Indoor plumbing. Seriously. Go without for a couple of weeks and tell me how you feel about hot showers and flush toilets.
Also, people really underestimate how difficult it would be to just fuck off into the woods. You’d need a good amount of planning and knowledge to do it. What’s edible within what time range. Where the animals are at what time of year. And if you’re up north you always gotta be laying in firewood.
Also civilization has taken over most of the good hunter gatherer/ subsistence farming spots. River valleys, estuaries, anywhere with good fertile soil. Most of the places with good desolate wilderness to fuck off into was left desolate because it’s fucking desolate.
Fucking cold winters and the effort of growing enough potato, hunting and fishing, gathering firewood all with hand tools is way too much work.
I’m a spoiled brat with soft hands and no survival skills, and even if I were better equipped it sounds exhausting and dangerous.
Lack of survival skills
I’m waiting for the next book in that series I like.
We have a cabin in the woods so I do it in the summer. I wouldn’t want to do it longterm in the winter. (Canada) A couple of days and I’m ready for civilization.
…money
Living in the woods needs a LOT of money
Ticks. Also, probably, my wife and progeny.
There are fewer than 10,000 people who, if they just like weren’t around anymore, would inprove everyone’s quality of life like ten fold. I cling to the hope that one day enough of us will realize that and save the world.
Getting rid of those 10,000 people is relatively easy. The hard part is preventing 10,000 replacements from popping up.
Have you actually tried doing that? It can be challenging to say the least.
I do it for fun sometimes, but I do it fully provisioned and knowing I can always decide to bail, hike out, and go home to my nice warm bed, clean hot and cold running water (people don’t realize how huge this is), a fridge full of food that I don’t have to carry with me, devices to make the food within minutes on a whim, no bugs or potentially dangerous wild animals, etc.
Volunteering at the native plant garden in the park. Just enough of a hit to keep me going.
Mostly that I like the civilized world.
Like don’t get me wrong: Nature hikes? Camping? All great. National parks are a treasure. But I will freely admit I rather enjoy little comforts of modernity like “clean water just comes out of the tap when I turn it on”, “fresh food is a 15-minute walk to the grocery store away”, and “the spinny machine makes my clothes clean while I do other stuff.”
I complain about the modern world petty often, but damn some of it is nice. The other day, the dishwasher was running, the washing machine and dryer were going, the robot vacuum was doing its thing, the litter box was cleaning itself, and I was just sitting there with a beer and a good book.
not having to shit in a hole in the ground
Shitting in a hole is not the part that concerns me, it’s dealing with the hole once it’s full.
Needing regular doses of my asthma medication.
