Rural Ramblings – Winter 1980
Ralph C. Miller

I can’t recall who first said it but it seems apt to me at the moment: Talking of someone who lived far off the beaten path he said, “He lives on the back side of yesterday.” A certain Editor (whom we all know) has found him a new patch there – just there – on the back side of yesterday. He calls it his personal time warp.

I have felt for some time the goldfish bowl he was living in was not going to be the answer. Either that or they would have to come for him in white coats and carrying a butterfly net. So now he is moving to the new place. I live out about 20 miles; if you take the back road on about 90 more miles you come at last to lost valley at the end of impossible canyon. I’ve been there … once.

I guess Oregon has as many of those areas as any in the contiguous States. Lynn has lived at the end of the road in a couple of them before but this time he owns the spread so no one else shares the responsibility for burying him there. Strangely enough he likes it and that’s what matters.

Maybe I understand that feeling. I guess some people felt that way when we got this place. It was quite a struggle up from nothing to what we have now. We didn’t really have to do it that way but now we’re glad we did. We appreciate it more because of what we were able to do with it ourselves. And we proved something – if only to us – that we could survive if need be on a whole lot less than we had grown used to.

That is some of where this particular trail leads: Survival. It seems to be a new and fashionable topic. Journalists, talk shows, books … they have coined a new buzz word for the exponents: Survivalists. It probably isn’t that the certified Survivalist feels more strongly about it than the rest of us; it is just that he sees a greater threat and he intends doing something about it.

I’m not implying that our Editor has moved back there to hide from impending doom. He just likes the privacy and the slower pace on “The Back Side of Yesterday.” Many of the others I am referring to appear to be ready to pull the hole in after them. They’re not only aiming for self-sufficiency but stocking an arsenal to defend it.

I won’t say they are wrong. I’ve mentioned often enough the many civilizations that have disappeared; I’m sure far more than we know. It’s just that if I have to shoot my neighbor to survive I wonder if it’s worth it. It seems to me we ought to be working a little harder to make what we have tenable.

When it does come down to survival, I think the Small Farmer has as good a chance as anybody – that is in time of adversity if the Government and prosperity don’t get him before that. In the first place he has to be diversified to some extent. To get by at all he needs to raise a lot of his own food and that of his animals, if any. Beyond that he needs shelter, clothing, fuel and motive power. That may not be easy to come by but he’ll come a lot closer to it than the fellow on the assembly line.

This country grew around folks who raised their own, built, wove and cut their own. It might be a wrench to many but not an impossible dream. It just depends on how badly it is needed and how much people are ready to sacrifice.

I don’t know how the rest of the country will fare this winter but we just got a notice to cut way down on our consumption of electricity this year and next under penalty of severe outages. Now the Pacific Northwest is presumed to be one of the best areas as far as electrical energy is concerned but they are painting a bleak picture. SHUT OFF water heaters at night, use only absolutely essential lighting and appliances and shut everything down where possible during usual peak load periods. This apparently is about to happen all over the Bonneville Power area because population is growing faster than the electric supply.

We are supposed to have a temporary abundance of gasoline in this country (although you don’t notice it much in the price at the pump). As this is written war is raging in the Middle East so who knows how long before shortages develop again.

I don’t recall those things being much of a problem when I was buttoning my pant legs at the knee. The nearest power line sparkled in the sun but it was almost a mile away. The newfangled gasoline lamps worked sometimes but it was best to be provided with extra candles and coal oil lamps. One neighbor had gas lights. You put carbide into a drum then moistened it and the resulting gas created passable illumination when you turned on the jets and lit them.

As for gasoline vehicles: yes, we had them but they didn’t always run even when filled with gas. Lots of farmers were getting cars for that occasional trip to town … in the summer. I can remember Uncle Ephraim getting his old touring car down off the blocks in spring. Clean the hay and straw off the hood where it was parked in the barn. Move the setting hen off her nest in the rear seat (or else move seat and all; more room for cream cans that way). Put back gasoline and water drained the fall before and then hook on the team and pull the car a half mile down the road to start it. Even then it wasn’t a good idea to turn the team out to pasture; the car might stall again or it might have to be pulled from one of those horrendous mud holes along the road.

As I said it all depends on how much we are willing to sacrifice. Going back to those ways is possible and many are living in comparable circumstances today. If cataclysm comes they will be the best prepared. It’s hard to lose something you don’t have to begin with.

I mentioned back there in the early going that we started from scratch (or less) on this place. With help from son Tony and some from Lynn I put up a 12 by 16 cabin soon after I bought it as there was a lot of preliminary cleanup to do and I wasn’t ready to start the house then. For home comforts we had a wood cookstove, a nearby spring and an outhouse. Candles or kerosene lamps. The following spring I built a two-story barn and with the addition of a 7 by 8 bunk room Lynn and his wife survived a year here. When Tony and I came back to work around the place we slept upstairs in the barn with the rabbits, goats and one bantam rooster downstairs.

Somewhere along the way I got in a temporary power pole and we strung a couple of lights. My wife and I lived in the cabin under such conditions for about 10 months while building; finally the house was liveable and we moved in to running water, and oil heat. As a result of all that we left the outhouse out there in the woods, we installed a woodburning cookstove and a heat exchanger fireplace along with the electric range and the furnace – we also keep a considerable collection of oil lamps well filled.

We raise a good garden every year and have the basement shelves lines with canned goods. An electric pump brings water from the spring but whenever the power goes off there’s a bucket handy. I don’t know if any of this qualifies me as a survivalist or not but it is a comfort to me.

Deer season is on right now but I won’t be hunting; I gave that up in World War II when the game started shooting back. I’m sure if I had to I wouldn’t hesitate to kill a deer for meat again. (I’d probably start with that old barren doe that eats the apples off my trees in the middle of the afternoon.) Lots of fish and bullfrogs in the pond; rabbits, squirrels and porcupines in the woods. I don’t expect it to come to that but it could keep us going for a while if it had to.

Eggs, poultry, milk and meat … the Small Farmer can supply himself and a little over for cash or barter. If he has horses too he has the power to plant and harvest crops even if the energy shortage becomes acute. He can mill his own flour in a pinch and if sugar is too big a problem sorghum and honey are passable substitutes.

While it is true that Small Farmers don’t raise any little orlons or polyesters there were some other things that antedated them: wool, flax, leather and if you don’t mind combing the seeds out by hand maybe you could make your own cotton goods. (Silk worms may be a little too exotic for us Small Farmers.)

There’s always manure and compost for fertilizer and if you must have pesticides there are nicotine derivatives. Give more of the tobacco to the worms and bugs and we’ll all be better off. That takes care of most of the essentials right on the small farm except if the oil supply goes out completely – then maybe we’ll have to rely on tallow dips. May be worth while to invest in a windmill or one of those homemade apparatuses for making your own methane gas. (Do they call them digesters? Ugh!)

Some of this may seem frivolous but to the survivalist it is no joke. How closely and how seriously we heed his warnings depends on our own assessment of the future. I guess what we need to know is which peril is he preparing against? The most cautiously militant, not to say paranoid, seem to expect complete anarchy that would wipe out the civilization we know. We can’t say it couldn’t happen here but hope we are civilized enough to avoid it.

Another possibility or perhaps a variation on the same theme involves some form of worldwide catastrophe: Natural disaster, famine, pestilence or a financial collapse tending to full scale depression. The last and probably the thing weighing most heavily on the survivalist’s mind is war – nuclear holocaust. Any one or combination of these might lead back to the anarchy mentioned.

If we admit that such contingency exists however remotely then it is difficult to condemn or ridicule his single-minded preparedness. The preparedness is indeed admirable as we admire the ant, the squirrel or the honeybee. The difference being one of degree.

From the time of the sabre-tooth tiger man has always been just a jump ahead of disaster. One slip and he goes down like ripe wheat before a storm. The trick has always been to know how to balance foolhardiness against overcaution and when to come out of the cave.

Withdrawing to remote areas as a means of avoiding cataclysm may be only partly successful anyway. Back in the 1930s a question often asked on campus was, “If the U.S. entered a war when it was not under attack would you go?” (Did you think the modern generation invented that?) Smart aleck as we all were, I can recall my own reply, “Not me, I’ll go sit on a desert isle somewhere where they won’t find me.” I sat on more than one desert island alright, but I wore a uniform and sometimes the bombs and shells came uncomfortably close.

The moral is that in this day and age there is no place so remote that disaster can’t strike. A couple of cases in point. In a past column I wrote of a will-o-the-wisp place in the back country of Arkansas called Bee Branch. I had encountered it long ago as a result of a most unpromising detour and was unable to find it or anyone who had heard of it since. Recent newspaper accounts of the fire and resultant explosion in a missile silo down there listed nearby hamlets as having been temporarily evacuated – there for all the world to see was the name of Bee Branch. I deplore the explosion and grieve for the loss of life but felt vindicated at last; Bee Branch lies just downwind of that missile crater.

The other case I mentioned wasn’t caused by man but proves the fallacy of depending on isolation for security. That was in the papers, too. Harry Truman (the recluse, not the late President) thought that by closing the door of his cabin on Spirit Lake in the Washington back country he would be safe. On May 18, Mt. St. Helens proved him wrong.

Probably none of this is going to change the mind of our survivalist. He’s convinced and only time will prove him wrong or right. Learning self-sufficiency can’t hurt him much and being that far away from traffic, smog and congestion certainly qualifies as a plus toward longevity.

The tragedy of all this is there are so few in position to take even rudimentary steps toward self-sufficiency. There is very little opportunity for that in the slums or even on the assembly line. Although there has been a definite movement toward the land all too many of these folks, lacking sufficient preparation and capital, have paid the price for their venture. Too many have been pushed off small places and with inflation and all the stumbling blocks set up by those who should be helping them they’ll never get back. So they go to swell the ranks of those contributing to urban decay. If cataclysm strikes the only question is will they be predators or prey?

Trouble is man’s natural lot but barring natural disasters the biggest problem I see is with ourselves – overpopulation. I was around when 100 million came pretty close to the national head count. Now we’re close to 2½ times that. Worldwide the figure is staggering. I can’t even begin to imagine what 4 billion means in terms of people … that’s a bigger number than MacDonald’s hamburgers.

The problem is that all 4 billion of us are dependent on a relatively small area for most of the food and clothing we use. This old globe is mostly water; take out mountains, deserts, forests and the permafrost areas and only a small percentage of it is arable land. Figuratively, we’re all balanced on the head of a pin … dependent for our lives on a few inches of topsoil and a handful of what used to be called farmers. Seen in that light the possibility of anarchy, famine or pestilence comes nearer. And if any of that does come to pass how many of the 4 billion will make it?

That brings up the question of who will survive. The true survivalist probably has guns to ensure his piece of the future. It may be enough except that those who would dispute his right to live probably won’t be emptyhanded either.

If it comes down to that stage moral or ethical considerations aren’t likely to enter in. If we figure the Small Farmer as a likely candidate for survival is there justification for him over others? I think there is and not only because he is less dependent on others. The skills inherent in his way of life are basic and essential if we must rebuild after disaster. If the skilled don’t survive, who will lead us back?

All this may be academic … at least in our lifetime. Scaring ourselves seems to be our national pastime, as witness TV, movies and books, and the survivalist may just be a victim of the fallout from that barrage – but – then why do we keep looking uneasily over our shoulder?

If the survivalist really knows something we don’t then maybe the best hope for tomorrow does lie on “the Back Side of Yesterday.”