• Facebook
  • Twitter

Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

  • Home
  • My Books
  • Essays
  • Contact
  • About Me

Why I live in a yurt, off the grid, on a mountain in Idaho. A guest post by Esther Emery

By Anita Mathias

A yurt

My yurt

Do you know anybody who lives off the grid? Well, now you do. I do. I live in a yurt, which is a kind of a wonderful round tent, on three acres of wooded Idaho mountainside, with no power and no running water.

Mine is a rich life, full of wild and beauty. It is a planted life, connected to our sloped bit of dirt and all the rhythms of nature. And it is a conscious life, each day revealing the true cost of human existence: what it truly takes to feed us, keep us warm and sheltered, clean.

But I’ll tell you what my life is not. It isn’t easy. Or secure. Or safe. Or glamorous.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t do it if something didn’t make me.

It’s too hard. And it’s too hard to justify! Keeping the kids out of school, bathing only once a week, living all in one room – the five of us! Also the cost to relationships, when I have to go to a friend’s house just to make a simple phone call, not to mention how it makes my friends feel that I openly and publicly reject the most basic principles of modern life.

Oh, that Esther, she’s a whole lot of fun to hang out with! Always talking about the cost of our extractive economy, irreversible environmental damage, the profound injustices built into the supply chain…

I can’t help it. I am driven by a ghost.

The ghost was my mother, and in her life I didn’t think much of her. It is the task of adolescent children to fail to take their parents seriously. It wasn’t until after my mother died that I came to know her as having lived a courageous and prophetic life.

Her name was Carla Emery. She was born a farmer’s daughter in Montana, just ahead of the baby boom, and she was born to teach. The way she tells it, she felt sorry for the hippies when they started showing up in rural places with no skills. She wanted to teach them how to get along. In 1974, she showed up at a Seattle craft fair with a self-published manual for living off the land, and her table was mobbed. It was a quick road to celebrity.

But it was a short road, too. By the time I was born, six years later, America had shifted into the dawn of the Reagan era. My mother’s promise of spiritual fulfillment found through animals and muck and laboring to the harvest was more laughable than livable.

America gave up on my mother. But she didn’t give up.

All through the 80’s and the 90’s, my mother was a has-been and a nobody, but still she preached her difficult message to the world. She crisscrossed the country with boxes of books in the back of the van, meeting all her people: tending souls. Where the counterculture had been a forefront press, now it was the fringe of society. All the people on the edges: survivalists, die-hard hippies, drop-outs, and mountain libertarians. My mother met them all. She spoke to them. She gave lectures on “The Modern Homesteading Movement” and “Peak Oil.”

I was mortified. I couldn’t get away from it fast enough. There’s nothing worse than being a teenager whose mom does a public demonstration of how to kill a chicken.

She died when I was 25 years old. It was the year 2004. Like my mother, I am bound to the consciousness of my own time and my own generation. And, lately, we are turning back.

There have been books: in the last decade, a whole genre of exposé revealing the problems with our food supply and food supply chain. There is a deep and underground craving for a better way. Spiritual wholeness. Integrity. Slow food. Resistance to greed and commodification. My mother’s manual for living off the land is popular again.

It was several years ago, convergent with my husband’s desire to use his construction skills to build something of his own, that I began to make the shift myself. I began to drop consumerism. I picked up some gardening gloves. I started looking more and more like my mother every day.

So there you go. Now you know somebody who lives off the grid. I am here, in my woods, living my simple life: strange to society, perhaps, but natural in the most profound way. I live with the land, with the rhythms and the seasons of nature. And I raise my mother’s ghost.

EstherEmerywriter

Esther Emery

Esther Emery used to direct stage plays in Southern California. But that was a long time ago. Now she is pretty much a runaway, living off the grid in a yurt and tending to three acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She writes about faith and rebellion and trying to live a totally free life at www.estheremery.com. Connect with her on Twitter @EstherEmery.

 

More from my site

  • Jesus on how to have peace in dire circumstancesJesus on how to have peace in dire circumstances
  • In which Roy cruelly nixes my lavender kitchenIn which Roy cruelly nixes my lavender kitchen
  •  Brennan Manning on Grace (from The Ragamuffin Gospel) Brennan Manning on Grace (from The Ragamuffin Gospel)
  • How to Get into the Zone of Writing or PrayerHow to Get into the Zone of Writing or Prayer
  • How to Catch a Wild Elephant and other Visions of Mughal India from the Collection of Howard HodgknHow to Catch a Wild Elephant and other Visions of Mughal India from the Collection of Howard Hodgkn
Share this...
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter

Filed Under: In which I proudly introduce my guest posters Tagged With: Carla Emery, Esther Emery, Self-sufficiency, Wilderness

« Previous Post
Next Post »

Comments

  1. Robert (Bob) Lee says

    January 12, 2014 at 9:26 pm

    The idea of “living with less” alienates a huge segment of the population, who think that it means “living less.” While I now live in a modest cabin, I spent the early 1990s living in an 8 foot by 8 foot cabin (a 8by16 one when my son was still young and living with me), while I built a $4m seniors housing project, a $1.8m biodiesel project and a $1.6m high-speed internet project for my clients. I had a diet, for 2/3 of the year, of plants that I harvested in the wild. I did so because I felt I owed it to the world around me. In 2005, I designed built a solid-wall yurt in rural Manitoba (-45C winters, +35C summers) where my wife and I lived, then began building portable solid-wall yurts for others. These homes use little of our environment, are low-cost, and yet quite intimate.
    Your mother had the right idea years ago, and you have found your own path to eco-responsibility. Congratulations.
    http://movingtoayurt.blogspot.com

  2. Tina/@teenbug says

    December 16, 2013 at 7:50 am

    You life, your story, your mother and your subsequent resolve are so fascinating, Esther.

    Can’t get enough!

    xoxo

Sign Up and Get a Free eBook!

Sign up to be emailed my blog posts (one a week) and get the ebook of "Holy Ground," my account of working with Mother Teresa.

Join 642 Other Readers

Follow me on Twitter

Follow @anitamathias1

Anita Mathias: About Me

Anita Mathias

Read my blog on Facebook

My Books

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Francesco, Artist of Florence - Amazom.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

The Story of Dirk Willems

The Story of Dirk Willems - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk
Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
  • Trust: A Message of Christmas
  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner
  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

Categories

What I’m Reading

Childhood, Youth, Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy
Tove Ditlevsen

  The Copenhagen Trilogy  - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazing Faith: The Authorized Biography of Bill Bright
Michael Richardson

Amazing Faith -- Bill Bright -- Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King

On Writing --  Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Kathleen Norris

KATHLEEN NORRIS --  Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk


Andrew Marr


A History of the World
Amazon.com
https://amzn.to/3cC2uSl

Amazon.co.uk

Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96
Seamus Heaney


Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96 
Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Archive by month

INSTAGRAM

anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things. * * *
Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.
And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.
He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.
For he created all things, and in him all things hold together
Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth
Drawing astronomers to him.
And drawing him to the attention of an angry King
As angelic song drew shepherds to him.
An Emperor, a King, scholars, shepherds, angels, animals, stars, an unwed mother
All things in heaven and earth connected
By a homeless baby
The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.
The One who makes connections. * * *
And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.
To me, today, it says, “Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.” The baby lay gentle in the barn
And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents. “Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says, “I will make a way. I will show it to you.” Happy Christmas everyone.  https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/24/trust-a-message-of-christmas/ #christmas #gemalderieberlin #trust #godwillmakeaway
Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
Load More… Follow on Instagram

© 2021 Dreaming Beneath the Spires · All Rights Reserved. · Cookie Policy · Privacy Policy

»
«