Is there an alternate life?

 Despite the fine and noble intentions of seeking a better life through minimalist doctrines, one has to question if the yearned for better life does indeed exist. Perhaps the one we lead is in fact as good as it gets. This IS it.
Turning 60 is yet another milestone (yawn) with ever increasing reflections on what-all has gone afore and what may yet be discovered.
Quote of wisdom: "Money can make life easier, but seldom better".
After 3 years of doing the minimalist thang here at The 12, living off grid, etc, the stark reality is that I'm still working like a slave. 
Granted I don't have to, we can live quite nicely on very little but we now find our children need a little help to set their lives on a better course. Which costs money......
And it's not just a case of handing over $500 to help where needed, it's a far less obvious cost.
As simple as taking a truck over to lift shingles onto my eldest sons roof can cost over $100 in fuel alone.
Lending daughter a vehicle while she enters the workplace after university can bump the insurance up a hefty rate because she's still rated as a young driver.
Not that we complain or hesitate for a moment in doing these things but the cost of simple acts of family support do add up in short order. Hence the continued need for income.
So as we coast out of summer and towards another grim winter, I question what we would have done had we stayed as we were. Had we stayed with the majority.
Our lives are now somewhat easier in several aspects but harder in others and our savings have certainly freed some income for those in need.
Sure I work the same as before and perhaps that was not the intention. Some might argue we have gone off course. 
I prefer to think of it as heading towards the same destination but charting a different course to get there. 
Sometimes we have to change vehicles, take a different road for a while, what ever.
Our pursuit of cheap living has given the ability to help others and also set an example to them that perhaps those things they thought they needed, are not so necessary after all. 
Perhaps we can set them thinking about their alternate life far earlier.

The mandatory winter gripe... 31st anniversary edition.

In my 20's, I was keen to leave the U.K. and fortunate to have the choice of 3 countries. Australia, the U.S; or Canada.
The first seemed an awful long way away and the very thought of living the rest of my life upside down still bothers me to this day. Dumb perhaps but I like the northern reality I live in.
The U.S. was very tempting and I did have a very good opportunity through connections I had there. Heck, I even had an invitation to meet then President Jimmy Carter, a farmer like me, whom history has deemed as being perhaps the last honest, decent President of any integrity. It was the foolish inbred British dislike for anything American that quashed that one. I regret that part of my psyche.

We arrived in Canada in February 1987.... in a blizzard.
The locals said we would get used to winter, give it a year, we'll enjoy it.
Then it was 3 years, then five years. In my mind, it hasn't stopped snowing in the last 30 years. Despite living in Alberta and savoring the most wonderfully warm summers imaginable, it's still snowing.
Every fall I look up at those beautiful birds migrating south, their calls haunt me daily until the last one disappears over the southern horizon and I sink into the sullen sadness of winter.
A few years ago we escaped this frozen wilderness to a magical kingdom called Arizona and I liked it there. I liked it a lot. The sight of Arizona sunrises and sunsets are like no other. If there is such a thing, I'm an Arizona junkie. Just can't get enough of that heat.
So you ask, what's stopping us doing the snowbird run?

Possessions.

Or more accurately, we are owned by our possessions. We have so many we cannot leave them because of theft, vandalism of the fear of loss in some form.
These fears are not without grounds, we have been broken into several times, even whist here at home. These parasites are fearless, brazen and without mercy. If you have it, they'll take it.
So we come to the deeper philosophical questions of which we are all aware deep down inside but we mostly avoid as being too uncomfortable to debate, much less take action upon.
But that's the subject of another entirely different gripe, to which I'll subject you at a later date.
Meanwhile, I conclude this 31st anniversary winter gripe with the comforting thought that at least there aren't too many mosquitoes out at 40 below.

The Miracle of Smokey Joe.

Joe came into our lives as a hobo.
Homeless, scruffy, always on the move, very guarded and cautious around people, he really was a lost soul. He'd show up occasionally through the summer months, then disappear leaving us to wonder if we'd ever see him again.
Over time, he came to see us more often but would never let his guard down.
We have no idea of his age, but he's still relatively young and in remarkably good shape for the life he's lived. He's never carried any weight, all skin and bones.
Sylv was initially very hesitant about showing him any hospitality. Knowing nothing about him, it seemed unwise to be overly welcoming. I saw him differently.
To me he was running from pillar to post, looking for a meal and knowing he had to find some shelter for the night. But there was more to Joe.
Perhaps I'm a sucker for the underdog but I saw someone looking for safety and a place to call home. I began to leave food out for him and he found it.
He'd want to hang out with us around the campfire but somehow just couldn't find the courage, always hanging back in the shadows where he could quickly vanish if he saw a threat.

His hair is the dullest smoke grey you will ever see, devoid of any other color. He is a living ghost.
Eyes of stunning yellow, he can disappear in a second.
He would sing his lonesome song at all hours of the day and night, unseen. When I heard him I would talk to him, as a friend and someone he could trust. He began to respond.
We would sit outside the cabin, he at a safe distance with the fall leaves dropping in the chill air, perhaps both of us knowing the clock was ticking and Joe was running out of time.
He would usually respond to my questions, telling me in his own way what I already knew. He had nowhere left to run and that the brutal cold of winter would likely be his demise.
Then came a miracle.
As I walked out of the cabin one morning, instead of vanishing as usual, he stood there on the deck, eyes locked on me as if gauging my response.
I sat down on the deck and we talked. The spell of fear was broken.
Within a week he was a regular around the yard, now becoming a target for our aging and deaf German Sheppard "Rex" to chase. Joe was never in any danger, Rex merely wanted to show he still had it in him to chase the intruders away.
And then we touched. I looked down one day and there he was. I reached down and touched the softest fur imaginable. The rest is history.
As winter locked it grip on his new home, Joe has become my best friend and we talk all day long as I go about my work, he on my shoulders or at least by my side.
I put a heater in our little workshop and cutting a cat door allowed Joe to move in without hesitation.
Sylv maintains he has A.D.D. but he certainly has an addiction to heat. Left to his own devices, he would set himself on fire by climbing onto a heater.
He still has an intermittent appetite and we offer him a very good palette from which to choose but he is safe and warm. Sylv has noticed there are no mice coming into the cabin since Joe arrived, so any concerns about his mysterious past have been dismissed.
Even Rex and Joe have become the best of friends.
Joe has found a home and a family to love him.
And that is the Miracle of Smokey Joe.