They did escape the world. Or died trying.
Sounds like the family version of the Chris McCandless Into The Wild Story.
Itâs all adventurous and romantic until the weather turns against you and you run out of food.
and/or unknowingly eat poisonous food.
Iâm all for trying to simplify life and not being completely dependent on the fragile infrastructure our modern society relies on. But you really have to know what you are doing to live completely off the grid and outside the safety net that communities and âcivilizationâ can provide.
Even well experienced outdoors people can get into a lot of trouble when just a little bad luck comes their way and there is no one nearby to help.
Prehistoric humans lived and migrated in tribes, and some places on Earth were not settled for a reason.
Winter in Colorado is not the time to experiment with living off grid and trying to go back to nature.
I think the most off the grid I want to try anymore is what it was as a kid. Up some holler, still have electricity for basic appliances, outhouse, carry water from a spring, garden and hunt. With additional trips to the local store for flour, coffee, sugar and such.
My brother has that at his hunting camp. A comfortable cabin with a wood stove, electricity, but also a generator, an outhouse, and a cistern. Heâs got enough acreage, deer and salmon that he could probably survive a very long time, but most people wonât get the chance to have a place like that. In the winter it does get really nasty and I could see where hunger could set in quick if enough food wasnât prepared ahead. In his case, though, he has a regular âon the gridâ house and doesnât try to survive on the land. Itâs just a fun place to hunt and camp.
And the gene pool is a little cleaner. The outdoors is not kind to inexperienced people, especially in harsher environments such as the Rocky Mountains in winter. This is a good example of making sure you have good training before putting your life on the line. Boobtube cannot be considered training of any sort.
I remember mamaw canning in the late summer or early fall. I helped cut corn off the cob, make pickles, snap beans and other veggies. She always had a large supply of canned veggies for the winter.
My mom did the same. Grew up during the depression then the war, and still has the prepper attitude today in her late 80âs. She and her sisters scouted out where all the wild elderberries were, then sheâd take us kids to pick them so she could make jam. We always had a huge garden in the back yard, and shelves of what she canned in the basement. Fall was always canning season, for weeks in the kitchen. We had a friend with an old apple orchard, and heâd let us pick apples, which we had pressed into cider, and my mom even canned that. Looking back, my parents did an amazing job of making the most of what they had and could make, and both know how to survive still today.
Back then the gubment was a helping hand for some by printing and distributing books on how to can properly, even meat. Yep, my mamaw and great mamaw were always on the lookout for things to pick in the wild. Both made the best blackberry jam.
One of my earliest memories is mom, me and great mamaw were hoeing her garden. Great mamaw gave me a hoe and said to hoe this here row of corn. Then they didnât pay any attention to me as I was working my heart out. Then when they got done they came over to check on me and by then it was too late. I had already hoed that whole row of corn out of the ground, weeds, corn and all gone hahaha. I was never asked to hoe again!
LOL! Hey, you were a little kid doing your best following directions! Clearly you did a good job hoeing, just the wrong plants 
My grand dad was a bad ass. He built the house for his family more or less by himself. He had a friend with a mule team haul out the dirt for the foundation, and literally built the place with all hand tools. Then, when hard times hit, he struck a deal with the bank that held his mortgage to care for their foreclosed properties in lieu of having to make his own mortgage payments. He kept his house when everyone around him were losing theirs, just by working his ass off digging ditches, working in a steel mill, and restoring abandoned properties for the bank. He built houses right up into his 70s, and my grandmother stayed in their last house (a duplex) as a landlord until she died in her late 90âs.
We need more people like that.
The handyman we hire to do odd jobs around the house that I donât know how to do is in his 80s. The two guys working for him are almost 70.