"Off the Grid" is a
one-hour documentary featuring Les Stroud (from "Survivorman") and
his family, following their attempts to create a self-sustaining homestead in
the Canadian wilderness. They succeed eminently well...with some additional
help from massive trucks, a chopper, a huge "portable" saw, and other
high tech gadgets too numerous to mention. No, it's not "wrong" or
"immoral" to cheat the Palaeolithic in this way (Native tribes love
to purchase our guns and medicine, after all!), but how many people can afford
to pay a million dollars, or whatever this operation might have cost, to go off
the grid in *this* manner? Very few, I imagine. Perhaps if all the governments
in the world get their acts together, we can all start living in this way...I
honestly can't see that happening, though.
As usual, I loved the absurd stuff found in "Off the Grid". The former owners of the land used it for an illegal cannabis plantation, and even dumped a filled body bag in a local pond... We never learn what was in it. That competing cannabis smuggler the RCMP have been chasing all these years? The idea to have racoons as pets also struck me as hysterically absurd. It's also fascinating how many things can go wrong when you're trying to live closer to nature. Stroud and his family had to wear masks when demolishing the old house on their property, since it was filled with mouse feces infected by a string of potentially lethal diseases!
As I said, I certainly hope that we can transition to a more sustainable lifestyle in an orderly fashion (and even use helicopters to fly in some solar panels), but unfortunately, I suspect that the real process will prove to be bumpier than Survivorman's attempts to get off the grid...
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