The Tribe - benefits of the small-scale community

A Greek anthropologist and FaceBook friend just introduced me to John H. Bodley's "Victims of Progress." This is the book's 6th edition.

Our nomadic village - 3 trailers, 5 tents, 2 SUV, 1 Class-C
and  1 Class A. Most are in the trees but all are in this picture. 

It all started when we were talking about another book, Jared Diamond's "Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" (1987). I had made the comment that, although not a trained anthropologist, I have long held that the real beginning of the decline of the human race was when we became farmers. The agrarian life-style required greater population, began adversely affecting the environment, turned resources into wealth, and created a work for wealth and power society where competition replaced cooperation.  

That discussion led to the introduction of John Bodley's book.  His book almost immediately points out that indigenous people; whom our urban-based, large-scale, resources-as-wealth society has systematically attempted to destroy; are, in fact, quite superior in many ways. At least I translate things like more sustainable, greater democracy and freedom, more successful, etc., as superior qualities, but that’s my world-view and prejudice. 

Br James' Class-C in the foreground and Nitsitapiisinni
(our trailer) in the distance.

Besides being more sustainable, "Small-scale societies have enormous human advantages, especially because people living in smaller, lower-density populations may be able to enjoy greater democracy, freedom, equality, and security than people living in large, dense populations, where they usually are divided sharply by differential access to vital resources, wealth and power. In small-scale societies, where all households have assured access to food and shelter and to the rewarding experiences offered by their culture, there is less cultural incentive to accumulate and concentrate wealth. Likewise, there is little incentive for population and resource consumption to expand." (John H. Bodley)  Sounds good to me.

This quote and Bodley's first few pages can ignite a host of discussions, which I'm sure I'll address at some point, but when I shared what I had read with Pamela she used our small nomadic community, sitting on a hill in the desert, as antidotal evidence. Thinking about it, she's right.  

I'm sure that our group as an example would not fare well under extreme academic scrutiny but it does a good job at making the point. Hence antidotal evidence.  I’m calling our small, very diverse collection of people a tribe because Bodley states “We may call small-scale societies and cultures produced by the humanization process tribal to emphasize the absence of political centralization.” 

We had 20 people for Thanksgiving. 

We are undoubtedly more diverse than Bodley's small tribes, but we also share a lot of characteristics. We are a small population. Low density. We are more sustainable than larger groups because we are unit or household focused. We are assured of shelter and the protection of the group. Therefore, we do experience greater democracy, freedom, equality and even security. We have limited contact with and no input from the outside world; i.e. we are left alone and ignored by the world around us. We are free to live our lives as we see fit as long as we do not harm others in the community. There is no hierarchy. Whether we live under a tarp or in a Class-A, we are all equal. Democracy for us is the ability to stand together and talk about problems or issues and arrive at an amicable solution that benefits and is acceptable to all members of the community. We have witnessed this at least twice in the past week. 

The argument that we are hunter-gatherers of a fashion could be made. We each leave the community on a routine basis and, using our skills and resources, return with food, water and other essentials. Many times we either share these resources or we help the other person get it for themselves. For example, we would have driven 9.6 miles, spending precious gasoline, to get water. A member of the community told us where there was water a little more than a mile away. We shared with those who were going to need to find a new place the location of dispersed camping we had found in our movement around the area that would be good for them.

Br. James'   He often has friends visit and they play
drums, but always respectful of others. 

Do we share our food and essentials with the others? Yes. Because we all have food and shelter, even the ones living under a tarp, and we enjoy a common culture and social connectedness, there is no incentive to try to accumulate and concentrate wealth and/or power. The person who, in the large-scale, urban society around us, would be considered the poorest, is, in our community, the one who is spearheading a Thanksgiving feast. Assisting them in this undertaking is the man who arrived in a 40 foot class-A motor home. We all did our part as best we could.

Further evidence for my position can be read in a James Suzman (The Guardian. 10/29/2017) article entitled “Why ‘Bushman banter’ was crucial to hunter-gatherers’ evolutionary success”.  Most people in the US would assume that everyone wants to live like the USA (which is definitely not true) and that hunter-gatherers are always just one step ahead of starvation. That too is quite wrong. Suzman refers to research by a Canadian anthropologist, Richard Lee, who studied the Ju/’hoansi (Kalahari Desert in Namibia and Botswana) and found that they not only make a good living as hunter-gatherers but they do it in what works out to be a 15 hr work week!  (Think about that when you drive 1-2 hours in traffic to get to work, work 8 hours and then drive 1-2 hours to get home five times a week!)  “On the strength of this, anthropologists redubbed hunter-gatherers ‘the original affluent society’ ”. (Suzman) 

I believe that Pamela is right. Our little, eclectic, off-the-grid community in the desert does reflect the truth of the superiority of the small-scale, hunter-gatherer tribe. According to Bodley things began to change about 6,000 years ago when resources became wealth and power, and we developed a society of haves and have-nots. I'm thinking that was a sad day, perhaps the worst day, in human history.

Dishpan Hands - or how I wash dishes.

For those of you who still live in sticks-n-bricks (i.e. houses) this will probably be the most useless blog you’ve ever read.  Others might find it interesting, while yet others – those new to the nomadic, off-the-grid life-style - might find it actually helpful.  I’m going to tell you how I wash dishes. Woopee!!

Washing dishes when you are ‘boondocking’ or ‘dry camping’ in the desert is all about the conservation of resources.  Pamela and I have slightly different techniques, but both are efficient.  Both of our techniques save water but neither are the very severe approaches like using a spray bottle, etc.  We live here. We’re not camping for the weekend.  Nevertheless, we still keep our wash well under a gallon of water. The picture is of our sink, with our dishpan, after I finished this morning’s dishes.  The dishpan holds just shy of a gallon, and you will notice that it isn’t full.  Granted there are just two of us, but I’ve done this after hosting a dinner party for six with the same results.

Besides saving water, my methods also reduces the amount of water going into the grey water holding tank.  That means we can stay in the desert longer without having to find a dump station. This dishpan has environmentally safe soap and no food particles, so it is as good as filtered water and, in such small amounts, could be poured on the ground away from any existing ground water. (Always protect the ground water. If you do dump in the desert or the woods, but sure to go far enough away that you don’t attract animals to where you’re staying. The water still smells.)  If you are talking quantity, you will want to further filter, just to be safe.  We use so little I could just leave it outside in the desert and the water would likely evaporate before the next wash. But all this is another blog, so back to washing dishes.

You will notice that our dishpan fits neatly into the sink.  Filled to the brim it doesn’t hold more than a gallon of water.  Some times we use a large mixing bowl, or other similar container that needs to be washed, as our dishpan. Double duty.

Some people use paper towel to wipe food scraps, residue and particles into the trash.  I don’t really like using paper towels, even recycled paper towels.  I scrape as much as I can directly into the trash. Then  I start the wash by putting a very small amount of Dawn detergent into the dishpan and adding an equally small amount of hot water.  I just need enough to keep my dish cloth wet.  I wipe all dishes and cooking utensils with the very wet rag (don’t wring it out) over the strainer in the right side of the sink.  (I’m left handed, so this is easiest.)   Since we use cast iron, I have a separate dish cloth for the cast iron. Once wiped clean of scraps and residue, the item (sans cast iron) goes into the dishpan.  Now I’ve got all of the scraps, residue and particles safely trapped in the sink strainer. Before continuing, I empty the strainer and wipe out the right side of the sink. You might be able to see in the picture that our strainer isn’t the one that comes with a normal sink. It is a special design and works great.  This step takes only about as much water as you can wring out of a dish cloth. Maybe, if you have really dirty dishes, you might use two dish cloth worth, but this is almost 100% of the water you will be adding to your grey tank if you dump the dish pan on the ground. If you dump your dishpan into the grey tank, you’ve still added less than a gallon of water.

Actually, the dishes look quite clean at this point, and, in all honesty, could probably be rinsed and dried, but I do an actual wash.  I’m still using the same dish water which has not been polluted by food residue or particles. When I rinse, I rinse over the dishpan.  This adds fresh hot water to the pan. The advantage of this is the order in which I wash.  It takes almost no water to cover a plate or flatware.  They go first.  As rinse water increases the volume of my wash water, I can now get larger and larger items under the water to wash.  Cereal bowls are next.  Cups, serving bowls, etc., are, of course, last to be washed.  To conserve space on my drying mat, I generally leave the washed flatware in the pan until everything else is done, but that’s just because I don’t have a very big drying mat. If Pamela is drying as I wash, I will rinse flatware as soon as it is washed.  

All done!  It is actually a very quick and simple method. It is going to be a bit more difficult if you don’t use cast iron for cooking.  Cast iron is soooooo easy to clean. After the dishes are done I use the dish water to clean the stove, counters and sink.  Occasionally we save some of the dish water to flush and clean the toilet. This saves on water use and gives us more time enjoying the beauty of the desert. Any remaining dish water can be poured down the drain into the grey water tank or safely disposed of on the ground. Again, disposing of water on the ground is a conservation, safety issue with which each of us must deal. The nice thing about this method is that the amount of water is very small.  

This isn’t the only way to wash dishes, but I have found it to be quick, easy and efficient.  It does reduce the amount of water we use thereby not only conserving water but giving us more time to stay out in the desert. 

Pamela and I are full-timers who spend about half our year in the wilderness of northwestern Montana (our “official” home) where we serve as camp hosts for the national park service, and the other half in the marvelous deserts of the western US.   We spend about 70-80% of our time boondocking (dry camping). 

Community

The party is beginning. The community is gathering.

For those of you who do not know Pamela and me, we are full-timers who live in our twenty foot camper trailer we call Nitsitapiisinni – Blackfeet for “our way of life”. Our home is in Montana where we volunteer as camp hosts for Glacier National Park from the first of May until the end of September. After that we visit family in the Midwest and south and wander southwestern US.  We have fallen in love with the desert and are currently staying in the desert east of Cottonwood, Arizona. We are in an area where dispersed camping is allowed on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, perched on a ridge, 4.5 miles from Cottonwood, with a magnificent view of the mountains, and as peaceful as anywhere can be.

As we walked home from the party this evening the sky was so clear that we could see the Milky Way and the various constellations almost jumped out at us.  It was the perfect ending to a great evening.  

Earlier in the afternoon Pamela decided that she wanted to meet more of our neighbors.  Our dispersed camping area was quite full and we only had room for one or two rigs of any size. Pamela’s efforts at meeting neighbors resulted in a party with food, a grill going, and a campfire that started just after 4pm and went until 8:30pm. What fun we had. Of the eleven units in the dispersed camping area, which is clustered like a small community, only one family were not full-timers. That happened to be a firefighter and his family from Peoria, AZ a couple of hours away.  The rest of us are from all over representing California, New York, Finland, Arizona, Louisiana and Montana. (Two of the couples established Texas residence because Texas is one of the states that is good for full-timers.)   I was probably the oldest.  We are again and again amazed at the number of younger people who are full-timers and work from their RV. The youngest was a couple who were probably in their early 30s.  They had moved to San Francisco for work, decided ‘hell with it’, bought a Class A and now run their businesses from their motor-home as they travel the country.  As they said, they don’t make nearly as much as they did working in the city, but it doesn’t cost nearly as much to live comfortably, and it is a lot more fun.  One of the couples just bought a Springdale, so they had to come look through Nitsitapiisinni to see what modifications we’ve made.  The fellow next to us, who has an old diesel pusher school bus, gave me a tour.  He is a PhD candidate and the back third of his bus is his study where he works on his research and teaches on-line class for the university where he’s doing his degree.  We are a small temporary community drawn together by the desire to escape the confines of cities, towns and sticks-n-bricks as well as a love for the magnificent country in which we are camped. 

As the party was beginning to break up an old Class-A pulled in.  Our party was occupying the only open site.  I approached the driver and suggested that they come and join us for some food and socialization then we’d make sure they got a good place to stay. It was dark and getting late, so the community came together to help them back into a good spot next to the party fire.  The couple who had brought the grill saw the newcomers getting out a grill. They insisted that the newcomers use their grill which was still hot and only needed a some more briquettes. There was lots of food left from our party, which we all insisted that the new family take so they didn’t have to fix a meal so late in the evening.  I think I’m the only one who knows that the newcomers are not full-timers by choice. The sharing by our cluster of one-time strangers made a significant impact upon the lives of people who weren’t as fortunate as the rest of us.  Our little community, drawn together by a beautiful place to stay, had come together, celebrated life and started creating friendships.  The community can only exist for the 14 days stay limit, then we must all move on, but friendship have been forged that may last for many years.  The community acted charitably and in a very harmonious way.  We did not pay attention to the fact that their motor-home was old.  We didn’t check their pedigree, their passport, their politics or their religion before we decided to help them and welcome them into the community. 

 

Did you notice how this friendly and helpful community came to life?  It came about because one person, Pamela, knocked on the door of an RV and said “Hi, I’m Pamela.”   And I’m proud of her for doing that.