Wild Man

This is surely the longest part of the day – waiting for the first coffee. The kettle was filled the night before, of course, and the wood set out neatly for lighting the little stove. But even though the heat builds up quickly, the kettle still seems to take an age first thing in the morning. So whilst I wait, I’ll tell you a little about how I live and how I got here. The first inkling of my changed life was a strange fact about cars. Make a car more fuel-efficient and people will drive more – in fact, people will drive more than even the extra amount that is allowed by the improved fuel-efficiency. This strange fact of human nature is repeated in numerous other examples. Staying with cars, for instance, if the price of fuel is reduced then again mileage goes up, beyond the amount that compensates for the price saved in fuel. Across the board, wherever there is an energy ‘saving’, we humans will end up using and spending more on whatever form that energy or saving happens to take. Well, so what? You might be thinking. So – it occurred to me a few years ago – all of our efforts towards avoiding a global disaster of ‘peak oil’ and climate change were actually having the effect of getting people to USE MORE ENERGY! The better we get at renewables and efficiencies, the worse things get – and the figures are bearing me out. What to do? The answer is obviously something to do with human nature and not with energy efficiency. So there are two choices. Make energy incredibly expensive or change the way people think. Out of these two, you may be thinking, the easiest option by far would be to make energy incredibly expensive. But what government is ever going to do that? There's not a chance that this will happen unless a scarcity of energy was somehow forced on us. And let’s face it, technology is very good at making things better. Despite the scares about shortages and all the rest, there’s always enough energy and more, and in the long-term the price will keep going down. That leaves us with the second choice – change people. Governments, of course, are not going to do that either. So my conclusion. We need to change ourselves. That’s where I’d reached a few years back. And it occurred to me that if I were going to preach to people about change then I had to start by changing myself – I had to live my message. So I took to the woods! Initially I asked around some of the big landowners to see if any of them would let me live in one of their forests – preferably in one of the patches of ancient woodland that are the remnants of the vast Caledonian forest that once covered the whole nation. One of the landowners said yes. I started out with ordinary camping gear and gradually I’ve learnt to build shelters using just the materials I can gather from the woods themselves. Let me describe the current dwelling. It’s called a ‘bender’. It can be made just by bending a few large saplings towards each other and then binding their branches together, then covering over the rough dome that is formed with turf. But this one is a bit more complex. The timber has been cut and set into holes in the ground, which are wedged for support. There’s a root membrane and some waterproofing under the turf. Then, the two main problems with benders have been addressed. One is how to get a decent doorway into the thing without weakening the structure and without resulting in a very draughty house. I solved this with an offset double door – making a kind of shell-like shape for the whole structure. The second big problem with benders is getting some light in! I’ve solved this with what I suppose could be called DIY sun pipes. They stick up above the domed grassy roof surface of the bender and reflective tubes lead through the roof and down into the interior. I’m always trying out different ways of making these and keeping them watertight. The bender’s heated by a stove, which has a hot plate (where the kettle is heating now) and a small oven. Keeping enough heat in the structure is important, since although it keeps the rain out it can be damp. Moisture and ventilation – these two things are critical for leading a safe and comfortable life, both in winter and in summer – and it takes a good part of most of my days just addressing these two issues. So yes, this first boiling of the kettle is just the start of a day of heating water, collecting and storing wood, washing, collecting food and all the other tasks needing to be done just to stay warm, dry, healthy and reasonably well-fed. I don’t yet grow all my own food, but I’m getting close. I confess of course to the coffee – my only real indulgence. I have a paraffin lamp, a few torches and a radio, which can be re-charged via a USB port. I have to do this in the café of the nearest town however, which is a twenty mile walk. They know me there as the wild man! All of my stuff’s stored in wooden chests that are arranged around the low inside walls of the bender. A small bed sits in an alcove formed by these chests. There are rugs on the floor, a small desk and chair, and a rocking chair to sit by the fire at night. And that’s it. That’s all my worldly wealth that’s left. Well, you’re probably wondering by now – how does any of this make a difference to that task of changing people? Sure, I may have changed my life, but how do I even get the message out there to people, living my hermit’s life in the woods? Well, first of all, you don’t change people by telling them to change – that’s kind of obvious when you stop to think about it. In fact – a bit like the use of energy that we started out with – there is a tendency for people to do the opposite from what you try so hard to convince them to do! So step back, take a break, and here are three things that need to be in my life before I can presume to say anything about anyone else’s life – looking, humility and acceptance. By looking, I mean keeping careful watch on what’s happening in the world and not being led along by campaigns and newsreels that are really just flouting their opinions about how the world needs to be. It was by looking that the whole energy-use, fuel-saving paradox started to make sense to me. (It actually has a name – it’s called Jevons’ paradox.) But looking also involves studying people and what really motivates and inspires them – all the unconscious and semi-conscious desires that make up the REAL story of a person’s life. And it also means looking at nature. For let’s face it, the world’s full of crazy creatures – crazy animals, crazy birds, plants and bugs – and of course, crazy people. So, hence, humility! I need to remember that I too am crazy! I need to know that I might be horribly wrong in my assessment of humanity and the way the world is heading. And so – no preaching. If people ask about how I live I just tell them plainly. If people ask me why then I tell them about the whole energy paradox thing that I explained earlier. But that’s it. I’m not offering solutions. Because even if everyone in the world took to living in benders in the woods and growing their own vegetables, then no doubt another weird paradox of human nature would spring up, and another, and another. And so, hence, acceptance! I can only live my message up to a point. It’s the nature of a paradox that it cannot be solved. If it could, it would cease to be a paradox. And who knows, perhaps the universe just wants or needs crazy humans with high-tech gadgets who will always do the opposite of all the things that they say they believe in! I need to accept this possibility – really sit with it and accept it – before I can say any more. Well, time will tell! And meantime, coffee’s ready.