Living Outside: Bandelier National Monument

Last week we made a trip to Bandelier National Monument, one of the first trips we've made to local landmarks.  Sitting in the car for more than a few minutes is very painful for me, so we haven't been able to explore the area as much as I'd like.


Bandelier is a mixture of canyon and mesa land, and is known for the human dwellings and petroglyphs that have been carved into the canyon walls over the last 11,000 years (find more information here: http://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm).

To get a sense of perspective, notice the people on the bottom right in this picture.

Ladder into one of the cliff dwellings

Something I found remarkable was the size of the rooms, which was possible to see from the remnants of the adobe foundations.  M. commented that he'd once been on a tour of similar ruins, and one of the people on the tour had asked the native guide how people had managed to live in such small spaces.  The guide responded that they hadn't lived in these spaces; they'd lived outdoors, and only used the spaces when the weather made it necessary.

This made me ponder what it would be like to live most of life outside.  This would be very different from how most of us in this country live our lives today.  If you drive down a residential street in middle class America, you see houses and yards and driveways with cars in them--but no people.  Everyone is inside, in their living rooms.  Similarly,  if you drive down commercial streets, there are individual stores, strip malls, and office buildings; the people are in their cars or the stores or buildings, or hurriedly on their way between those things.

Most people in the United States go outside only in order to get inside someplace else, except for those occasions when they're outside to play sports or exercise, to walk their pets, or to take out the trash.

But what if you did everything outside?  Cooking, eating, laundry, clothing making, playing, hanging out with friends and family, sleeping?  While I'd like to have a little cubby hole to crawl into and to heat when it's cold and wet outside, I really would like to live outside.

Ever since I was a little kid, I was attracted to the idea of living outside, not just for a few days in a tent, but for the long haul.  Though we lived in the city up until I was about seven, our house was on the edge of a wooded area and I spent most of my after school and weekend hours there.  I'd sit in trees and imagine them to be houses that I lived in.  At my grandmother's house in deepest suburbia, I had little hidey-hole places behind the tall evergreen trees that surrounded the house's basement, and I'd tuck myself away and imagine that I lived there, in the bushes.  I'd imagine never coming out, expect to get food and water, and I was torn between hoping my family would miss me on the one hand, and hoping they'd forget all about me and leave me in peace to live in the evergreens on the other. One winter after a big snow storm my parents and I built an igloo in our yard in the city.  I tried to convince them to let me spend the night in it, but they were not having any of that.  In that particular case, I'm glad they weren't persuaded, because it warmed up considerably and rained overnight, and the roof caved in.

For about a year when I was seven, we'd take long weekend and vacation trips to the land my parents bought in New Hampshire.  We'd stay in tents while we cleared trees, burned brush, and built a cabin.  I'd often sneak off and try to build my own house out of fallen trees. I remember an immense feeling of frustration--the houses I built never approached the ones I constructed in my imagination.  After we moved to New Hampshire full time and I started elementary school there, during recess my friends and I would sketch out lines in the dirt to represent walls in our imaginary houses and stables.  We'd forage for leaves and branches and pretend they were plates and food. I had a strong attachment to the trees, boulders, and the stone wall that were part of our imaginary house and barn.  Though we only spent time in these pretend rooms and with these pretend household items during recess, I used to imagine what it would be like to live there full time, foraging for food, cooking that food over a campfire, and making my own clothes from plants and animal skins.   In an interesting way, those constructions weren't imaginary homes--they were home to me.

During my early teen years on our homestead in rural New Hampshire, I'd set up a tent in the woods not far from the house and sleep in it instead of the house for weeks on end.  At that point, our house was small cabin--a single room with a kitchen tacked on the end.  My parents and I slept in bunk beds, them on the bottom, me on top.  The tent was a rare chance for me (and them) to have some space and privacy.  But I don't think privacy and additional space was my motivation.  What I remember looking forward to with the coming of warm weather each spring, was the feeling and sound of air moving around me and through the trees and material of the tent.

In my midteen years, after I'd fight with my parents, I used to imagine running away from home.  In my version of this perennial favorite, my horse and I would roam around the country, going from field to field.  While I imagined my horse would be just fine grazing in the fields, I always came to a stop in this fantasy with imagining how I'd feed myself.  It didn't occur to me at the time to get a book to learn about hunting, trapping, fishing, or foraging.

One of the options I considered before moving to New Mexico was selling almost all of my stuff, buying some kind of truck, and living in a tent in the National Forests and Wildernesses, or Bureau of Land Management Lands for awhile.  I know I'm not alone in this impulse; there are many out there now who are living their lives as digital nomads/bomads/boondockers/fulltime rv-ers.  I'm still mulling this over.  Even though I've made some dramatic changes in my life over the last few months, I'm feeling an ache inside me to be living closer to the land.  I'm very happy to have comfortable indoor spaces such as a bedroom with a cushy bed, a kitchen with cabinets and a sink, a bathtub and toilet, a nook with an arm chair and footstool, etc.  Somehow, though, I'd like to have these things in a way that brings me closer to the outside.  This house, like every one I've ever lived in except for the cabin in New Hampshire, feels too large and too shut off from the world outside.


As I walked through the canyon in Bandelier and climbed the steps to peer into the small homes in the canyon walls, I imagined living in the canyon, spending my days in the grassy and treed area of the canyon, and seeking shelter in the rock during periods of wind, rain, and snow.  I felt a sense of serenity.  I heard the leaves rustling as the wind moved through the trees around the river that runs through the center of the canyon.  I felt the coolness of the air in the canyon on my skin and felt it move through my body as I breathed in.  I felt the intense heat of the stone walls where the caves are, warmed by the sun through the middle of the day.  I saw the shifting shapes made by shadow and sunlight, and the the movement of sunlight as the shadow of the cliffs on the western side moved across the valley floor and onto the walls of the opposing side of the canyon.  I smelled the grasses and flowers, mostly dried at this time of the year, and imagined their textures as I stepped over them.  I imagined the kinds of animals that could feed from them, and which could live there with me: goats, horses, chickens.  My eyes took in the sight of the dark, fertile soil in the canyon, and I inhaled its aroma with a kind of hunger that I felt deep in my chest.  The soil was rich with organic matter that had washed down through the canyon over the centuries.  I imagined the crops I could plant there and which I could feed myself with: carrots, onions, squash, pumpkins, corn.

It felt like it could be home.

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Here are links to the sites of a few digital nomads and and whatnot who camp on public lands or live a nomadic lifestyle:

The Good Luck Duck (http://www.thegoodluckduck.com/p/about-us.html)

Daniel Suelo, author of Living Without Money (https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/Home)

Cheap, Green RV Living (http://www.cheapgreenrvliving.com/)