Many people feel that our way of life, the move we made from Boston to the middle of nowhere is/was drastic. My mother-in-law and her husband still feel that visiting our home is camping. In most cases, the criticism of our way of living is said in the context of justifying their own environmentally friendly choices, “you don't have to go to such drastic measures to have a smaller 'footprint'. I turn off lights. I recycle. I drive a Prius.” This generally elicits a giggle from me, followed immediately by the “what is this world coming to” train of thought.

 

 

Our original intent in moving up here was to use this property as a proving ground for what “makes sense” in the average American home. Dan and I are both scientists at our cores and living an experiment is not an unpleasant concept for us. It simply started with turning things off- all things from the electric tooth brush charger to the DVD player (off off, not sort of off, but really in standby mode. We switch off with a power strip.) This is the most logical place to start. From there, we trained ourselves to use power responsibly and in a timely manner. On those sunny days when we have to go to work, but there is a load of wash to be done, we put the wash in and time it to start during the sunniest part of the day. These things matter when you are off-the-grid. As Americans, we have embraced the “I want it when I want it and I want it now” philosophy. Convenience is paramount in our busy lives of trying to get ahead.  We are entitled. Multi-tasking is how we live.

The increasingly global economy gives people the false impression that all foods are fresh now. Produce is picked before it has ripened in order to ship it to it's final destination. Tomatoes are bland and yellowish. Apples are mealy and mushy. Eating with the season is only accomplished in the summertime and only for things which exist in your garden. Once this goal has been reached, most people give up. I can empathize with that. Without my husband's help in the garden, it would only be half its current size.  I get burnt out. I get tired of grubby hands and broken fingernails. I get tired of running out in the middle of the night to cover plants in an effort to protect them from the freakishly late frost in spring or freakishly early frost in fall.   

I ran a personal experiment last year. In October, I tried to do the 100 mile diet for 1 week. All food had to originate from within 100 miles.  I was starving that week and I had a perpetual caffeine headache. I ate lots of apples, winter vegetables, lamb (from the farm down the street), honey, and lettuce. I scoured grocery stores for indications of where produce came from. I sent stock boys scurrying. I read labels.  I learned to drive up to farmer's doors and knock if I thought they had something I wanted. I was committed. I was hungry. 1 week was not enough time. After this experiment, my shopping had been re-tuned to focus on locality. I had been re-cast. Once again, the difference between my shopping as it started and after my experiment was worlds apart. I had made yet another incremental change away from mainstream.

Moving to the top of a mountain in the middle of NH had very little to do with our ecological footprint. We moved here because this is paradise, our Xanadu. It's true, my background would suggest that our ecological footprint would be in the forefront of my mind, but at the time, all I could think of was getting away from the stress of Boston and traffic and the biotech field.  I spent 8 months recovering from the stress-induced illnesses, sleep-deprivation, tennis-elbow from mousing, and an alarming amount of stuff accumulated in frivolous bouts of expensive retail therapy.

These little incremental changes are what have really made us divergent from mainstream society. Pamela Gay of www.starstryder.com is correct in saying that, “one of the side effects of being careful about power and food and waste is that you notice the world around you with a new set of eyes.” Dan and I walk into buildings now and we see power used to create heat (whether or not that was the purpose), to create light, to create pressure (refrigeration units), and to lift (water pumps). We are above all else informed about how power is consumed. When we choose to watch television, we know what it costs us. I think our greatest challenge as environmentalists and educators is to raise the awareness of the public. Let them choose, once they know the cost.

The last few years that we have lived here, we've seen tremendous changes in our environment. Do I have to mention the record snows and what is shaping up to be record rains? Mother Nature has a thing or two to say about how we have been treating her. We are lucky. Our little corner of the world doesn't get the tornadoes and the brunt of the hurricanes and the horrible droughts that other areas do. So we have prune-y fingers, what of it? Sadly, I fear this is only the beginning of what we will see. There are always those who will argue that the changes that we are seeing are “normal” or “natural.” I can only say to them that I can also find individuals who say that we didn't land on the moon. Regardless of whether it's normal or natural, it is happening and can we afford to risk doing nothing?  Or have the dice already been cast?

As we learn about our choices and our impact on the earth, it has become clear just how far Americans have strayed from a truly sustainable life-style.  This was confirmed in my mind when I found from www.myfootprint.org that even with my pared down, simplistic, drastic, camping lifestyle, if everyone on the planet today had my lifestyle, we would need 1.8 earths to support the population. 1.8!!! We live a footprint which is 80% larger than is sustainable. So when someone says to me that our lifestyle is drastic, all of this rolls through my head and I ask, “why isn't yours?”