While staying with our old HMT friend Steve, he mentions off-handedly that the woods behind his house are owned by the neighbours down the hill – and though in my head I understand what he’s saying, and in the context it was about as benign as it was possible to be (e.g. – owned by that neighbouring co-op so the marshes are protected from development), my heart pushes back against owning forests.
Somewhere deep, I UNDERSTAND that you can own a home and you can own a road and you can even own land, but forests are for exploring. Forests are free.
There’s childhood fantasy given lie by capitalism and American grabbiness that I “should’ be allowed to simply build wherever there’s space. If I’m willing to put in the effort and Live rough enough, I should be able to wander into all these expansive wooded spaces off the highway and set up camp. Simply dig and dig and dig and build a home.
As I’ve gotten older, not only do I know someone will find you and uproot you, but I also absolutely acknowledge that the kind of effort and inconvenience it would take to DIY myself into an off-grid niche is far beyond me. I’m a creature that likes controlled inconvenience and temporary discomfort, and by now I know that I quite LIKE coming home at a reasonable hour… beyond that, I’ve ALWAYS known that I PASSIONATELY Love clean running water, well-functioning toilets and hot, high pressure showers. Strangely, I have ALSO learned that within a given value of temperature extremes I don’t even care if those things are indoors.
But I want them to work.
And so, as we drive through the heart of Wisconsin, past bogs and fields and hidden monuments of stone, we roll through long stretches of birches and less-identifiable woodland and I dream a temporary dream of homesteading.
Perhaps it’s because this part of the country, with it’s hidden lakes and lower-than-normal billboard density, reminds me strongly of Sweden, where their Constitution guarantees the right to pull over and put up a tent and just BE almost anywhere.
But we’d probably abuse that. We’d trash it and move a little down the way and trash it too. We’d use it up and spit it out.
But a boy can dream.
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