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A quote: “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” ~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I’ll start with a story …
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The people of the towers – select and slim and rich. They set trends and fashion and living to collect followers, checking their accounts several times a day for the fix of accolades.
With the same insight as “fashionable” finger piercing, camping became the Next Thing.
And they glided to manicured nature to stay in electrified Yurts with catered meals and massage therapists.
Most of them didn’t survive the collapse. Teaching my assigned few the basics of living off the land is thankless. They are hostile to dirty hands and oil lamps. They leave offended and they don’t come back.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: I made my way back to the yurts as the air began to cool. My wife and our friends looked at me expectantly.
“We just passed the government busybody’s inspection. We are obviously living primitively and not contributing to any pollution based problems nor are we using any electricity or other forbidden technology.”
My son looked up from his console. “Dad, the drone confirms that the inspector is fifteen miles out.”
“All right. Bring it back and have your cousin get those sensors back on.” A moment later, the grid fired up and we went back to living our lives.
Great-grandpa built this motel, right after the War. That’s the big one, World War II, for you kiddies. People were itching to travel after the wartime sacrifices, and they wanted places to stay. So he got some military surplus huts, painted them to look like fanciful yurts, and put up a sign.
Being right on the way to a major national park made it a sure money-maker. Pretty soon he started expanding, building a proper building for the front office and including a few rooms behind it. Except everyone wanted to stay in the yurts because they were so cool and different, so by the time Grandpa took over, he had built twelve more.
Over the years the prices have gone up, and we’ve had to rebuild more than a few of those yurts when the original metal proved less durable than expected. But one thing that we’ve really lost is the common sense people used to bring with them. They understood that the forest wasn’t like in Disney’s Bambi, that wild animals might look cute, but they were most definitely not pets. Nowadays, a week doesn’t go by but we have some idiot walking right up to the bison for a selfie, or trying to cuddle a bear cub, or calling “here kitty, kitty” to a mountain lion. Most of them manage to escape with their hides intact, but every now and then one of these nitwits leaves in an ambulance.
Or a hearse.
Navig8r says: “How is occupancy at my new resort?”
“Low. You might want to rethink your advertising.”
“Why?”
“It’s fall here. Not exactly clothing-optional weather. The beachfront is half a mile away.”
“You’re lying. Weather is warm, it is beachfront, occupancy is high and you are keeping the difference! Fifteen years ago, I bought this land before rising sea level made it beachfront and global warming made it just right for nudists. I got my info from expert Al Gore, your former vice president! I am the Nigerian prince that Americans send money to. You can’t scam a scammer.”
“Someone did.”
Dupin says: Who’da thunk it. Here we are thriving in Russian yurts, using Chinese-made solar cells, batteries with lithium mined in Zimbabwe, motors using neodymium magnets mined in Australia, Kazakhstan-mined gallium for our LED lighting. We use Oriental bamboo for our renewable biomass; Middle Eastern-origin barley, Mexican corn and agave, and African coffee for our drinks; and a mix of Old and New World crops and animals for our food.
And now we’re cut off from everyone else but comfortably safe in our East Texas lakeside community. No radio these days, or at least nobody broadcasting, but we’ve got what we need.
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