Winter Survival

I’ve mentioned before my love of travel literature (on the nightstand right now is Paul Theroux’s first railway saga The Great Railway Bazaar). My other escape genre is the DIY/cheap living/how-I-dropped-out-of-society-and-lived-to-love-it treatise. Although book editing is a pretty good gig, Christmas and winter both make me especially susceptible to the gospel of simple, jobless living. I thought I’d share a few titles that I have not yet read but that will likely be in this winter’s lineup, in case you want to read along.



First is Possum Living by Dolly Freed, which was published in 1978 when the author was in her late teens. Her father quit his job and pulled her out of high school, and the book is her story of how they got by on little to no money and what she did with all the time she had to self-educate. It has experienced a recent resurgence with a new edition released by Tin House Books in Portland, Oregon, last year. Dolly also has a blog, which I see is on hiatus now but has included some interesting reflections on her old life.



Second is Novella Carpenter’s Farm City, published last year. I read a review and then devoured every last post on her blog and have still not got around to buying the book – I intend to remedy that soon. For the past several years Carpenter has squatted an empty lot in Oakland, California, raising goats and chickens, gardening, and hosting classes on such things. She is ambitious but also very frank about her failures. She also makes no bones about enjoying life in the city and is not a purist back-to-the-lander in that regard, which I find quite refreshing. She’s a journalist, too, and has interviewed some like-minded people, including…



...Philip Garlington, whose book Rancho Costa Nada: The Dirt Cheap Desert Homestead (2003) has been out of print for a few years and goes for about $60 on Abe. Garlington was also a journalist who, back in the 1980s, quit his job and moved onto a $300 piece of Nevada desert. He doesn’t actually recommend the lifestyle, but it combines two of my favourites, deserts and dropping out, so I can’t resist.

In the meantime, presents need wrapping and the job needs going to.