Off the grid

My aunt and uncle have a "cabin" just north of Gettysburg.

I say "cabin" because as you can see in the pictures, it's a bit more than that.

Photo credit Bill Paxson

Photo Credit Bill Paxson

These pictures were taken in late spring/early summer. It's more white and a little less green this time of year, but I wanted you to see what it looked like.

We call it the cabin because growing up the only part that was there is the blue building. It is a simple, two bedroom one bath log cabin. My aunt and uncle bought it years ago and have spent the last 20 years fixing it up, adding on, and totally revamping it. My uncle is a carpenter/handy man and loves a good project. There is a total of 8 structures on this property, 7 that he built from the ground up. The addition (the white building) is shaped like a light house because that's their "thing." They love all things light houses and growing up, I used to make my school art projects involve light houses so that I could give the final project to them.

As a kid, my brother and I would spent summer and winter days at the cabin riding golf carts around in the woods, going to the "top of the world"(an orchard atop a very large hill and once there you can see for miles) and swimming in the pond at the bottom of the hill. 

There is no cell reception or internet at the cabin. There are just acres and acres of woods and trails and basic television (if it's not raining too hard).

As I grew older, I didn't go as much. I took friends up here and there, but for most part I took a break. I was too cool for my own good in high school and couldn't imagine not having AIM for a whole weekend.

Now that I'm even older, I realize that it's the best kind of vacation to take. I can go completely off the grid. I can leave the noise that we've grown so accustomed to and hear nothing but silence.

Lately, I've been interested in learning how to build things and become more self sufficient. Sure, we live in a world where that isn't really necessary, except I feel people my age (myself included) are mostly helpless when it comes to doing anything without technology.

This weekend I got away for a little bit to recharge and work with my uncle a little bit. There was no plan, I just wanted to keep gaining experience and who better to learn from than an expert! My aunt and uncle have always offered to teach us things that they know, so I finally decided to take the up on it.

The addition of the cabin is built mostly from local resources. The wood comes from trees on their property that they cut down, used their homemade sawmill, and made boards from the trees. 

I didn't make it as far as building a house this weekend, but I did cut down my first tree and chop wood for the wood stove. It wasn't easy, but after a few swings, I started getting the hang of it, and loving it. 

Below are some videos (proof) that this smart phone toting, technology driven 20 something can actually do things the way they used to be done back in the day without the help of a youtube video.

The first day's load, we had almost double the second day

In the background of the videos, you hear my uncle say something like, "Yeah, look at that John Wesley!". That is a shout out to my brother. He used to help my uncle out a lot when he was younger. He'd go up to the cabin for the weekend and help lay foundation and chop wood, but that was during my years where I was too cool. Before I went up for the weekend, my brother was joking around and giving me a hard time about not knowing what it was like to REALLY work at the cabin. So although I had a lot of fun, and plan to go up soon to do it again, my motivation was partly because I wanted to prove to him that I could do it.