Kind people gave a homeless woman an old trailer.
Imagine a generous individual giving a homeless woman an outdated trailer. That camper, which some had referred to as “ugly,” gradually transformed into a cozy retreat tucked away in the forest.
This is the story of Mama Vee, whose life was significantly improved by choosing to live a basic, self-sufficient existence.
Mama Vee longed for a more independent and tranquil existence away from the hustle and bustle of the city, so she set out to find solace in the quiet of the natural world.
Her journey began in an old school bus, but as her family expanded to include dogs and cats, she quickly realized she needed more space.
A kind neighbor gave her an old travel trailer, which she turned into her sanctuary.
With the assistance of her friends Jamie and Kevin, Mama Vee transformed the dilapidated trailer into a cozy haven. Together, they remodeled, cleaned, and furnished it with all they would require for a comfortable home. They prepared for this new chapter in their lives by packing the trailer with provisions.
For Mama Vee, the trailer signified a fresh start. She dreamed of being alone herself, taking care of her own garden, and leading a peaceful life in the middle of the forest.
Off the grid:
Meet the people leaving modern life behind
When it comes to sustainable living, some of us are dipping a toe in the water, while others are diving in at the deep end. 5 meets the off-gridders who have left electricity behind to live off the earth – and found that they gained more than they lost. These are the people living fully off the grid.
Two years ago, Kirsty Tizard’s morning routine was exactly that: a routine. Every day she trekked up the road, checked into work at her café, spoke to the same people and completed the same tasks as the day before. On paper, Kirsty was ticking all the boxes of affluent middle-class existence – as a café owner her work-life was something many dream of. But just below the surface she felt restless with the repetition.
She and her husband had always been staunch believers in sustainability, and the idea of doing something radically different had been hanging between them for some 10 years, like an unfinished conversation. The ball finally dropped when, in April 2017, a close relative the same age as Kirsty passed away, prompting a moment of deep reckoning for the two. “I got an intense sense that life was short, that I should do with it what really mattered, and fast,” she says. So goodbye café it was. The pair quit their jobs, uprooted their four kids and left a comfy house in Devon behind to move 60 miles away into a wonky woodland cabin – and a brand new existence.
Tinkers Bubble is a 14-member-strong community of like-minded people in Somerset, England who have decided to untangle themselves from the bondages of modern life to pursue a simpler existence. Kirsty’s new morning routine goes like this: wake up with the sun, head down the hill, milk the cows, followed by communal breakfast complete with gas-heated tea, freshly harvested vegetables and eggs laid that morning. The rest of the day she spends weeding and tending to the flock while others around her cut wood, maintain homes and cook. When she washes, it is usually in the nearby lake.
Kirsty is part of a movement quietly spreading throughout Europe and the United States: the off-gridders. People who have, for whatever reason, decided to live off the radar, away from supermarkets, power bills and traffic jams, closer to nature and their own sustainable power solutions.
“I want to be the most sustainable individual I can possibly be”
“Grids” refers to the familiar spiderwebs of modern living: the criss-cross of phone and internet cables, roads and sewers, plus the intangible networks of finance and food supply. For most people who rely on these grids, they can at times feel stifling, and their environmental impact is hard to ignore. To go off-grid is to disentangle oneself from one or more of these systems. The Tinkers Bubble bunch – who don’t rely on any of these networks at all – are at the extreme end of the off-grid spectrum. “Extreme in a good way”, boasted Kirsty contentedly through the camps’ one communal phone. Most of the other off-gridders 5 spoke to begrudgingly deemed having a personal phone necessary, although predictably, few of them were quick repliers.
One particular grid represents the ultimate obstacle for most off-gridders since it is by far the hardest to leave behind. The electrical power grid, its long transnational cables reaching across most developed economies, makes up around two fifths of carbon emissions (it is estimated that 30% of electrical power is lost on its journey across the grid). Emancipating oneself of electricity is therefore by most estimates the single most impactful step an individual can make towards carbon neutrality. To do so, off-gridders generate their own electricity in various ways, using water, wind and the sun.
Still, life off the grid is not the romantic adventure that dreamy city-dwellers might imagine it to be. Laura has learnt this the hard way over the past six weeks. “Transformation is hard,” she says. “If you want to break out and do something radically different, there’s always a cost involved. If there wasn’t, everyone would do it”. Martin echoes the sentiment: “We talk a lot about what we can do for the climate, but we never talk about the things we actually have to give up,” he says. “And we do have to give some things up.”
In the climate vs. comfort conundrum, most have yet to truly pick a side. Not the off-gridders, who believe that waiting is costly. It’s clear that, for a movement full of idealism, packed with dreams and hopes for a better future, its followers are a bunch of stone-cold realists.