One Man on His Own in West Texas

The New York Times just ran a story about John Wells, who lives off the grid on 60 acres of West Texas desert. He calls his place the “Southwest Texas Alternative Energy And Sustainable Living Field Laboratory.” As Wells hit middle age got tired of a city-based life style and mounting debt. His father died and Wells began to rethink his life. As he says at his website:

Several years ago I began experimenting with alternative energy. I feel that the technology today has advanced enough and the costs have dropped to the point where just about anyone can make the move to off the grid living. This just happened to coincide with discovering accounts of pioneer life of some of my relatives from over 100 years ago. Their lives were difficult back then, but I sensed a feeling of great joy and accomplishment in overcoming hardship - where hard work payed off and living life was a fulfilling experience. I began to envision my life as a pioneer in the 21st century, and have chosen to follow that path.

In taking inventory of my life to this point in time, I believe that over the years I have picked up just the right skills and mentality to live my dream of how I would do it if I had it to do all over again. I suddenly found myself at the perfect point in my lifetime to go for that dream.

And so he sold his house for $600K, paid off his debts, and moved from upstate New York to Texas. He lives on rainwater, solar power, composts his wastes, and is grows vegetables. He’s got a blog going back to 2008, and a bunch of photos at his Flickr site.

Wells, of course, is in a long tradition of go it aloners. One suspects he’d be doing this regardless of the society-wide need for Transition. And that’s the point, our society needs to make such a radical decision. We don’t all have to make the decision together, but by ones and twos and tens and more, we’ve got to start moving and start changing our communities.

Transition Mission

I’ve been working with Charlie Keil to start The Transition Party USA. As Charlie put it, “it’s a way to give a whole spectrum of NGOs/non-profits, peace orgs, environmental orgs, AND a precious slice of Teapartiers who genuinely want to restore the Constitution, repeal the Patriot Act, no bailouts for Wall St., reduce the debts and size of Fed gov’t and it's taxation of middle class to feed the rich, etc.” Our modest aim is to become a "decisive" or log-jam breaking party in the House. If, for example, there were 214 Republicans elected and 209 Democrats, our 12 Transition Party Representatives could exert great leverage for Truth, Traditions, Transition legislation – and against the tremendous waste encouraged by big corporations feeding at the trough of big government.

You can find out more at our blog, Transition Party USA. Here’s Charlie’s local perspective from Lakeville, Connecticut:

The Great Transition is being made as we speak. In Lakeville, Connecticut the Great Transition to sustainability, permacultures, resilience in everything that matters (highest standards of humor, musicality, plenty of mighty trees to admire, excess energy in the local grid, etc,) has been ongoing for over a century!

150 years ago all the trees had been turned to charcoal for local iron making furnaces (and then the first Bessemer steel?), smoke, soot, grey skies everywhere, desolation, fires burning 24-7 in the hills making the last piles of charcoal. Then it went to Pittsburgh and Lakevillians began to make a long, slow, recovery that has culminated in recent decades with the reappearance of all the animals, pileated woodpeckers, too many geese, too many turkeys, too many deer, bear, a moose came through our yard a few weeks after my father died and took a swim in Lakeville's lake. We have a sawmill in Falls Village, for local timber. My wife Angie calls them Potempkin forests but they are real enough, old growth enough, for those giant pileated woodpeckers.