Living in the Moment

I used to practise mindful meditation. The way I did it was to observe my own train of conscious thought. For example, as I drove down the road, I'd observe how my conscious mind would wander here and there while my subconscious mind and body would continue driving. I'd try to catch myself in these mental states and remind myself to "stay in the moment". To observe the grass and trees and fences as I passed them by. To stop reminiscing about yesterday. To stop thinking about tomorrow. To enjoy the experience of driving down the road.

That style of meditation worked well for me, especially when I was stressed or worried or depressed. So long as I could maintain that state of mindfulness, I was able to step away from my problems. But it was an active process that took a lot of focus and mental energy. It was work. And it always felt like I was somehow just treating the symptoms of my problems instead of addressing the causes. Even so, it was an effective tool that I used often, and it worked.

In the past several months, I've sort of forgotten about practicing meditation. At the same time, I feel like I'm living in the present moment now more than ever. What happened?

Well, I have a theory. If I look back on the times when I used to practice mindfulness, I see that it was always during difficult periods of my life. When I was worried about losing my job. Or when I would lay awake at night thinking about all the things I had to do the next day. I was treating the symptoms, but what were the causes?

I recently pondered that question and came up with this cause-and-effect chain:

That's how it used to be for me. I'd get stressed and worried over things that were out of my control, or bad things that I thought might happen in the future, or my never ending "to do" list.

As I searched for a "root cause" to my stress and anxiety, I found Materialism and Complexity. Tent living has eliminated Materialism and Complexity from my life. Is it any wonder that it's easier now to live in the moment without practicing mindful meditation?

Rain

It rained last night. It started as just a sprinkle at around 11pm, just when I had crawled into bed. As soon as I heard the first few random drops, I rolled over onto my back and laid quietly, a smile crossing my face, and listened. I had noticed crickets chirping earlier in the evening. It was the first time that I had heard them so loud, a nice sign of warming weather. So as the rain began, I listened to see whether I could still hear them in the background. But after just a few minutes, the storm intensified and drowned out all the other sounds.

My tent began filling with white noise. The rain fly is a thick poly tarp and it resonates at a low frequency when struck by raindrops. As the rain fell harder, the noise in the tent increased until the whole tarp buzzed with a low-pitched drone.

Soon, I was fast asleep. I awoke at 7am to my cell phone alarm. The rain was still going strong so I snoozed. And snoozed again. When I finally decided to get up, I remembered that I was out of water, but instead of walking to the water supply, I decided to place a pot outside along the eaves of the rain fly to catch some rain water for my bath. There was just enough potable water left in my container for a pot of coffee, so I made one and put it on the stove.

As my bathing pot filled with rainwater, and my coffee pot began to perk, I looked out onto the path to my home. It had become a little river, with large section being overtaken by runoff that was making its way to the creek just below my tent. I gazed for awhile longer until I started to smell the coffee. By then, my bathing pot was full so I brought it inside and put it on the stove to warm. Surprisingly, this was the first time that I'd collected rainwater that way, but it won't be the last. The rainwater was noticeably softer than the well water that I usually bathe in, plus I didn't have to walk through the rain to fetch it.

It's early afternoon now and the rain has stopped. The sky is starting to lighten and soon the sun will be out again. My path will be a muddy mess for a few days, and now that we're getting closer to Spring, it will be like that more and more often. But my nights will be good, and I'll sleep well as those Spring showers make their way to Virginia, and my rain fly.

On Being "Off the Grid"

Last week, we had our worst Winter storm so far this season. It started Tuesday evening around 8pm and got progressively worse through the night. The wet, heavy snow accumulated on everything, including on the pine tree branches above my tent.

At about 3am, the wind picked up and started blowing the accumulation from the tree limbs. My tent was bombarded with heavy slush-balls that made a loud "Pow!...P-Pow!...Pow!" as they crashed onto the rain fly. My lady, Jeanie, and our dog, Max, were spending the night, and we all three woke up and looked around as the bombardment began, trying to figure out what was going on. At first, I thought it must be tree limbs breaking and striking the tent, but it didn't really sound like that. Max was sitting up in the bed, fully alert, snapping his head from side to side as the slush-balls struck the tent over here, then over there, then over here again.

The bombardment continued on into the morning, and we had a hard time getting back to sleep. We finally gave up and crawled out of bed around 9am. As I put on the morning coffee, Jeanie mentioned that she'd have to call her daughters back home to see whether they'd lost power.

Fortunately, Jeanie's power was still on, but over the next few days I ran into plenty of people who had lost power due to fallen limbs and trees. And as I talked with people after the storm (people that weren't aware of my current lifestyle) they'd ask me: "Did you lose power?"

The first few times, I just said, "No, I didn't lose power", not wanting to get into long explanations. But that started bothering me a little because it wasn't exactly honest, so I tried, "Well, I'm not sure whether power went out in my area", which was closer to the truth, but led to questions like, "Oh? Where were you during the storm?" Oops. That didn't work, either, since I had to explain things anyway. Once I tried, "Well, I currently live in a tent without electricity", but that, of course, got me back into a long explanation.

Later that day, I came up with a nice, honest, short response: "I'm off the grid". There.

Being "off the grid" is something people have heard of and can relate to, unlike "living in a tent". When I say I'm off the grid I get questions like, "Really? Totally off the grid?", to which I respond with a simple, "Yep, totally", but that's it. No long discussion about tent living.

It's interesting that it never really occurred on me that I am, indeed, off the grid. It's been more of a byproduct of how I live than an objective. When one of my co-workers mentioned that he had always wanted to live off the grid (not knowing that I live in a tent), I said, "Well, it's pretty easy to do, but you have to make lifestyle changes". He said that he'd like to talk to me sometime about how I did it. So much for avoiding long conversations!