One interesting thing I’ve noticed about our off grid experience is how naturally I’ve fallen into more resonance with the rhythms of Nature.
Of course I had hoped this would be the case. I do desire to be in alignment with the natural cycles. But I’ve been a night owl since I was a teenager. Maybe it’s a Pisces thing: “It’s so peaceful at night when the psychic noise has died down; I can actually hear my own thoughts!”
I figured that going off-grid would at least temporarily limit my ability to have as much artificial lighting (and power my studio gear) as I wanted at night, so the reality of the situation here wasn’t a total shock. But I did wonder how I would adjust.
We do have electric light in the cabin. Provided the generator is working, we can easily power a couple strings of clear Christmas lights and two or three lamps. If we were willing to use LED bulbs we could have it as bright as we liked. But Phoenix and I both have a strong aversion to the energetic quality of LED lighting. And, now that the only incandescent lighting available in stores is 40-watt “appliance bulbs”, we are definitely going with an “ambient warmth” kind of vibe. Which is great on the coziness scale; not so useful for any kind of focused, productive work at night.
And the generator is loud. Even though our latest generator is way, way quieter than the two that preceded it, it’s loud enough that it’s always a relief when I shut it down for the night.
Add in the cold and the knowledge you’re only going to have enough daylight to get things done until about 4 pm the next day and going to bed by 9 or 10 started to seem really appealing this winter.
I love the sunshine. When it’s sunny, I want to be outside. So I’ve typically looked at the dark period of the year as a time for accentuating my night owl preferences. Oh, the days are short and gray and gloomy? Great, I’ll stay up at night and work on music!
That hasn’t really been a viable option here (we are going to build an off-grid studio but it’s a little down on the priority list right now) so…I actually got a lot of sleep this winter.
I also spent a fair amount of evening hours sort of mooning about, feeling like I should be doing something productive but not feeling like I had the energy or drive to figure out something productive to do and then work around the constraints of the situation to actually do it.
When I tuned in to whether I should be trying to force my way through the resistance to doing, I kept getting that I should just let it be. Go with the flow. Catch up on some years of missed sleep. “Soon enough it will be spring and you’ll be working long days outside; let this dark period be what it is.”
And now it’s spring! We’ve had several days of lovely weather so far in February. A few days with temps in the 50s and 60s and most nights not survival-level cold.
Over the course of a year, the climate in middle Tennessee is pretty mellow. It gets hot and muggy in the summer but it’s not New Orleans hot. It gets cold in the winter but the cold snaps usually only last for a week or so.
But since we’ve lived here I have noticed that the change of seasons tend to come on really fast. One day it’s winter, everything is frozen, nothing is growing. The next day it’s spring and you’ve got to get those early seeds planted and get the beds prepared for the next round of plants.
So, as the weather has grown more pleasant and the days have started growing longer, we’ve been spending hours at a time in the garden. (We have a lot of clean-up and repair to do, but it’s also just time to get the beds ready for spring planting.)
It feels really good to be outside and working in the garden every day. It’s also given me the opportunity to reflect on just how much time and energy we had to spend during the winter on fire-related tasks: cutting, hauling, and splitting logs; moving firewood from the stack beside the porch up to the big cradle on the porch where it could dry out a little; taking pieces from the cradle out to the wood-chopping stump in the yard to quarter them or split them into kindling; bringing the quarters and kindling inside to dry further next to the wood stove; cleaning ashes from the stove; and, finally building the fire and keeping it fed.
It’s still cold enough most nights that we have to spend a little time splitting wood most days, but for the most part I’ve already traded in the splitting maul for a shovel and a rake.
Maybe by next winter I’ll have my little studio in the woods built. Maybe I’ll get back to burning the midnight oil on some of those long, dark winter nights. I do miss making music. But I have to admit to experiencing a primal sense of satisfaction at having gone with the flow as much as possible this winter.