Off-Grid Living

The march is taking a day off at a private home whose owners live along Concho Road. We are a few miles short of reaching Concho. The house has solar panels in place and two wind generators that can produce 2000 watts of power. The house is one of many in this area that are attempting to live off the grid. I guess it’s unfair to use the word attempting because many are. Recently I’ve met folks along the road with very different perspectives but have come to the same conclusion … they want to live more sustainable lives and have picked this sparsely populated area of Arizona high desert to do so. Some are fed up with big government, some see a cataclysm in the making, some simply vision a different world and ﬁnd a receptive environment for their efforts. A few of them share our view that climate change is a dangerous component in humanity’s future, but many are to some degree … deniers. It’s surprising to ﬁnd a sustainability mindset denying climate change but that’s the way it is.

I wanted to take some time today to talk about the outhouses on wheels we haul around to do our business. These composting eco-commodes have been one our success stories in our attempt to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Today was a good day to empty them and I thought I’d take a few photos and lessen the stigma our human waste carries. It is hard to quantify just how much water I have used to ﬂush excrement out of my life. The largest household use of water involves a toilet. Showers aren’t a close second. So, our mobile One Earth Village is composting as we go. It isn’t as difﬁcult or nasty as I once imagined. In fact, it turns out it is a preferred community job because it takes so little time to get it taken care of. About once a week we ﬁnd a place (BLM land, private land with permission, etc.) to pull the barrels from enclosed toilets and dump them in holes we dig. Sources for sawdust are easy to come by and we use it by the scoop to cover poop as we go. ( a bucket of sawdust stays next to the toilet) It is a friendly footprint, and easy to manage.