Sophisticated and Brittle

Photo courtesy Flickr

In yesterday’s latte line, I found myself standing between two fellows who were comparing notes on last week’s snow and ice storms. One said he had lost power for four days. His family spent day one with neighbors and the rest of the time with family.

Frankly, that’s dumb design. There’s no excuse for setting up living quarters that are not resilient. High-tech domestic systems are fragile, but it’s simple and straightforward to found housekeeping on featherweight, portable techniques that allow any ambulatory person to live comfortably nearly anywhere.

Basic hiking equipment does all that, and it does it well enough to serve everyday needs, too. A portable camping stove, the clamshell kind with a gas cartridge, can turn out daily meals just as well as it rehydrates a freeze-dried packet. First-rate sleeping bags let one laugh at low temperatures, and an insulated parka with a hood makes the best bed jacket of all. Solar and manual charging systems keep the phone alive.

By relying on field gear for at least some aspects of daily life, one can ensure that disruptions don’t interrupt the habitual motor sequences of cooking, going to bed, and getting dressed. In effect, one is constantly drilling for the unexpected, but in ways that are not pessimistic. Including emergency food supplies in the basic meal rotation keeps the reserves fresh and displaces fast food now and then.

One of the less obvious rewards of living close to the field is that it shrinks one’s carbon footprint by reducing consumption, energy needs, and transportation costs.

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