As any Permie or off-gridder can attest, the first year in a new state, climate, or lifestyle is most certainly the hardest. Should one adapt quickly enough using a basic skillset and survive the first year, the chosen situation will only get easier…or such was my belief. In many cases, depending on the situation, this proved to be worth its salt indeed. I refer to the “Survival 5”: food, fire, water, shelter, and companionship. Of course these should be rearranged based on the previous factors aforementioned. But the first year…the first year is finding oneself as it relates to dealing with sometimes extreme discomfort whether it be environmental pressures, physical pain, loneliness, etc. I believed that I was certainly capable. What I did not and could not have known at the time, the hardships I would face, the problems I would encounter, nor the Endurance I would have to muster to complete the task at hand with my mantra always being “If I fail, it won’t be for lack of trying.”. As for the Survival 5, taking them in written order, my decision to leave society and walk into the woods initially left me hungry and dreaming of food, cold without the available resources to build a fire, a thirst so strong that when I finally did get a clean drink of water, I vomited it up, having to cut my way out of a tent that collapsed during an ice storm (my only shelter at the time), and with my Great Pyrenees, Bene, for companionship. But that was in the beginning.
Endurance is the ability to withstand the discomfort that is an absolute and total reality where one asks themselves very serious and desperately honest questions such as, “What the hell am I going to do now?”, and “Have I just made my final mistake?”. Endurance could theoretically be partly defined as “winning by attrition”. Simply outlast Goliath, some may say. But this is only part of the answer. One must DO SOMETHING about the situation. This is Endurance.
As the first few years ground abrasively along, I had solved the clean water issue, built an 8’x16’ lean-to from pallets and scrounged materials (it had a dirt floor), put an old, rusty wood stove back to work, had a comfortable stack of dry firewood on hand, and was eating small animals I had trapped as well as frozen road-kill during the winter. A daily, beneficial routine had developed, I embraced the idea that I had made the right decision to leave my profession/society, and traveled a bit lighter upon the Earth feeling that I was now in charge (within reason) of my life. I learned at that time that in this chosen lifestyle, I get back only what I put in, every calorie of my life energy is being spent directly for my benefit, and, most certainly, that there are no “freebies”. I remember vividly eating a full belly of road-kill deer for supper, feeding the gleanings to my companion, water and coffee grounds on hand for coffee the next morning, and watching “caveman tv” with the stove door open while the ambient light and audible purr of the Coleman lantern lit up the shack. This, to me was Contentment.
(PLEASE NOTE!: The shack was VERY drafty. Burning white gas or Coleman fuel in an enclosed space is lethal! You will die!)
This is the first half of the equation.
