It's easy to knock "hippie communes" but once you've lived this way it's quite difficult to go back to "normal".

Virtually everywhere I stayed in my adult life was some iteration of a collective, whether at anarchist squats or their oddly-similar antipode - military barracks.
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In a collective, there's always someone around to talk to. You never eat alone. Stimulating conversation takes place daily, though retreating to your room now and then is normal.
At its best, a commune also fuses the productive capabilities of many - making work easier.
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Falling in love should feel like an irrefutable proof of the existence of God and like a testament to His benevolent genius. Nothing about it is ambivalent or half-hearted, I am not 'of two minds' about her, I am unequivocally hers, forever, until my life is over. Period.
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Just before we met I had quietly reached the conclusion that I'd probably never marry. I thought about becoming a Franciscan friar. I knew that the intersection between religious traditionalists and third-world-style off-grid hippies was tiny.
I started to accept it.
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"Economic prosperity" as it is understood in America is utterly corrosive to beauty and historic architecture. This is clear to see in any town that got "left behind" after WWII.

Their beautiful buildings would've been torn down if they ever boomed with "lots of jobs".
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Cities like Gloversville and Utica have had their flagship architectures largely unmolested, almost solely because they've remained economically depressed. Had lots of "development" occurred, they would've gutted their downtowns with relish.

Luckily, it never happened.
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Increasingly convinced that the cheapest and best quality life involves 20 factors:
1. Can heat with wood legally
2. Within bicycling distance of a small city with Amtrak and some public transit (can get away with no car)
3. In a cheap housing market and can own outright
(thread) 4. Building codes nonexistent or un-enforced (makes building cheaper)
5. Minimum 90 day growing season
6. Cool summers (no A/C needed)
7. Good hunting + fishing close by
8. Vibrant Catholic community with daily Mass
9. Several 49cc mopeds
10. Lots of local friends/family
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I am tempted to build a UK-style "narrowboat" to live in seasonally on the Erie Canal. Really doesn't seem like too big a production to build a suitable liveaboard vessel for calm inland waters.
Free mooring system-wide, world class scenery, 5mph speed limit.
1/4 The narrowboats are 6'10" abeam and range from 20' to 50' in length. I'd think at about 25-30' it'd be good and livable on the Erie Canal. I'd keep it simple - flat-bottomed with an outboard since the canal's 12' depth is too deep to pole.

If I'm making 3mph I'm in high clover.

In the 18th century, a sect splintered from the Russian Orthodox Church known as the Doukhobors. Known for communal living, luddite views, nudism, and arson, ~7500 of them sailed for Canada in 1899, facing persecution from Russian authorities.

They landed in Saskatchewan.
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Their theology was iconoclastic, believing that God was immanently present in all human souls. Staunch pacifists and often vegetarian, they completely rejected military service and most aspects of orthodox religion. Nonetheless, they accepted the divinity of Jesus.
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Many followers have messaged me asking for "travel tips". I find these solicitations to be baffling as they imply that travel is a "thing you do" more than a practice of mystical surrender and penance.

Nonetheless I will indulge these requests with the following "tips":
1/9 The first is that neurosis about gear and technique belies an entirely wrong attitude about what traveling should be. Reading endlessly about these topics is a fool's errand -- whether you have great gear and knowledge or not, you're still going to "pay your dues". Embrace it.
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To travel 1000 miles:
You could take a plane in 3h.
You could drive in 18h.
You could bike it in 10 days.
Or you could walk it in 2 months.

Given the choice, I'd do the journey on foot. I've traveled hundreds of thousands of miles by all these means - walking is always best.
1/9 Walking defines our species. Virtually every chapter of the human story took place at 3mph, day in, day out. Walk, camp, repeat.

Yet, incredibly, most human beings alive today have never experienced the ancient rhythm of the long-distance walking trek. It is a travesty.
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For about 7 years, I lived with no fixed address. For 5 of those years, I was constantly traveling. Where the hell did I sleep?

About 7 nights in 10, I 'stealth camped' anywhere I could sleep without detection. In almost 2k nights out, I was caught <10 times.

Megathread
1/25+ 'Stealth camping' involves violating numerous laws and social norms; tresspass and vagrancy laws make it illicit to sleep in any non-designated sleeping area. Vigilante landowners, cop-calling joggers, and rough-handed cops could subject you to a rude awakening or worse.

Remembering the days when I was building bicycle-towed mobile homes and living in them about 10 years ago. I was obsessed with the idea of living a totally mobile, rent-free, mortgage-free, gas-and-insurance-cost-free lifestyle.

I spent nearly a year living in these.
(thread)1/8 I was 18 years old and had utopian visions of buying plots on which hexagonal structures built from stuccoed rigid insulation would serve as 'common areas' for a legion of bike trailer dwellers. Each wall would have a 'loading dock' into which a trailer could 'plug in'.

We're living through an era of suicide. Because I grew up in the woods, even during my darkest hours, I always knew I would retreat to the woods - maybe forever - before killing myself.

Dark to mention it, but my rural upbringing probably saved my life. I was not "condemned".
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https://twitter.com/devusnullus/status/1642876348191457280

Moreover, the isolation of my village taught me how to overcome boredom. I read constantly. We had a unicycle in the barn - I learned to ride it. I learned state Capitols, tracking, tree IDing.

Next to their suburban peers, rural kids seem like renaissance men by comparison.
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Drug smugglers on the St. Lawrence River at the US-Canada border. Here, they are passing through the Akwesane Mohawk reservation, a nebulous political entity where one can pass from the US to Canada without customs.

It is an almost totally unknown and semi-lawless region.
1/5 With land in NY, Quebec, and Ontario, the Mohawks can maintain a shocking level of autonomy. Yet straddling so many jurisdictions makes cohesive law enforcement impossible. This + unique geography involving islands on an oft-frozen river makes Akwesasne ideal for smugglers.
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In 1583, Friar Luis de Leon of Spain published a treatise titled 'The Perfect Wife' for his newly-wed young niece.

My grandmother gave me a heavily-highlighted 1943 edition, marked from her years of re-reading the book. I cannot find any editions still available for sale.
1/10 The book is packed with wisdom about gender and marriage that today would be largely un-printable. And there are many corollary bits of wisdom regarding housekeeping and a manly and temperate Catholic livelihood on the land.
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Once heralded as the "Copper City", Rome, New York was formerly a paragon of industrial prowess in Central New York State. It is today an ugly, lonesome, blighted town that has lost 41% of its peak population (51,000 in 1960).

Rome has fallen.
1/22 In many ways, Rome's Genesis is not extraordinary. Situated at the sole portage on the canoe journey from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, the site that would become Rome was of incredible importance during the days of fur traders, the French & Indian war, and the Revolution.
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The monthlong leave of absence was a raging success. Just weeks ago I was at the brink. I was freefalling from one crisis to the next without a breath for nearly five years.

Chaos gets addictive.
1/23 The first time you learn you can enter a dangerous and unstable situation and not only survive it, but actually excel and lead others through it, you find a caliber of meaning that is not generally available in normal life.

It teaches you to prefer crisis to anything else.
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America's dying hinterlands are depressing to some. To me, they appear to offer the greatest opportunities ever afforded a single generation in our nation's history - if we move carefully and deliberately.

(a hopeful thread)
1/15 The precipitous decline of the American village has been one of the greatest blows to our culture to date. While many forces are responsible, what matters most today for young people is the 'power vacuum' created by this decline.
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I can't begin to describe the bizarre desolation of life on an icebreaker. You're in a rarely-transited, ever-changing, completely inhospitable place more barren than the desert.
You are reminded every day that you have no business being where you are. It's a very weird feeling. Everything on deck is always frozen. Tasks that would take five minutes in summertime take an hour. On 'soft water', you'll get bow-legged from the waves. On ice, your bones rattle, because everything is always vibrating and grumbling loudly as the ice breaks beneath you.