House Hunters “Off the Grid”

Yes, I know.  It’s been too long since I gave you faithful readers an update on the saga of “House Hunters”, where people looking to buy a house, and which gets more and more bizarre as time goes by.  A recent trend has been to “get away from it all.”  It’s a new, truly disturbing twist on what is frequently referred to as work-life balance. I wasn’t really sure how some of these folks could get to this point, but they have.  

In a couple of recent episodes, we find some people that are looking for something that is well away from civilization.  You know, something really remote and, dare I say, exponentially increasing the risk of disaster.  I say that because each of these families has stated at the onset that “they’ve never done anything like this before”.  I’m reading into this, but I think it translates into “haven’t a clue what they’re doing.”  

The first couple was moving from the Pacific Northwest to the deserts of the Southwest.  You know, where there only sparse vegetation, and not human-friendly beasts like lizaards and rattlesnakes roam as far as the eye can see.  The first house they looked at was a bit more than a half hour out of town.  The man was retired, but the wife worked as an emergency room nurse.  Presumably, she’d need to get to work fairly quickly, but he wasn’t having it.  He wanted to be miles and miles from anyone else.  As you know, our “hunters” are presented with three options, from which they will choose one.  Actually, they’ve already chosen one and moved in, but we’re not supposed to know that.  It’s a big secret, except for those posting on social media.  They “chose” the one furthest away, well beyond the delivery range of Pizza Hut.  

A few interesting features of the house they chose.  As I said, “off the grid”.  So, it collected rain water.  I don’t know much about the desert Southwest, but I didn’t see any rain forests in the area, so that seemed to be a risky proposition. It also was powered by solar panels spread out around the house, with a shed full of batteries to collect the power.  Said the gentleman, who looked not unlike a cast member from “Duck Dynasty”, that he’d “have to learn how to use those.” Yes, that sounds promising.  The other feature I found interesting, in a disturbing way, was that the house was constructed of bales of hay, lined on either side.  They even left a spot in one wall with a bit of plexiglass or something clear, creating a window so you could see the hay.  It’s called “Straw Bale Construction”.  Apparently, the bales insulate the house well, particularly from the heat.  What I found alarming, though, was that the house had two wood-burning fireplaces for heat at night.  The real estate agent reminded them that the temperatures in the desert go from a bazzillion degrees during the day to freezing cold at night.  So, the fireplaces will “take the chill off” when the sun goes down.  Now, two things occurred to me about this system.  I’m sure I’d like to be sitting in an igloo of hay with a roaring fire going at both ends of the house.  Yes, I know what you’re thinking.  The engineers and builders must have considered this, and provided fire-proof barriers for it.  Ok, and the Titanic was unsinkable.  The back yard had barriers around the bottom of the fence so that snakes and other dangerous critters couldn’t get in.  That’s reassuring, particularly as the couple had a couple of dogs. The last bit, less dramatic than the house becoming a huge bonfire or a rattlesnake invasion, was that I didn’t see much in the way of wooded areas. Certainly nothing that would burn.  It was all sand, rocks, and the occasional scrubby bush.  Wouldn’t that mean that they’d have to have wood delivered?  From a distance? That would be practical, to say nothing of the cost.  One spark from a battery and up goes the woodpile, spreading to the Straw House.  New episode – “Conflagration in the Desert.”

The next show I was watching was a couple looking to relocate onto a river, with no road access.  A big river. Something on the scale of the Colorado.  White water rapids and everything.  Yes, you guessed it. An experienced river boat captain brought them and their agent to their destination options.  A view of the river was a top priority, and while the house they selected, for about three-quarters of a million dollars, was very lovely, it was isolated and required alternative energy sources.  Plus, there wasn’t much by way of WiFi, so communication with the outside world was problematic.  The real estate agent told them they could get a booster system to make it better.  The really attractive part of this was that they’d need a river boat, and as the wife explained, she’d never driven one before so she’d “have to learn”.  Yes, that’s going to end well, because the nearest location for supplies was about 10 miles down the river.  I envision at some point in the future, when the show goes back to see how it’s going, there will be two skeletons sitting in deck chairs, facing the river view.

In a third episode, aired just the other night, there was a family – father, mother, and two young children.  They were looking to purchase something out in the wilds of Colorado, where they could return to Mother Earth.  In the house they selected, I’m rather sure that Mother Earth will toss them to the wolves, bears, or other killer wildlife.  Mother told us she could envision the children out “playing in the yard”.  Yep, solid idea as we got to see bears not far off, and as far as I know (and my knowledge is limited here), bears and children do not interact well.  Anyway, they chose a lovely house with separate “guest quarters”, reached by open stairs and deck.  Wonderful in mid-winter. The road in to the house looked to extend for miles, although it probably wasn’t that far.  But it was a dirt road/path carved into the side of a hill.  Mother wondered how they’d clear the “road” to get in and out in the winter, and that thought also crossed my mind.  If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me, but don’t they get beaucoup snow in Colorado?  And, presumably, come springtime, there would be a fair bit of road repair on the parts that washed out.  The third house they saw was not totally isolated – one could see a couple of houses in the distance, but bull-headed Dad was having none of it.  He mentioned too that he would be “away” from time to time, one would guess for his job.  So, he’s leaving mother and children alone in the wilderness that he had to have.  Not thinking “Father of the Year”.  Mother kept stressing throughout the show “keeping her children safe”.  This location, again with alternative energy and back-up generators, seemed anything but.  But, as Forrest Gump would say, “Stupid is as stupid does.” 

I’m never quite sure why people feel a need to live in an environment that clearly is not in their best interests.  A few years ago, on the international edition, the show featured a couple that were moving to Southeast Asia some place – Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, one of those.  The husband was in remission from cancer, from which he’d been in treatment for several years.  He wanted to be in a place where they could live cheaply and he could sit on the beach all day and enjoy the ocean.  Does anyone else see a problem here, in a remote part of the third world when you have serious medical issues?  Particularly with cancer, which seems to recur just when you think it’s under control?  They selected a hut, and I use that word judiciously, that was several miles away from the nearest town.  Another part of a solid plan. Being the realist that I am, I have a fair suspicion that his body washed out to sea some time back while his mate had walked into town, a few miles away, for supplies.  

It constantly amazes me the life decisions that some people make, and what types of living conditions they find desirable.  Unless one is Grizzly Adams or Ted Kaczynski, why would one choose to live like that?  A large part of my distaste or rejection of this notion, is that I thoroughly embrace creature comforts.  If I need a power generator, I want one of those that turns itself on automatically, along with furnace, lights, and refrigerator when the power goes off.  Water comes from the tap, not from the sky. If I decide to collect rain water, it’ll be for my plants, not for my morning shower.  If I want a “river view”, it will be far enough away and high enough above that I won’t wash away in the next flood.  As I get older, I look at all possible places to live, I judge them by their potential responses to climate change, and to their options for hurting me.  I will say, the options and possible regions are steadily narrowing.  California and the coast of the Gulf of Trump are pretty much off the list now.