For most people, modern life is slavery, plain and simple.  Many people battle noisy, smelly, traffic each day to get to jobs that they, at best, can tolerate, and at worst, hate.  This they do so that they can pay mortgages, car payments, daycare, insurance, medical bills, credit card bills, and on and on.  And nearly all of us are disconnected by our lifestyles from the life-giving earth.  Some seem to thrive under this type of slavery and disconnection from the natural world.  Or they think they do.  Others of us feel the wrongness of it deeply.

That is why I was fascinated and moved by Dan Price’s story.  I can identify with whatever impulse sent him to live in the woods of Idaho, first in a teepee and tents, and later in little dwellings that he built for himself.  Because he has no bills to pay other than what it costs to feed himself, he is able to live entirely off of savings as well as, I assume, royalties for his writing and art.  He lives in very close connection with the natural world, is not forced to leave his home to go to a job he doesn’t like, and has the freedom to explore the world.

Many people would cringe at the idea of living so simply and so close to nature.  Wild animals, bugs, weather, isolation…all of this might drive them as nuts as a conventional life drives me.  But when I watched this video, it gave me a deep feeling of rightness and a longing to one day be freer and closer to the earth.