out my camera to take pictures of nice bikemods myself. Whenever I see interesting old cars there are often some people loitering around taking pictures of it, so I am hoping the creepy stigma that used to be attached to taking pictures of other people's stuff has slowly waned now that we are all photo-spies.

Above is a bike I saw recently with some well executed plastic bottle fender extenders. Plastic bottle fender extenders are a staple in the world of diy bicycle upgrading, but this one was particularly nicely done, I felt. Note the use of pop rivets and reflector material.

Indianuity

This is a Doolan's fish camp in the Nisga'a valley in northern British Columbia, where I spent a week for work-related reasons this spring. If you look closely and have perfect eyesight (or click on the pic), you will see that the door is connected with a string through a pulley to a large shackle (in front of the blue plastic bottle). This way, the door, which opens inwards, closes automatically and as little precious heat as possible is wasted.

So much elegant technology to ape after, so little time.

The joy of utter incomprehension

I discovered that the Voynich manuscript can be downloaded in its entirety. Nobody knows what language it's written in. Or even whether or not it's just some insane nonsense jotted down by a nutter with fantastic stamina.

Either way, I can stare at this stuff forever.

I should include more astronomical charts, diagrams of plants and pictures of naked women in pools in my notebooks. I'm sure if I did that, nothing could possibly go wrong.

The reason for it all

Bootie time: Me putting on booties on Franklin, a dog who is both soft spoken and fierce. (Photo: ELG)

I moved up here so I could spend more time mushing.

As it turned out, living in the sticks takes a lot of time in itself. It evened itself out. That was not a surprise, really.

Autumn training has now taken off, most runs are slightly longer than the last one. And with a near full moon we can sail over the logging roads without using lights even in the middle of the night. Every autumn I am in awe at how quickly the dogs build up perseverance and muscle, how quickly they remember old tricks of their trade.

Maybe they're not fantastic sled dogs. I am certainly no award winning musher. But this is what grace must feel like.

Lessons in light learned

Lesson number one: Now I know why the main light in kitchens is rarely squat in the middle of the ceiling. You end up casting a shadow over everything you do.

This life is even teaching me stuff about interior decoration. Who would have known.

Lesson number two, which is not really a new lesson, is that things sometimes look better in books, especially in line drawings, than they do in real life, or at least in my real life. Above is a nifty looking lamp with a counterweight, as presented in the book "Low Tech" (mentioned previously). Below is my attempt. I was so happy with the lamp over my bed I made one pretty much like it. But the wiring is just too unwieldy, and the lamp too light weight, for the counterweight thing to look nice.

It does work, though. It goes up. It goes down.

I now plan to come up with lots of ideas on how to make this look better, while doing nothing whatsoever about it.

Best friend technology

Sometimes the bond between man and dog bring out the best in both. Sometimes it does not. And sometimes the result is something in between. Here's a "dog restrainer" gadget which I doubt would work for sled dogs. From Life Magazine's "30 Dumb Inventions".

Despite the title, some of those inventions aren't dumb at all. (Via Dinosaurs & Robots.)

Kitchen of light

Putting up wires at home has inspired me to make things to connect those darn wires to. Above is my spanking new kitchen light. It's simply a piece of plywood with LED bulbs stuck in small bulb sockets on one side, and some messy electric stuff on the other. All that wiring is because I didn't want the "Christmas light effect" where the removal, or burnout, of one bulb makes everything else go dark. My idea is to regulate the size and amount of bulbs according to the state of my batteries.

Two 1 w "warm white" bulbs, and a 0,5 watt "ultra white" one. No real philosophy behind this setup, it's just what I had lying around. The picture below shows the difference in light temperature.

Extension V

Soon finished with the extension, I've put tar paper on the roof and painted the interior. Happy with self.
Note door for evil cat.

Get wired

Despite living all these years with a solar power system, I have only recently started wiring the cabin so I can get electricity other places than right next to the batteries. Up until now I've simply relied on my cat-like night vision in places like the kitchen.
Actually, I've used a combination of candles, lights powered by AAA-cells and those tricks blind people use. Like putting my thumb into the cup so I know when it's filled up.
Soon, that will all be history. Real power is coming to the kitchen. And while I'm at it. all other kinds of places.
As this is all 12 volt it's OK for me, insurance-wise, to do all the electric stuff myself. At least I think it is. Never check a good story twice.
(Note to self: Do I have insurance on the hovel?)
Above is what passes for wiring in this place, untouched by professionals. The big fat wire on top is the trucker's lane, you need big fat wires to transport 12 volt any distance. And then I add narrower, and more pliable wires to go to the assorted lights and switches.

Architecture for sheep

This summer, GF and I walked around some mountain pastures for sheep. The sheep farmers set up constructions like this so the ewes have somewhere to go with their lambs if it really starts pouring.

"This is great," said GF.

"You could live here, and I could stay in that luxury hotel three miles down. Wouldn't that be just perfect for both of us?"

Thanks for all the fish

Friend and neighbor K. has started cutting out the mackerel logo out of tins of mackerel & tomato sauce, a local popular bread spread.

So there. See what happens when you live alone in a small cabin in the woods.

Mackerel & tomato is often known as "dead man in a tin" or "air plane crash", because that's what it looks like, if you got that kind of imagination. After a couple of decades, the jokes have gone beyond stale and now functions as simple synonyms.

K. has a vague idea about making a glittering, shimmering kind of curtain with these fish, suspended on fishing wire, I'm guessing. It would look nice in the wind.

K. refuses to call this an art project, claiming everybody calls everything art these days.

I'm still filing this under "art". Don't know where else to put it.

Art for woodland hermits

No title: Erland Nilsson. Photo by Lars Tunbjörk

At a wonderful exhibition called "Other Art" I saw this. The theme was "outsider art". All around the place, it seems, there are madcaps with no formal art education churning out stuff like this for their own satisfaction.

If this isn't wonderful, I don't know what is.

The heat is on

Here's my wood stove, a 1960's cast iron "Jøtul #4". When it was designed there was a rage for all things Pacific and "tiki", and this is reflected here. The "Jøtul #4" is obviously inspired by the statues on Easter Island. It has that convex eye ridge and stoic expression. The statues didn't have nose rings but some artistic license should be tolerated.

A great boon with this model is that the front door slides downwards and under the oven, so it doubles up as a fireplace (below). This is real luxury mode, the wood burns quickly and the room is not heated.

That's a water heater on top of the oven, great for washing off all those blood stains after a quiet afternoon spent splitting logs. The oven is not much good for preparing food apart from long-simmering stews. You'd just end up heating up the room to sauna-like temperatures.

There's a whole world of theorizing about how to improve the efficiency of a wood stove. Chop enough wood, sit comatose long enough in front of glowing embers, and this kind of speculation comes naturally.

The burning wood sucks in the air from the room, and then promptly sends it up the chimney. Certain industrious people have been upset enough about this state of affairs to create an air intake to their oven from the outside of their homes.

Another trick is to extend the stovepipe horizontally under the ceiling for the whole length of the room. I've seen old Scandinavian and American school houses with ovens fitted out this way. There is a limit, however. At some point you have to accept loosing some heat up the chimney as the heat transports the smoke.

You can also attach fins to the stovepipes, increasing the heated area. And there are fans to put on top of the ovens, that start rotating "on their own" (actually from the rising, hot air) and disperse the warm air.

Since the 1980's wood stoves have improved immensely in terms of efficiency, and also pollute a lot less than they used to. There is a ghastly irony in that when people really needed these things they didn't work all that well while today, when wood stoves are not as vital, they're much better.

An eye for it

Pregnant women recognize other pregnant women all over the place, I'm told. A bike fiend friend can spot a Campagnolo derailleur a mile away.

Me, I sure got an eye for outhouses. Here's a communal one I saw this summer on a ferry landing. I'm not sure why it says "Baron", but there used to be a barony close by.

Aye, the common people will arise as one, one day.

Also, I'm not sure how it works, as I didn't have a chance to check. Most likely, it's either closed or they've carved out a hole so everything just plops down into the fjord. Any other technology would require maintenance, which in general is just not in vogue.

Building with tarps

A couple of months ago some friends held a performance in the courtyard of a renaissance house. A good rule of thumb in this area, of course, is that no matter what the weather man says it will probably rain, so tarps were suspended over the area.

As anybody who has built with tarps knows, they will collect rainwater and eventually burst unless somebody applies some real engineering to the project. In this case, the problem was solved by attaching hoses to the lowest-hanging parts of the tarp, thus diverting the water. If I can only figure out how this was done, it might be practical in the construction of temporary sheds and the like.

Below is a tarp-and-rain-related accident waiting to happen. Note the water-filled bulge above the bed:

This is the now abandoned home of my former neighbor Mo. The picture is taken some days after he was sent to the hospital, and I was asked to collect some of his stuff. He was what is normally called a "homeless guy", except that he did have a home, this shack made of birch poles and tarp and scrounged odds and ends, situated quite close to the local train station but out of sight of everyone. I hesitate in calling Mo a friend, as he had some real serious issues and could be sort of scary when high or drunk.

I imagine what he would normally do about that rainwater catchment above his bed was simply push off the collected water after each rain. He didn't quite have his act together to make a more maintenance-free solution, though there was nothing wrong with his skills or potential.

You'd think just building a roof with a really steep angle would solve all problems, but it would need to be so steep that it for all practical purposes would be a wall. And you'd be back to square one. A method I've used (example below) is making sure ridges below the tarp create grooves that lets the water flow downwards.

Extension IV

Area hermit expands spartan cabin into sumptuous luxury palace.

This just makes me so incredibly happy. Pottering around, hammering a bit here, sawing a bit there, seeing it all come together. I realize I'm acting as if I was Trifon of Solovetsky or something, as if I built something monumental and impressive.

But there's that crisp autumn air, I have most of the materials and the tools that I need, and pretty soon now, I'm going to put up the doors.

A guy who actually knew what he was doing

This is Richard Proenneke. He thought it would be cool to build a cabin in Alaska and live there for a year in 1961. And stayed until 1998. He was insanely resourceful and built his cabin using almost only stuff he found on the site. That dutch door he's leaning through, those hinges: All's made from local wood using nothing but hand tools. He even made a hinge and a lock out of wood, too.

All this is documented in a film called "Alone in the Wilderness". Proenneke shot a lot of 16 mm film about his life, which has since been edited together. He's almost blogger-like, when a bush pilot friend arrives with two pairs of socks, Proenneke drags out his 16mm Bolex and films them, so he can show them sometime, somewhere, to someone. My friend, mushing comrade and, alas, ex-neighbor Jaass gave the film to me but I only managed to get around seeing it yesterday. It is mind-bending. The stuff this guy could build with hand tools.

He seems to have been a short man with a funny gait. If you get to see the film, look at his enormous biceps as he saws!

Somehow he manages to build, fish and hunt without any kind of macho swagger. Just a careful guy minding his own business, with a bent towards perfectionism. Me, I'm a tall, confused guy with no discipline. But I can still be inspired.

Excerpt of the film below:

Extension III

"Well," I think to myself. "It might not look like much now. But just you wait until I paint it!"

My ride

Extremely professional: The rig, that is. The photographer, on the other hand, didn't even see his own shadow.

This is my off-season sled dog training rig, the closest thing I've got to a car. That seat in front is for passengers or load carrying, the driver stands up behind it and clings for dear life to the steering bars.

It's got drum brakes in front, hydraulic disc brakes behind. And a wicked parking brake made of serious spikes that you kick into the ground and lifts the back wheels up.

There's a whole micro-industry around mushing rigs, though most dog drivers still make do with assorted junked ATVs, bolted-together car parts or the like.

Some just wait for the snow, and let their dogs do other stuff off-season.

For a while, I trained four dogs at a time with my off-road bicycle. I must have been out of my mind. If I had met someone walking their poodle I would still be in prison. There was no way I could stop for the first miles, and I changed my brake discs every week. Another disadvantage of bicycles in this context is that if you put it down to check the dogs, untangle them from the gang line or whatever, they might run away with the bicycle rattling behind them.

Purpose-made rigs are expensive, but not more so than top-of-the-line bicycles. And they're made by guys who don't have the advantage of an efficient assembly-line production behind them or a large market in front of them. So actually I'm surprised they're not even more expensive. If I ever tried making a rig that would actually last instead of disintegrating the first time I applied the brakes it would end up costing much more.

Cat on a hot tar roof

Here's Felis, licking her genitals on my roof. You can also see how I should spend some time improving that roof, instead of just building more stuff.

Homebrew DC LED lamp

Spread the light: Actually, the funnel is just for looks. The LED lights up a pretty narrow area.

The hardware store where I get my weekly fix has started stocking 3w DC LED bulbs which emit "warm white" light, 3000 kelvin. This is astonishing stuff. Just a couple of years ago the best I could get were 1w LED bulbs with that eerie, sf-like bluish white light. It was either that, or solder together a whole bunch of small LEDs by myself, still emitting that creepy alien hue.
Below is the bulb, intricately engineered with an integrated heat sink, as it were. To the right is a "bulb socket", just a way to connect the bulb to wires.

Strangely, there are hardly any lamps around that this bulb would fit in. There are some hideous low volt-lamps for RVs, but they look like something you'd get free with a stick of gum.
I found a steel funnel, some heat shrink tubing, a cigarette lighter plug, wire and a switch which I think I got from some car shop, and strung it all together.

That picture on the wall, by the way, is from one of my former lives as a frame maker. I had a friend who was a budding artist who would come by after closing time with prints and I'd frame them for him, and get some of his works for my trouble. Much to my chagrin and surprise, he has become an art teacher instead of a fabulously famous artist. Those swaps would have made a good story.

Come to think of it, it's a nice story anyway.

Here's the lamp in action above my bed. The candle on the right seems just as strong, but that's just the camera talking. The light from the lamp is more than strong enough for reading.
It draws so little electricity it does not even register on my control panel, but if I turn on my 1 w LED table lamp too, they draw 0,6 amps put together.

Downscaling

I've had between one and eight sled dogs for the last eleven years. For four memorable months, I took care of two German Shorthaired Pointers for a friend who was traveling, so there were ten dogs on my lot.

Now I'm down to four. I found it harder and harder to train a large team. So I've sent away the most athletic mutts to happier lives with more dedicated mushers. And by now I realize I'm never going to run a team of eight again. At least not eight of my own dogs, which was the whole point. I have no need to be a tourist on somebody else's sled.

I still can't make myself burn all those doghouses, though. So they're stacked up, like some sad Doggy Manhattan.

Things change. Go with the flow.

Kerosene addiction III: How to use an Aladdin lamp

According to the internet, and if you don't believe the internet, what are you going to believe, Aladdins are the "Cadillacs" of kerosene lamps. This makes a lot of sense. They are big, beautiful and the company's R&D department have obviously been on vacation for a long, long time. The Aladdin lamps also need constant attention and use a whole lot of fuel.

Some of the parts for this contraption are still labeled as "Made in Tennessee". How often do you see that these days?

They are really wonderful things and easy to fall in love with. But they are not easy. I used to hold courses in "Aladdin care 101" when I went away and surrendered my place and dogs to other people, but I would see their eyes glaze over and could almost hear them thinking to themselves "How hard can this be? It's a lamp, for chrissake." Before I managed to get to the train station they would invariably call and tell me the lamp was sooting like hell.

Now I simply tell dog sitters to never mind about those lamps. Stick to the other ones.

Aladdin lamps are round wick type, but with a twist. Above the wick, there's a mantle covered with thorium. And that mantle, in some way or another, reacts to the flame beneath it and lights up something fierce.

Step I: Fill'er up! I have a small funnel with a bent stem that makes filling less messy. You can fill the lamp even while it's burning, it's not going to kill you unless you do something stupid. If your dogs are like mine, this is the moment they will choose to flip your arm up with their snout. So I normally do this when I'm alone.

If the wick has been dry for a while, let it soak for half an hour.

Step II: Trimming the wick. Most lamps are delivered with a small plastic trimmer. Remove the flame spreader, a perforated thimble-like device inside the wick, and turn that plastic doo-dad clockwise on top of the wick. I do this every third or fourth time I use the lamp. I keep the trimmer on a nail on the wall, otherwise I would certainly loose it.

Step III: Insert flame spreader.

Step IV: Light it up! You want a blue flame. If it gets yellow, it will start to smell.

Step V: Add the combined glass chimney/mantle thingamajig. Twist it on. And now do this, I mean it: Turn the wick down until you here a throbbing/humming sound. That's too low. Turn it slightly up. You want to be able to see the woven pattern in the mantle, if not, it's too bright. Now let it alone for a while. After some time, you can consider turning it up.

If you do the homo electricus thing and just crank it up to max at once, it will start sooting horribly. This is because the kerosene's viscosity changes with the temperature around it. If it gets real hot, it flows easier, and you get too much kerosene which is then not properly combusted.

That's my theory, anyway.

I usually keep my Aladdin lamps turned down pretty low, and then turn up the one I use for reading or sewing or eating. And I keep an eye on that bugger. If a dark spot appears on the mantle, I turn the wick down, and it disappears. By now I have developed an intense pavlovian reaction to the smell of sooting kerosene.

These lamps must have been a real revolution for people in rural areas. They were invented around the same time people in cities had gas lights, and just before they got electricity. But for millions of kids in the boondocks these lamps erased the link between "doing your homework" and "going blind".

They give off a whole lot of heat, too. Comparable to a 1000w electrical heater, I'm told. This is nice to know, when comparing with stuff in civilization. I sort of know what "1ooo watts" is. Actually, if I stay at home all day during winter, four of these will keep me toasty without lighting up the stove.

If you turn up the light, it corresponds to a 60 w incandescent light bulb.

On this site:

Kerosene addiction I: Flat wick lanterns

Kerosene addiction II: Round wick lanterns

Extension II

Going nowhere fast. But even the slightest progress makes me fantasize about all the cool stuff I could build. Someday soon.