It?s been six weeks since we returned to the New Jersey suburbs after living for a year in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods of Maine with our three kids and two cats. Reflecting on the year in my final Green post on the experience, the question that matters most is: Was it worth it?
Personally, professionally and financially, the answer is yes. The benefits were greater than the costs. The pleasure was greater than the pain, even for the cats.
Perhaps my most consistent pleasure came from a mundane task: driving to the cabin. I?d turn off the paved road that parallels the lake and onto our dirt road. Behind a locked gate began our 1.5 miles of road to the cabin. The road runs by a vernal pool with wood frogs that freeze solid every winter, past a beaver who tries to flood the road periodically, over the brook that powers the beaver?s engineering schemes, around a hawks? nest corner; over a second brook where a giant female snapping turtle lives; across the Appalachian Trail 117 miles from its end; left at the fork to the waterfall, past 13 springs on the hillside, up a steep hill that washes out when it rains, and around the garden to a cabin on the hill with views that stretch 180 degrees to the horizon.
I would drive slowly with the windows down, and the scenery would mentally move me from focusing inside on the worry of the day to focusing outside on the beauty and wonder of nature. It was a 15-minute vacation that left me feeling refreshed.
For me, the year also provided a chance to watch nature up close, whether it was a family of merlins fledging their chicks or a deer-tick-infected moose surviving the winter. The views from every window of the cabin were inspiring and made for a productive year professionally even though cellphone coverage and Internet access were a continual pain.
For Susannah, the year provided the mental space to decide on what she wants to do for the next chapter of her life and get it lined up.
For the kids, there was a lot of unstructured playtime outside, which may have social, emotional and cognitive benefits. Our kids can now play for hours together making up stories of great adventures. They fight less. They read more books. They have new muscles and lean bodies from a more active lifestyle and are less likely to join the ranks of the 16 percent of adolescents who are obese. They are more confident and self-sufficient.
An early love of nature often leads to nature?s being an abiding joy in life. Yet a 2011 poll of adolescents by The Nature Conservancy found that 33 of them had never had a personal experience of nature. Our kids now have this experience and may find that time spent in natural places is a sweet part of life.
We are also happy to say that our kids for the first time know more species of common wildlife than they do Pok?mon cards, unlike the youngsters surveyed for a quirky British study.
For Susannah and me, we now know what we want to do long-term. Go back to the woods, but only after the boys finish high school. No more home schooling. It was easily the cause of more tears, more frustration and more red wine consumption that any other factor in our year.
But what did it cost? The rent in Maine and our mortgage payment, property tax and home insurance in New Jersey were covered by renting our modest but well-located suburban home. Even so, our year in the woods drained $16,462 from our savings accounts. That included $6,500 for a four-wheel drive Jeep we decided not to sell afterward, $6,783 for a solar system that will now go on our house in New Jersey, $1,100 in losses from buying two snowmobiles in the fall and selling them in the summer, $879 for installing satellite Internet and a cellphone booster, a $200 loss from buying an enclosed trailer before the trip and selling it afterward, and roughly another $1,000 in miscellaneous expenses like ice chains for the vehicles, first aid kits, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and LED lighting for the cabin.
One year gave us many of the benefits of reconnecting with nature but without the high costs to careers and to connections with friends from a permanent move. We?d do it again. $16,000 for living one year of our lives in someplace spectacularly beautiful seems like a bargain.
And our indoor-only cats agree. Having the occasional field mouse sneak into the cabin fulfilled their life ambition to terrorize the rodent population.
In sum, the year in the woods moved kids, cats and parents closer to achieving their individual potential. We touched the top of Maslow?s hierarchy of needs.
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