‘I don’t think I feel as good anywhere as I do outdoors, with the sky above me. Indoors is probably only a place I want to be when I’m sick. I just love the outdoors; it’s so much more interesting, the more natural the better. A lot of people love virtual reality but to me that’s an anaemic shadow of the real thing.
“I’ve been living in my rustic cabin for 21 years, I guess. I’ve done a lot to it; made a path to the door and put stones on the incline down. None of that matters in the snow, of course. My bedroom is in the loft with the livingroom below, there’s a small kitchen, shower, toilet and screened-in porch overlooking more forest. The cabin’s tiny, with high ceilings and great light; all the windows look out into the forest. I don’t have a phone. If I did have someone might call.
“It’s a lifestyle, a way of being. I live and work as part of a residential, therapeutic farming community so don’t have to get in a car to go to work. The whole idea behind the work here is for people to focus their thoughts on things outside; on farm life, forestry and an older, traditional environment.
“It’s not like I was shooting to live in a community when I was in college, more like where I ended up and it fitted me. Life in a lot of ways hasn’t fitted me. This is the only house on the farm’s 650 acres around which the landscaping is as it was way back when. Other houses are close together but I don’t care to have a man-made environment around me.
“I step out of this cabin in the morning and it’s a whole different feeling. The average American spends 10 minutes outdoors daily, between car and office or car and mall. It’s ridiculous.
“Every night there’s a big row over who’s going to be in this cabin, me or the bears. Bears move pretty stealthily. They don’t worry me – they take right off when they see you. A season or two ago a bear used to wander by the cabin all the time; I think he was on his way to a dumpster. The deer come pretty close too; sometimes I suspect they like to listen to my classical music.
“Mice are always a problem. I like ‘em and hate doing ‘em in. They come indoors for the heat, especially in the fall. They’re cute and intelligent, good community members, but I do realise how quickly two can become a thousand so I try to maintain a mouse-free zone. Last winter I found a milk snake by my water heater. They like to bite but I figured he would be on my side and get rid of the mice so I left him there.
“Suburbia is a hard one for me. I’d rather live in New York city than suburbia, it’s just a different kind of jungle.
“Conventional living happened to me once; everyone has misfortune in their lives. It was when I was a kid and lived in a suburban part of the States. I also lived in rural Africa as a kid.
“I ski and skate and climb mountains and swim. There’s a nice river below my cabin that I jump into any time it’s hot.
“I don’t think about the future. I probably should, but I don’t.”
In conversation with Rose Doyle
