What approximate physical location are you in? This is my dream, but right now I’m wasting away in SF. I’ve been looking for properties with a stream but they seem pretty far between.
I own 4.2 acres in the Sierras north of US-50 between Kyburz and South Lake Tahoe at 5,600ft elevation. It was not easy to find, but there is a seasonal creek that runs through it fed by snowmelt. I had to drill a well 600ft down to find water year round, there are no utilities so I had to dig out for septic, get propane storage for generator power, and I have a gravel path via an easement into an adjacent property to link to a forest service road. As remote and unconnected it was, it still fetched an amount that I am not super happy with, but I acknowledge even that price I got it for was cheap. I knew what I was getting into, specifically buying it after the major fire up there two years ago and was able to get a wide open tree-cleared area that I didn’t have to gain authorization to remove. I fully intend to build a cabin up there and then probably resell it because it’s too remote to AirBnB.
I think you should carefully consider your goals and what you want out of a location (must haves vs nice to haves and a list of dealbreakers).
There are a few things you probably take for granted. If your are considering an off grid or at least remote location, some things you should keep in mind:
- More than ten miles is a long way to get groceries, especially if primitive roads make part of the drive.
- It gets dark when you’re outside of civilization, don’t leave lit areas unless you must.
- Carry extra fuel at all times, you should also have a working, spare vehicle that you actively maintain.
- If you are settling in an area with snow, both your vehicles need to be AWD with snow tires and you should carry chains at all times when it’s season for snow.
- The spare vehicle should have a full tank of gas and spare fuel treated with an enzyme to keep it stable.
- You should have spare parts for your home and car, be comfortable with doing a lot of stuff yourself.
- Know the fastest and slower but more reliable route to the nearest hospital.
- Get a cell phone repeater from your cell company (they often even do it for free if you power it).
- Make sure your house has a power inlet so you can use a portable generator in case your permanent one fails or have a very beefy car inverter so your spare card can power your house.
- Have backup fuel for your generator.
- You should have one week of food, water, and generator fuel on reserve at all time.
- Your firewood pile should be sheltered, covered from the elements, and easy to get to from your home.
- Maintain a sat phone (one with minimal minutes is fine, this is backup comms).
And be sure to remember that shit gets or feels weird for us when we live in remote locations. You will start to see things if you let it get to you. If you plan on exploring, be prepared to come across (and avoid) carcasses, wild animals, poison oak or ivy, strange or out of place structures, people walking around who don’t answer or acknowledge you when you call out, trust your gut and fucking bolt when things are just not right even if you can’t put your finger on it.
I have hallucinated people that disappear when you try to approach them, full and partial structures that seem to dilapidate when I approach them. I’ve seen brand new cars driven out miles off the highway left with their door open as if someone just got out and walked away never to return, burnt out cars miles out in the wilderness, heard children laughing in the distance at midnight in the pitch black, heard the moaning of someone in pain but nobody to be found.
Maybe the most unsettling thing is when you walk into a specific area of the forest and, as if all the air is sucked out, it goes so quiet enough that you can hear your own pulse and rumbling of blood flowing through your ear. You feel, not hear, this low, intense hum, a sense of dread falls over you, as if you are being watched or hunted. This happened to me back in May when I ran across a set of poured, concrete stairs in a clearing as if built for a porch, but no foundation where the house should have been.
Nobody told me this lifestyle would cause me to become afraid of the dark again. I used to camp up there but now I don’t go up there unless it’s light and I can be back on the highway well before nightfall. Honestly, this experience has given me a huge appreciation for the game Don’t Starve.
I only have anecdata, but I have identified two factors: isolation and vulnerability, or rather the sudden change in how isolated or vulnerable we feel. We become accustomed to the sounds of our own neighborhood and city in general, so if you stop all these sounds and introduce new ones, in addition to literally being isolated and unable to read others’ emotions on the situation, our brains generate discomfort via anxiety and stress. The vulnerability aspect is due to the fact that we don’t know what’s out there. When we’re walking around in the darkness, our brains are determining that we are in danger and attempts to signal to us that we need to GTFO. Being in terrifying situations will heighten that response.
Is this a ChatCPT written article to sell stuff or for SEO purposes? Definitely seems like it, and actually makes me wonder about the entire parent post.
I wrote my post with my own two thumbs, thank you.
The site linked looks like one of those stupid content farms that analyzes popular crap on Reddit. The stairs in the woods thing got popular because they are out there, but the is not supernatural - people just abandon or recycle material within structures in remote places if it no longer suits their purpose. Decking and stairs are often made of pressure treated wood which does not burn or decay as quickly and if they are concrete, they most definitely will not decay in a hurry. So once the combustible tinderbox of a log cabin is consumed or is recycled (via dismantling) all that is left is often just stairs.
Yea, I see more and more of these content farms when I'm googling various topics as well, which is actually making using the internet to learn how to do things less productive.
Your post overall was not written in that manner, but the tangent into the stairs thing was unexpected and borderline supernatural, actually would have been an interesting segue into a ghost story.
@influx post is so low effort it's hard to tell if they're the one profiting from the content farm or just posted up the first result he found on a quick google search.
I do not at the moment, but I agree that I need to start writing about my off-grid and battery-powered (mis-)adventures. Most of my battery management is bespoke hardware and I’d love to share it.
I also do not want to highlight the creepy side of remote living because that just attracts the wrong type of attention.
Yes, it would be very interesting. For people like myself, living in parts of Europe where there’s no real off-grid wilderness, it’s fascinating to hear about. Particularly when it’s not paired with a) prepper/conspiracy mentalities or b) gear-obsessed content.
Yeah, I’m the western US which is very sparsely populated by comparison to the eastern half of the US[0] or Europe in general. Waaaay too much of off grid information is focused on preppers and I’ve even been accused of being one. Can’t someone just want a cabin to visit for leisure?
I never appreciated how easy it is for me to find very remote wilderness until I started traveling to other places both in and outside the US. I can take a major US highway over Donner pass, a place that 175 years ago, people were eating each other because they got stuck without food. Now, CalTrans has a fleet of equipment and staff that work 24/7 to keep the road clear 99.9% of the time.
> Waaaay too much of off grid information is focused on preppers and I’ve even been accused of being one.
I feel your pain, every US "prepper" related material I've read or watched leaves me with a hanging "and ...?" or "so... ?"
I'm 60, my father, still alive and splitting wood, was born in 1935 - we're both from the remote corners of western australia, a state 3x the size of Texas with a 2023 population of ~ 2 million most of whom are concentrated about the single large city.
In the mid 1980s a group of people came in from the western desert and were suprised to find that Europeans had landed in Australia and over run the continent ... it was the first they'd heard of such a thing although they had wondered about the contrails across the sky.
Are you milling with an alaskan mill or are you using a horizontal band saw? I'd really love to have space and money just keep a wood-mizer around. Do you have a kiln as well?
Lol... I should have got that.... I do not have a wood drying kiln, but I have a small shelter where I stack boards over the winter. It ends up bone dry by the next year when I am ready to use it.
I have thousands of board feet waiting to be milled, so I plan on building a larger lumber drying "shed" at some point with some of the resulting boards.
1. three small creek-fed ponds (bonus: one has an island),
2. numerous outbuildings for various kinds of livestock,
3. a pair of portable outhouses,
4. several miles of perimeter and cross fencing,
5. two large greenhouses (20x50 and 30x90),
6. a built-in oak storage bench for the farmhouse entryway,
7. a portable covered milking stanchion that can service a cow or two goats,
8. a semi-permanent lumber mill capable of milling logs up to 30" around and 24' long,
In addition, I have performed endless upgrades and repairs to existing structures and equipment:
1. rewired and plumbed the wellhouse, adding new storage tanks,
2. maintained my fleet of trucks, heavy equipment, and dozens of other machines that contain small engines,
3. finished out the farmhouse basement to use as a dairy parlor,
I still have a few projects on my TODO list:
1. more outbuildings,
2. a 20' wood bridge across to the island in the lower pond,
3. hot tub (made from cedar that will be cut and milled here on the property), and
4. so much more....
It will never be "done".