Last December, we moved out of the house, and into a canvas tent under the roof of the barn. Since then we've been living outside day and night. I can confidently say that of all our against-the-grain attempts to find glimpses of a sane life-way, this has been one of the more profound and successful. A little voice in us --as well as several other well-meaning ones-- fretted about cold, winter, damp, rain, wind, and other unavoidable calamities from which the House would no longer have the power to shelter us. It is widely accepted that conditions such as these are undesirable; this is made clear to us at a very young age by concerned and loving relatives explaining that it is cold outside and hats, mittens, jackets, overcoats, thick socks, insulated boots and scarves will be necessary implements for survival today. By comparison, the House is the culturally accepted haven from harm: Home Sweet Home (and never mind that domestic accidents are one of the leading causes of death in our society!).In spite of this, it has been fascinating to me to notice not only how unharmed I remain from the ostensibly hostile elements, but in fact how much better I feel. For example, rain is usually thought to be an excellent reason to stay indoors, even if this means staying cooped up in a dim, gloomy house. But meanwhile I'm out there enjoying the song of the rain on the roof, leaves, grass, driveway, and myriad other musical surfaces! I'm amused now at the discrepancy between how pleasant it is to experience rain and the gloominess that I felt when I voluntarily limited myself to the house so as to avoid the hardships of being exposed to the rain! The beauty of the sky-water's earthbound journey, the splashes and drips and gathering into pools and rivulets... Rainy days are not inherently dark, depressing occasions, quite the contrary. It is our allegiance to the dark, disconnected house environment that make them seem so.
Likewise for temperature: I have noticed that while a warm spring day feels nice at 50ºF (10ºC), even 60ºC (15ºC) feels cold in a house. This demonstrates to me how psychology and cultural notions of what constitutes an appropriate range of conditions trump our body's inbuilt tolerance levels. Adapting to the cold has not been so much physiological as a mental shift of what I consider "normal". This has taken very little time, and I am very pleased to now feel quite comfortable whenever conditions stay above or near freezing, even without a coat. If I get cold, I just increase my activity level, which is the best medicine for preventing a sedentary, "couch potato" lifestyle! The hardest step all day is getting out of a toasty warm bed. But then, better get the hardest part of the day behind you first thing, right?
The level of control over our surroundings that the House both symbolizes and demands is a weight I am very glad to have shed. Now, if we accidentally get the floor wet or drop food, it isn't instantly a crisis demanding immediate action before life can go on. In the House, a wet or dirty floor is either a hazard, or gross. Usually both. Yet any action, from eating to removing a book from a shelf, has the effect of moving the House away from its idealized "clean" state. This means that every moment we live in our House, we live in a situation of cognitive dissonance: the way we imagine a House should be is invariably at odds with the way it is. Even the best housekeeper is fighting a losing battle trying to maintain constant "tidiness". It's like fighting windmills! On the other hand, is a forest ever "messy", despite the absence of a dedicated concierge? So why do we design houses according to artificial standards that are only bound to keep us dissatisfied and in a perpetual control-freak cleaning frenzy mode??
In our present life situation, we keep in a reasonable state of cleanliness only that which we need to keep clean: our dishes, essentially. We use an extension cord and a vacuum cleaner once in a while for the carpets in our tent --living in a tent has not meant giving up on all our fancy comforts! (Actually, one of our carpets is a big old oriental rug that was probably made to go in a tent or yurt in the first place!) The floor of our outdoor area, which includes our rustic kitchen and fire pit, is packed earth over concrete, so no maintenance there. The kitchen counter (plywood covered in contact paper) is both fast and optional to clean. The camping stove also. I feel a great relief that my surroundings do not demand constant attention and maintenance. The culturally-defined comfort standards of the House require great maintenance to sustain, and I am learning now that it is all for rather meager and biologically unnecessary benefits, and at the cost of our life-nurturing contact with the elements. The House not only exemplifies the flawed assumption that we can radically control our environment successfully, but places us in the position of having no choice but to try, and repeatedly fail, to do so.
So far, my spirit has been strengthened by continuous contact with the same forces among which we as a species have evolved. My awareness has grown, from my senses being constantly embedded in a wide and complex landscape, beginning my recovery from the sensory deprivation of the House's restricted and simplified environment. My mental state has improved, and I'll venture that the peak in depression that occurs in winter and is commonly blamed on the seasons can really be attributed to the house-bound lifestyle most people espouse at that time. When I feel the wind on my skin, I take in the sensation and rejoice. I take note of its direction and the implications it has for the next days' weather. In the House, wind is reduced to a draft, a problem, a reason to curse and buy caulking and insulation. When the birds sing, I pause and listen. The Song Sparrow next to our barn has a dazzling array of songs for various occasions. My understanding of bird behavior and my responses to it have deepened considerably. Indoors, I hear nothing but the whirr and buzz of fridge, heating systems, and other unidentifiable nuisance noises. Even the rain, as I mentioned, is an occasion for celebration now.
I believe that part of our biological heritage is a kinship with the elements, animals, changes in the weather. For untold millions of years the genes of our ancestors were shaped by an environment that included bird song, rain, wind, "cold" and "hot", a gentle fade of day into night. Living close to nature then should not stay merely an ideological position but should translate to a physical proximity, indeed, full immersion. The benefits have already shown themselves to be deep and far-reaching, and certainly worth the discomfort of transcending the cultural barriers that make us cling to the House. I look forward to moving away even more from learned symbols of comfort, toward a joyful involvement with the dynamic elements which lies still at the core of the biological expectations of our senses.
