Spring peepers
For an off-grid cabin experience, this is a unique one. Here I am, at our lovely cabin in Goose River, connecting to the wireless signal to Skype back home. The "crickets" are also making their calls. Jon thinks this is just too cool. He records the whole thing and posts it on Facebook.
There's off the grid, and then there is OFF the grid...
I like to joke that someone--perhaps me?--should come up with a semi-facetious scoring table for off-grid living. Something like a 0 to 100 scale on the off-grid continuum, where 0 is complete connection and 100 is, well, living in a universe in of one's own. While on Prince Edward Island I had the fortune to meet an islander who is, so far, the highest scoring Canadian off-gridder.
New paper published
Many of us in the Western world have become accustomed to the convenience of our automobile trunk. Drivers regularly rely on this simple tool to load groceries, luggage, supplies, and anything else that would be cumbersome to carry with our bodies while walking.
From one an island to another
We're off to Prince Edward Island. And admittedly, very excited to be staying at a nice off-grid cabin right by a beach.
Ideas galore
I need to do some thinking out loud today and writing helps me remember whatever my brain will come up with. These ideas are in no particular order. They are interpretations of the things I've been observing.
Ice Roads: A New Photo Essay
I have written a new piece on Ice Roads. Parts of that essay will be used for a chapter meant for an edited book to be titled Water Worlds. The photo essay, instead, is bound to be a hypermedia chapter that will be part of the book on off-grid I'm working on.
In the press
Jonatahn Taggart (left, above) and I (right, above) were in a couple of newspaper stories recently. The Goldstream Gazette and the Inuvik Drum both reported on the off-grid project.
Bigger than I thought
Canada is much bigger than I thought. Jon and I are only 5 provinces/territories into our project, and it feels like we've been travelling forever. The trip to Ontario did nothing but reinforce this feeling.
Miles away from the 401
I never thought Ontario could be so... off the grid. Most images of the province come from the 401 corridor, which connects most of Ontario's major cities with many of Canada's cars. In 2000 kms of driving around the province Jon and I did not touch the 401 once, and stayed instead, as planned, fully off-grids. And really, really busy at that. Read Jon's blog entry for more on our adventures.
