It’s Earth Day, but I want to write about the Moon. I want to write about how it breaks my heart that we are in a space race with China to colonize the Moon. I want to write about how as long as Earth Day exists, (a once-a-year only event to stop and consider, hey, maybe we should care about our planet,) we have no business developing and exploiting outer space. I hope you understand.

Artemis II astronauts just completed a slingshot around the Moon and while we celebrate their successful return, I mourn what this means for us. Because although they experienced the overview effect, the state of awe that arises from seeing Earth from space where you suddenly recognize that we all belong to a small, fragile, interconnected home planet, I don’t need to go to space to feel this transcendence every day. Humanity abuses, pollutes and pillages Earth, and now we seek to do the same to the Moon.

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The Moon is Magic

Did you know the Moon’s cratered surface is a record of billions of years of impacts from space rocks, a witness to our solar system’s impact history that Earth has largely erased? The Moon is a record keeper.

Did you know that in the distant past, the Moon and Earth sometimes formed a shared shield against the young Sun’s harsh solar wind, helping our planet maintain its atmosphere? The Moon was our early protector.

Did you know in many earth-based cultures, the Moon, Grandmother Moon, Sister Moon, is honored as the feminine eye watching over us, lovingly helping to guide our way?

When the Moon is full, she brightens our nights, so we have no need of light. The Moon is not lit from within but a reflection of our Star. She reflects light back to us in the dark. She reflects our own cyclical nature. She reflects our psyche. She reminds us that the living world is not all light, it is darkness too and when she pauses from reflecting, we are left to reflect on our own. She disappears from night. She is with us during the day when we are unaware of her presence, she is still there, ever revolving.

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Humans are Connected to the Moon

Did you know that some evolutionary theories suggest that women’s menses are linked to the lunar cycle because our ancient ancestors mated in the moonlight and bled in the dark when they could hide from predators? The word moon shares an ancient root with the words menses and month.

Across the world and throughout history, countless cultures have used lunar or lunisolar calendars systems that count months by the Moon’s phases, tying festivals and ceremonies to her changing light.

The Moon pulls on the oceans with her gravitational leverage, so the tides rise to meet her cycles like water bellies bulging from the Earth. Did you know she subtly pulses the groundwater and aquifers too, so that many traditions attune to her rhythms when planting and tending food? Did you know our own bodies are 60% water and so we must be drawn closer to her too, energetically, in ways we may not know?

The moon is witness and protector, cycles and growth, tides and gravity, culture and ancient roots, reflection and introspection, darkness and light, mystery and intuition, she is the liminal beloved of our lives and we barely notice. Well, some of us do.

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Moon Worship

I honor the moon most prominently twice a month. I honor her yin and her yang, her fullness and her depth. On the new moon, I find my quietest center, the center of my center, and I pray for medicine to carry with me until the next cycle begins. On the full moon, I celebrate in circle with drums, song, friends, meditation and manifestation. I promise her I will act on my prayer for she has returned to light and so we all must eventually.

Colonizing the Moon Changes Everything

But now, Man wants to build space stations for people to live on her surface. There is talk of space industry and the optimistic say it will relieve the Earth’s congestion. (Send AI data centers to space!) But many of us know better. We have not learned our lesson, and we will only repeat our crimes. We will not reduce pollution on Earth; we will add our pollution to the Moon.

Once upon a time, the Earth was a wild place, but Man colonized her and now she is coughing, sputtering, relinquishing. We are killing our own habitat like the most ignorant animals in the galaxy.

Perhaps some will gaze in wonder at the modern Moon with humans living upon it, but I know I will never see the Moon the same again—naked, unpolluted, raw wilderness. Some may say, she’s only a rock! But they don’t know what I know, what so many of us know, that she’s so much more. The moon is pure, strong, mystical, mythical, shapeshifting beauty.

I will always love her, always honor her, but I will never see her the same way again.

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Moon Rituals to Practice Twice a Month

Below are rituals for the Moon and how I practice honoring her cycles. Working with the rhythm of the moon will change the way you function in the world for the better. They allow you to honor your own internal cycle and phases in tune with the natural world.

I lead both full moon and new moon ceremonies in my community in different capacities and have done so religiously for the past five years. It has become a beautiful essential part of my eco-spiritual practice and if this calls to you, here is a starter kit to practice your own moon worship.

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Whimsy is trending and I’m all for it. This makes perfect sense. We’re in the middle of a slow collapse during late-stage capitalism, things can feel heavy. Last week, I wrote about going on a news diet because we are inundated with negativity. Everyone is feeling inflation, the economic downturn and the stifled job market. AI is taking jobs while increasing global warming with its huge data centers. We are at war for reasons no one fully understands.

This is why we need whimsy.

When I think of whimsy, I think of doing something for the sake of joy, beauty and fun without commodification, purpose or productivity. Very anti-capitalist. AI sucks at being whimsical. Whimsy is light, regenerative and refreshing when we need it most.

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Forest Bathing

As a Nature Therapy Guide, my job is to take people into green spaces and give them invitations full of whimsy that allow them to connect more mindfully with the more-than-human world. This is called forest bathing from the Japanese translation shinrin yoku. There is not actually bathing involved, though I guess there could be if the invitation calls for it. Forest bathing and mindfully spending time in the natural world calms the nervous system, relaxes, heals and restores us. Whimsy has a similar effect of uplifting our spirits with simple gestures of joy.

Whimsy in Nature

So here is a list of whimsical things to do in green spaces. Please add your own whimsical ideas in the comments below so we can keep a good list going. Remember to practice common sense, land ethics and safety when in wild places.

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1. In the rain or snow, tilt back your head, open your mouth and stick out your tongue.

2. Scan the ground for treasures like a cool shell, fallen leaf or twig to take home and place in a special spot to admire.

3. Look for animal tracks and if you find them, follow to see where they go.

4. Inhale deeply and name all that you smell.

5. Splash in puddles or mud. Get dirty.

6. Explore your environment with touch. Touch everything you are curious about and notice what textures you like.

7. Pick a color and look for everything in that color you can find.

8. Greet every insect you see from bee to spider with a cheerful hello.

9. Hug a tree, notice how your nervous system shifts.

10. Sing to a flower, share your current favorite song. Notice how the flower reacts.

11. Gather items that interest you from trash to pinecones to lichen and create an altar to the earth beside the trail for others to find.

12. Wander off trail, let your heart sense guide you. I wonder what you’ll find.

13. Find a seed like acorn, pinecone, or dried flower or grass and plant it in a special place with a good intention for the land.

14. Find a body of water and let your fingers skim the surface. Maybe take off your shoes and dip your feet.

15. Build a sandcastle.

16. Build a snowman.

17. Draw pictures or words in the dirt with a stick.

18. Bring your camera and take up-close photos of things that catch your eye.

19. Close your eyes and listen. See how many sounds you can identify near and far.

20. Skip.

21. Eavesdrop on bird songs. See if you can determine if they’re talking about you.

22. Lie on the ground and watch the clouds. Practice nephelomancy.

23. Count butterflies.

24. Climb a tree or boulder.

25. Build a shelter for a human or fairy.

26. Nap on a bough or a patch of grass under a tree.

27. Pick berries and eat them off the bush.

28. Share water from your canteen with a thirsty plant.

29. Find a mossy boulder shaped like a chair and sit with it.

30. Stand facing the wind and let it blow you about. Dance like a tree.

Add your whimsical nature ideas…

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Though we live off the grid, we aren’t living in a bubble. We are still watching television and scrolling on social media like most people. Even though we live in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful, serene desert environment, we are still tethered to the onslaught of daily headlines that never cease. While it is important to me to stay in touch with what is happening in the world, constant updates wreck my nervous system and negatively infiltrate my quality of life.

On my decade-long journey of going off the news partially, then completely, and then slowly reintegrating it into my life, I have learned a lot about how to create a healthy news diet. I discovered what is necessary and what is peripheral and found a balance that works for me. In line with our mission to help people find a slower pace in life, I’m going to share what I learned and help you to create your own news diet, based on your personal needs.

First, let me see if I can convince you that you need a news diet.

The Rise of the 24-Hour News Cycle

Prior to 1980, television news was consumed in 15 to 60-minute blocks once or twice a day. In 1980, CNN launched what would come to be known as the 24-hour news cycle. A little more than a decade later, CNN gained notoriety for its coverage of the first Gulf War. People at home could stay tuned moment to moment on updates of the war on the ground. I remember this time because my brother-in-law was stationed overseas in the Persian Gulf with the US Navy. I was young, but I felt a direct connection to the soldiers that were fighting. We tied a yellow ribbon around our tree in solidarity.

My mom didn’t yet have cable television, so we didn’t watch it constantly. But this period in the 1990s created competitors in the 24-hour news cycle game, including Fox News, MSNBC, and CNBC. By the time the O.J. Simpson murder trial aired in 1995, we did have cable television, and the continuous all-day coverage was mesmerizing. The 24-hour news cycle was solidified and became a normal part of life when the internet exacerbated the constant, round-the-clock news updates.

Feeds on Negativity

Humans have a negativity bias. We pay more attention to, are more influenced by and more likely to remember negative events over positive ones. This is most likely because we protectively evolved to pay more attention to threats so we could adapt and survive. Our brains are still wired this way, even though we are no longer running from sabretooth tigers.

One study showed that adding more negative words to a headline increased the click‑through rates, even when the story was similar. Negative stories feel more urgent and credible, so people are more likely to click, believe, and discuss them. Since emotionally charged, anger‑ or fear‑inducing posts reliably generate higher engagement, they are optimized by news outlets and social media algorithms to get more likes and clicks. So, staying glued to news and social media feeds is basically flooding our nervous system with negativity.

Additionally, this results in rabbit holes in which we are inundated with a singular opinion. Only learning about one perspective of any event does not increase your knowledge, it is only confirming what you already believe. Responsible news engagement requires us to look at different angles, engage our critical thinking and come to conclusions on our own, not based on what a computer program suggests will make us angrier.

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Our Nervous System and the News

The human nervous system was not built to be in constant hyper-vigilance of worldwide atrocities. When we see upsetting stories, our brain can interpret them as threats, triggering the sympathetic system, causing adrenaline and cortisol to rise, heart rate and breathing to speed up, and muscles to tense. This can happen even though the threatening story is on a screen. Our amygdala responds to emotionally intense images and stories, not just physical danger. Repeated activation via doomscrolling and 24/7 news can leave the nervous system in a state of chronic hyper‑arousal, which is linked to anxiety, irritability, sleep disruption, headaches, and blood pressure changes. Overtime, people may exhibit trauma response patterns. This has been found to be true even when the news is playing in the background and you’re not actually paying attention to it.

If you are already a sensitive person such as me, the symptoms are likely to be worse. You are of no good to the world if your mental health is disrupted. I learned this the hard way after finding myself constantly on edge and quick to anger. I was doing myself and everyone around me a disservice by continuing to consume the news at the rate I was going.

My Journey with Reducing News Consumption

In 2016 after Donald Trump was elected president, I stopped listening, reading and watching the news. I would love to say that it was in protest, but it was mostly due to overwhelm. Well, first it was shock. I suddenly realized that my nation was not what I thought it was. I couldn’t handle all the reports explaining why Hilary Clinton lost, analyzing where the Democrats went wrong and all the justifications for this disappointing outcome. After a while I realized that I preferred to not engage with the news. I felt genuinely better not being inundated with the constant world report.

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You Don’t Actually Need the News

The thing that most people don’t realize is that you don’t actually need to attend to the news to learn the news. First, people around you are constantly talking about the news. Open your ears to it and you will begin to notice. Especially if you have politically minded friends and family. Eric is the most updated person I know. Because of his years as a journalist and his work in communications, he always has one train of thought focused on what is happening in the world. Due to this, the news was unavoidable. If something major or interesting happened, I knew about it. If I was interested enough, I would do my own research and learn more.

Second, if you are on social media, you are always watching the news. Even though I didn’t intentionally watch, read or listen to the news, I was still aware of what was happening via my social media feed. I tended to follow people who posted political content. I soon learned that this was problematic when my news became one-sided algorithm fed. I learned this with an unnerving intensity after October 7^th, 2023 when all the political content I followed ended up posting drastically misinformed, often antisemitic information all over my feed. At that time, I left social media too for the same reason I left all other news sources, my nervous system couldn’t hack it. Looking at my social media feed only enraged me the way news media did when Trump first got elected. My news sources dwindled greatly.

For the next couple of years, all my news came from word of mouth. Sometimes I felt completely out of it. People brought up current events and I stared dumbfounded. Embarrassed I might change the subject or otherwise ask them to fill me in. I intermittently looked up news stories I heard about to learn what was happening, but otherwise I was naïve. Overall, though challenging, I don’t think this was harmful in any way. I did what I needed to do at the time to get by.

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You Don’t Have to Bear Witness

This may be controversial (maybe this entire post is controversial) but you don’t have to bear witness to other people’s pain to be a good person. Soon after I left social media, I was in a group for women entrepreneurs and explained why I had to leave Instagram and Facebook even though my business might suffer since I used them for marketing. A woman I barely knew said to me, “You are irresponsible to close your eyes to what is happening. It is our responsibility to bear witness to the pain and suffering of others.” She claimed that she had authority on the subject because she was gay and her wife was Black. I didn’t know what this had to do with my experience, but I let it go and spoke to the moderator later who agreed with my confusion.

I was deeply offended. Going off social media because people I once respected and followed for their fight against discrimination started using antisemitic cliches is not irresponsible. It is very responsible to myself. Ancestral trauma and epigenetics were causing my entire system to fire on high, and I could find no peace online. It was hard enough seeing it on every corner and from people I knew but there was no reason to voluntarily bear witness online.

The idea of bearing witness comes from Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient who said that “his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living,” and that he has “no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” When people apply Wiesel’s framing to everyday news and media feeds, they are saying, do not look away so that the suffering of others disappears. Perhaps this woman in the meeting did not realize that my cultural, experiential and familial connection to Israel made it impossible for me to look away. I didn’t need Instagram to remind me.

What I am saying is that staying informed of what is happening in the world is a means of recognizing other people’s vulnerability and struggles and inspiring ways in which you may be able to respond, not with virtue signaling, but with donating, voting or speaking up to your government representatives. Staying informed does not mean to consume horror endlessly. Because on the flip side, constant exposure can exceed our capacity to make meaning and overwhelm us out of doing anything because nothing seems like it will make a difference. Constant witnessing can lead to news fatigue and emotional burnout. Responsible witnessing means limiting your intake and seeking sources that inform without crushing.

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Since the hostage return and ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, I have begun to reintroduce the news back into my life. While antisemitism is still growing globally, my news fast allowed me to be better resourced now to witness it. I am able to witness and empathize with others’ pain in the Ukraine, Middle East, Sudan and in my own country where people are struggling economically and immigrants are living in fear. I have reintroduced the news back into my life by creating a news diet that works for me.

Quick note: For the sake of honesty, I want to point out that even with my news diet in place, I still find that reading the news is often frustrating, disempowering and depressing. Trump’s reign cannot arrive quickly enough for me, and I just hope he doesn’t completely demolish our democracy on his way out.

How to Create Your Personal News Diet

As with a food diet, dieting is kind of hard. You are restricting things from your life that have become habitual and breaking habits are never easy. If you are like Eric and feel that you are fully capable of compartmentalizing the news without it affecting your everyday wellbeing, then you’re probably doing a good job of creating information balance in your life. However, if you are like me and notice that the news’s negativity can be overwhelming and trickle into other areas of your life, then it may be worthwhile for you to commit to trying a news diet and see how you feel. If you are interested in learning more, read on.

My hope is that the following 8 tips for how to create a simple and doable news diet gives you permission to step away from the battering new cycle and trending horrors and listen to your body, prioritize your values, and bring more peace and positivity into your life. This list is distilled from years of experience, experiments, and careful research and is shared exclusively with our paid subscribers. Thank you for supporting this work and making it possible to dig deeper together.

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We're Eric and Johanna, and we've been living off grid in a strawbale house on the Mesa outside Taos, New Mexico for over six years with our daughter. We started this Substack in 2021, a year into the pandemic and a year after we moved from our home in town to our off-grid tiny home on a high desert Mesa about 30 miles from town. If you want our origin story, start here:

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What We Write About

We publish something new every week (at least), from articles to videos to podcasts. The majority of our content is free, but about a quarter of what we share is for paid subscribers only. Our Uncertain Future centers around an alternative lifestyle that is at its core about:

• sustainability/conservation/regeneration

• minimalism/anti-materialism/anti-capitalist values

• slow living/rest

• decentralization/localism

• nature connections/animism/seasonal rituals

We are not preppers, Chrisitan survivalists, drug addicts, criminals or misanthropes. Eric and Johanna grew up in the suburbs, with different cultural backgrounds and have multiple higher degrees. What we are is passionate about living a life that is healthy, compassionate and rich in all those important things like loving relationships, being close to nature, taking time to relax and following our bliss. Johanna is a Nature Therapy Guide, writer, artist, Reiki practitioner, and yoga instructor. Eric is a DIY enthusiast, runner, mountain biker, environmental writer with a passion for decentralization and he works in communications for a blockchain company. With differing left and right brain strengths, together we try to cover the whole picture.

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Why are you here?

We’re curious what brought you here. Wherever you are in your journey, whether you are already off grid or ready to go off grid right now and looking for practical information on how to do it, getting curious about the lifestyle and looking for inspiration to take the leap, or more of an armchair voyeur who is happy that other people are doing it but prefers their creature comforts, you are welcome here.

Where to Start:

If you’re looking for inspiration to take the leap, you may like:

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If you are interested in discovering ways to integrate the off-grid lifestyle into your life without fully going off the grid, you may like:

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If you are off grid or ready to go off grid right now, you may like:

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And if you are a nature lover interested in integrating more ways to connect with the other-than-human world into your life, you may like:

Listen to Us

We have a podcast too. Here’s where to start.

OUFPOD: Reflecting on 6 Years Off-Grid Amid Collapse
What collapse feels like day to day, how our definition of it has changed, and practical takeaways if you’re collapse-curious but still on the grid.

We’re on NPR’s The Modern West
The post about our appearance on the Cheap Dirt series, with links to listen.

How This Works

Free subscribers get most of our posts — essays, podcast episodes, seasonal rituals, and the occasional how-to.

Paid subscribers ($5/month) get everything, including our deeper how-to guides, Earth Sensory Perception essays, the full podcast archive, and Johanna’s nature-based practices. It’s what keeps this going without ads or sponsors.

If you’re new and just trying us out, we’re running a free first month for paid subscriptions.

Subscribe for free | Start your free month of paid

Well, we hope that gives you plenty to peruse and consider. We understand that we live in a world with so much media, and we appreciate that you consider our work worthwhile enough to invest your time and energy in. Our future is uncertain and every moment counts. Make the most of it!

All our best,

Johanna and Eric

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Jez is a true pioneer and the perfect person to start this series on Neighbors of the Mesa. Learn about her life as a child of one of the oldest colonial families in America, her surprising mid-life awakening, leaving everything behind to become a travelling archeologist (or as she calls it, a dirt bum) and after getting her PhD in Alaska at 70, moving out to the Mesa community alone and building her house. As an artist and intellectual with multiple degrees, Jez, has never followed the path well-trodden. Her love of living on the land, working with her hands and adventure, has kept her young and vibrant despite health and family setbacks.

Jez’s life is truly an inspiration, and she had a lot of stories to share, many of which I had to cut out for the sake of time and continuity. I was surprised at how much she remembered—names, dates, and ages—even when she fumbled with them a bit. Her beautiful home is a testament to a life well lived—filled with artifacts, art, plants, animals and memories.

If you want inspiration to go off grid or wonder how one ages well off the grid, start with Jez.

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I had been wanting to start this series for a long while now, interviewing the very cool people that live in my off-grid community. It turned out that it’s more work than I expected with interviewing and video editing. If you like this and want to see more of it, please show support and let me know by becoming a paid subscriber. I did not paywall this one and want to continue to offer them for free, your financial support will help me to do so.

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The result is an episode called “The Apocalyptic American Dream” and it’s part of the podcast’s Cheap Dirt series, a season exploring what happens when people across the American West decide to opt out of the conventional housing market.

We are the final episode in the series. It dropped last week and you can listen here:

• 🎧 Listen on NPR

• 🎧 Listen on themodernwest.org

• 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts

We talked about a lot of things, such as how we ended up here, what collapse actually feels like when you’re living through it slowly, why having survival skills makes the chaos of the world feel a little less overwhelming, and the strange, tangled history of how this stretch of mesa outside Taos became a kind of no man’s land in the first place.

If you’ve been reading Our Uncertain Future for a while, some of this will sound familiar, but from a different angle. The conversation is candid, surprising, and a little silly.

There were things we didn’t get to. Melodie had limited time and we could have gone on for hours. We didn’t get deep into the day-to-day practical stuff or talk much about what it’s like raising a kid out here, or the ways technology both saves us and makes things harder.

Some of that we covered in our latest podcast episode, “Reflecting on 6 Years Off-Grid Amid Collapse”, which came out earlier this week. And in fact, Melodie plans to drop that episode into The Modern West feed in the coming days. So if you’re subscribed there, you’ll hear from us again soon.

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If You’re New Here

If you found us through The Modern West, welcome. Here’s the short version:

We’re Eric and Johanna. We’ve been living off-grid on the Mesa outside Taos for over six years now, with our daughter, a lot of mud, some solar panels, and the realization that the way most of us have been taught to live doesn't work.

Our Uncertain Future is where we write about what we’re learning. Some of it is practical like how to garden in the desert, how to live on less, what off-grid actually costs. Some of it is more reflective like seasonal rituals, slow living, and what collapse really means.

We publish something every week. Paid members get access to deeper how-to guides, our full archive, and nature-based essays from Johanna’s work as a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide.

Subscribe for free and you’ll get everything except the paywalled stuff. If what you find here is valuable, consider going paid ($5/month) to support our mission to inspire others to explore alternative lifestyles better for the Earth and each other.

We’re still a little amazed that NPR came up our dirt road. But it also makes a certain kind of sense. The questions Melodie is asking in the Cheap Dirt series about affordable housing, about the American Dream, about what people do when the system stops working for them, are our questions too. We represent one answer.

Thanks for being here. And if you listen to the episode, we’d love to hear what you think.

— Eric & Johanna

P.S. — If you’ve been thinking about going paid, now’s a good time. We’re running a free first month for new paid subscribers through the end of March. Hit the button below to try it out.

Start your free month →

As she got older, we looked for things on our own without the list, becoming more creative with what constitutes signs of spring—pill bugs under rocks, birds in pairs, animal tracks in the mud, skeletonized leaves, bones, hollow logs, lichen, the smell of compost, the river rushing with snowmelt.

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This game was a way to connect us with the changing season, to instill a deeper connection with the natural world and how it affects us mentally, physically and spiritually, to learn how to be naturalists in our ecosystem, to get outside, to spend time together, and to have fun.

Now that she’s a teenager with a busy life of school, jobs, internships, and clubs, and would rather spend time with her friends, our spring treasure hunt is less likely to happen, at least in a traditional way—now we hunt for prom dresses, senior photoshoot locales and colleges.

My own connection with the natural world has deepened immensely as I’ve aged and sought my own healing and relationship with the living landscapes. As a nature therapy guide and a nature intuitive, my connection is instantaneous. As soon as I step foot into the forest, I am at once in communion with the ecosystem. I am in communication with the trees, the river, the butterflies and everything around me as if I were a note in a larger symphony and I only had to enter the cacophony to become part of the music. This is something I teach others to do in my courses and my writing. This way of interbeing with the other-than-human world has brought me endless joy, calm, belonging, and magic.

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I still go on spring treasure hunts. This year, I noticed a robin carrying a stick in its mouth, a plethora of brown butterflies flitting in pairs, new willow buds, green grass poking through the dirt, the warmth of sunshine on my arms, a flowing spring, mud, a spider, two rabbits, a woodpecker pecking on a tree and a feeling of joy and promise.

Being in green spaces at this time of year, we immediately sense the feeling of renewal, awakening, fertility, and balance innate in this season. Allowing yourself to set aside a sacred time to simply absorb all the offerings of the natural world and join the symphony will bring you into concert with the blossoming and beauty of spring within yourself.

I invite you to celebrate the Vernal Equinox with your own Spring Treasure Hunt. I wonder what you will discover.

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Here is a spring playlist to get you in the mood:

Here is a guided meditation:

Experience yourself as a seed in the earth, gently pushing through the topsoil and blossoming into full bloom. This practice is great for grounding into the earth's elements and feelings of abundance and joy.

Full Bloom Flowering Yoga Nidra on Insight Timer by Johanna DeBiase

You may also like:

• What living off-grid really looks like compared to the prepper fantasy

• How our definition of “collapse” has changed over six years

• Where tech genuinely helps, and where it quietly makes things worse

• Practical takeaways if you’re collapse‑curious but still grid‑tied

  . We also dive deeper into this post in the process. If you’re new here, this essay is the best on-ramp to our collapse framework:

We’d also love to hear from you. What’s your working definition of ‘collapse’ right now, and how does it show up where you live? Let us know in the comments.

Time is Not Linear

Standing at the edge of the ocean, I am soothed by the infinite repetition of waves roaring and colliding against the sand. In an hour, the foam fingers of the swells will be high enough to reach the legs of my beach chair. In a few hours more, they will recede again, leaving a line of shells and seaweed along the shore. This cycle will begin again in a few hours, thanks to the gravitational pull of the moon.

The tide reminds me that time is not linear. Our society operates on linear time. We perceive time as having a beginning and an end. We are born at point A and we exist until we die at point B. The years tick by in chronological order, one after the other on a straight path into the future. Our own years accumulate in the same way, each year adding another number to our age, always proceeding forward to our final destination.

When we perceive time as linear, we expect progress to be constant and so pressure is applied on us to advance. Starting over is considered moving backwards in linear time. To start over is to “lose time.” Even rest, relaxation or resignation can be thought of as “lost time” because they are the antithesis of linear time, which requires a constant forward motion. Waiting for something to happen is considered “wasting time” because we consider time without action to be a waste.

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Nature Lives in Cyclical Time

In nature, time is cyclical. A multitude of cycles layered together, causing spirals of time. There is the cycle of a day from sunset to sunset, of a month from new moon to new moon, of seasons from springtime to springtime and of lifetimes from birth to death to rebirth.

Each season of the solar cycle, trees lose their leaves, grow new ones, until those brown, and release again. Each lunar cycle affects the direction the sap flows in the tree and the amount of growth it receives in a week. When a tree falls, it becomes a nurse log that creates the perfect environment for new life to grow. When one cycle ends, another begins

Consider how our body’s cells are constantly replicating and replacing themselves. Some parts of the body are renewed more frequently than others, but over time all the cells in our body are different than the ones we were born with. This cycle occurs within a multitude of cycles like the solar years and life cycle of our body. Age is not linear, but cyclical or more specifically a spiral.

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Time is a Wheel

In many Indian traditions, time is understood as cyclical, through kālachakra, the “wheel of time,” in which creation and dissolution continually turn and return. As a wheel, there is no single beginning or final end, only ongoing turning. The various cycles, such as cosmic, earthly and inner seasons, overlay with one another, the pattern repeats, but the details and conditions shift, so the wheel of time holds both recurrence and change, just as natural cycles spiral back around but never in the same way. “In essence, the Kalachakra view maps the macrocosm and microcosm onto one another…The movements of stars and the movements of our breath mirror each other in a profound correspondence. Thus, the cosmos and the individual are nondual and mutually pervasive, intimately interconnected and influencing each other,” writes Luis Gallardo in his essay, Turning the Wheel of Time. Just as the cycles of the moons affect the cycles of the ocean. Just as the circadian rhythms of the sun affect the cycles of sleep in our bodies. Everything is interconnected, turning simultaneously inward and outward, in cyclical time.

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Healing Happens in Cycles

Consider the healing process. When we function in linear time then anytime we have a setback in our healing process, we feel defeated because we should be progressively getting better, otherwise we are failing to heal. Also, we feel like at this moment we should be in optimal health instead of understanding the cyclical nature of our body, which is not an upward climb to constant improvement, but an ever-evolving state of being.

“If time is a line, as western thinking presumes, we might think this is a unique moment for which we have to devise a solution that enables that line to continue. If time is a circle, as the Indigenous worldview presumes, the knowledge we need is already within the circle; we just have to remember it to find it again and let it teach us,” Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her essay, Ancient Green. In cyclical time, when our healing is delayed, we are given another opportunity to get better, to reevaluate what worked and what didn’t work with more wisdom, instead of feeling shame or disappointment. Our expectations are more realistic. We understand that our standards for health must shift with the shifts in our body and environment, such as hormones, sunlight hours and climate. This example can be applied to creativity, work, relationships, and many aspects of your life.

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In cyclical time, we are able to repeat old patterns graciously, understanding that though the pattern may repeat, we are never the same twice. Though I may have made the same mistake twice, I did it differently this time. I did not fail to learn, I am still learning.

Cycles Embrace Uncertainty

Water molecules of the ocean evaporate into vapor and rise to the sky where they accumulate into clouds and rain down to return to the ocean. Each moment on this cyclical path the water transforms, and while the pattern is well-trodden, repeated in multitudes, each time the cycle is performed, the ways in which the pattern plays out changes. The cloud is unique and the ocean has shifted. As the saying goes, you never stand in the same river twice. The beauty of cyclical time is that not only are we moving in spirals, but the spiral is also always changing. The results are always uncertain and mysterious.

This is counter to chronological linear time in which there is no room for mystery, the movement is always forward and the results are always progress. Linear time is unnatural and a social construct. If we consider time as cyclical instead, then each moment is an opportunity to start again and with a fresh new perspective.

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Time is on Your Side

By applying cyclical time, we can release what no longer serves us when we have evolved out of it without feeling like we are inconsistent, flaky, or unreliable. Cyclical time allows us to start fresh whenever “the time” feels right to do so. You can never “lose time.” Cycles are happening every moment, every day, every year. Allow yourself to be guided by the natural energy cycles within you of movement and rest, solitude and socialization, creative outbursts and fallow times. By recognizing and acknowledging these cycles, we can flow more easily, slowly, and naturally, like the ebb and rise of the tide, the trough and crest of the wave, the turning face of the moon

Are You Ready to Discover Your Cyclical Rhythm?

If this topic resonates with you and you want to learn more about how to embrace cyclical time in your daily, monthly, seasonal, yearly, and lifetime spirals, I’ve included a list of 9 ways to practice cyclical time. These practices can help you slow down and find more ease with your own natural rhythms. This list is a compendium of life experience, nature‑based trainings, and research, and is available to paid subscribers only.

How to Discover and Practice Cyclical Time:

Here are nine simple ways to discover and practice your own cyclical time so you can slow down, listen to your body, and reconnect with the natural rhythms supporting your life. Start by choosing one or two practices that feel most alive for you right now. Let them move in cycles too, releasing any practice that no longer fits and beginning a new one when the season of your life changes.

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The headlines are filled with biases, but what if every journalist, pundit or influencer was forced to put down real money to back up all of their predictions or prognostications? Such a filter actually exists.

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I’ve written a bit about our belief in the importance of decentralized systems and I’ve become fascinated in recent months by prediction markets. They’re often derided as a form of unfettered gambling (there’s obviously some truth there), but that’s not the whole story. As these markets have become more popular and widespread, they’ve also become a powerful source of intelligence that is uniquely decentralized and transparent.

So I’m combining my background in journalism with this powerful new tool (and some assistance from a bunch of code and AI to parse through tens of thousands of markets) to launch Low Pass, a weekly newsletter that sums up what people - as a whole - truly think will happen next in the world.

Check it out - it’s a fun weekly forecast that might also just be the most insightful. I’m also giving Our Uncertain Future subscribers a free 30 day paid subscription to get the full content. Just use this link to grab your free month.

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When I was twelve years old, every night at 11:11 pm I would make a wish for a boyfriend and world peace. The boyfriend would take a few more years. I’m still waiting on world peace.

I don’t know how I thought world peace would arrive. Maybe I thought, like you, that one day all the world leaders would come to an agreement to end all wars, oppression and violence, despite several millennia of historical evidence to the contrary.

World peace is not going to ride in on a horse one day waving a white flag and leaving a wake of peace trailing behind it. Nor can we rely on the rich and powerful to turn over a new leaf, denounce material wealth and oppressive control. They are not going to suddenly step down and form a non-hierarchical society, hold hands in a circle and sing kumbaya.

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World Peace Comes from Within

You know you want world peace, but have you considered how it’s going to happen? Are you waiting for someone else to figure it out? Maybe you never really thought about it before.

Here’s the hard truth: world peace begins with you. World peace is only going to occur when the majority of people in the world are peaceful. People are going to be peaceful by finding their inner peace. Since we can’t immediately change the chaos of our modern world, peace must come from within outward, not the other way around.

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Inner Peace is Contagious

The good news is that inner peace has the beautiful effect of spreading rapidly and exponentially. Think about someone in your life who is peaceful. No matter what chaos occurs on the outside, this person holds steady. They approach every situation with calm and fortitude. They don’t complain or commiserate. They don’t fixate on the most horrible current event in the news. They are collected. But they are not cold. They emanate warmth and caring. They laugh easily. They are honest.

Consider how you enjoy being around this person. Recall how when you are near to them, you also feel at peace. They relax and ground you. That’s because inner peace spreads. It’s contagious. When you are surrounded by peaceful people not only do you feel peaceful, but you want to be peaceful like them as well. They model another way of being.

Additionally, you get into an energetic coherence with people around you. Your nervous system, emotions, and heart rhythms can synchronize with others. Studies show that when people interact, their physiology can synchronize heart rate, heart rate variability, facial expressions, and even brain activity can subtly lock into similar rhythms. So, just being around peaceful people can bring peace to others.

For more examples of inner peace, consider a mountain, tree or ocean. The mountain remains solid and still, even as the storm circles overhead. The tree sways with the strong winds but remains rooted to the ground. The ocean waves break overhead but in the depth of the sea there is eternal peace and quiet.

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Inner Peace Takes Work

Inner peace requires work. It’s not easy in a world full of challenges, struggles, and chaos. But you have overcome obstacles before. Remember a time that you overcome an obstacle-- illness, loss, transition, heartbreak, etc. How did you do it? You may have asked for help or been blessed with external support but ultimately your resilience and ability to overcome came from within you. You had to find it within yourself to make peace with the situation. Otherwise, you never move on, you never overcome. What did it feel like to meet this challenge and overcome it? What characteristics did you need to do so? Bravery, faith, forgiveness, patience, surrender, calm? This answer might hold your recipe for inner peace.

In other words, you’ve done it before, you can do it again. And when you learn how to cultivate inner peace, each new struggle becomes easier to overcome because you have the tools, you’ve practiced for this.

This might be a hard pill to swallow, but you can welcome every struggle as an opportunity to cultivate inner peace. Every time you are faced with a new obstacle instead of feeling like a victim of circumstance and wallowing in woe, take a moment to collect yourself and find inner peace. Finding inner peace when life is going swell is one thing, but to do it when you are in the thick of tension, is a master class.

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Inner Peace Feels Great and is Worth the Work

So, finding inner peace and spreading it around to the people you come into contact with who can spread it around to others is a recipe for world peace, but it also feels great. Existing in the world in a state of equanimity means that your ego is not triggered by every little thing. The words that might have offended you before don’t bother you anymore. Even when you read the news, you can see the full picture of what is playing out and not get caught up in the drama. When you have inner peace, you are witness to the world. You are watching this great play of life unfold before you and though you are participating, you don’t have to react.

Additionally, through practice, you learn to lasso your thoughts, and you become more present in the moment. Your thoughts are no longer wandering mindlessly into regurgitating the past or jumping ahead worrying into the future. In the present, the world is a beautiful place. You can think and act spontaneously in the moment rather than based on fear, old stories, programming or past experiences. You are able to better appreciate what you have right now with a deep feeling of contentedness.

When you no longer need external validation because you discover that everything you need resides peacefully within you, you feel compassion towards yourself and others. Characteristics of greed, jealousy, dishonesty, scarcity, fear, domination and the such begin to fade away. Imagine all the people living in this peace.

If you are really committed to world peace and inner peace, then you must start by setting the intention to seek it out every chance you get. Not just to consider it sometimes when it is convenient for you but to truly devote yourself to the practice and lifestyle of cultivating inner peace. Say it out loud. Tell your friends and family. Make yourself accountable. Get a little obsessed.

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Ways to cultivate inner peace

1. Find peaceful people to be around. Search them out, ask around. Visit places they may likely be such as temples, ashrams, yoga studios, nature-based activities, etc. Spend more time with people in your life who are peaceful or cultivating peace (and maybe less time with people who are not.)

2. Meditation is the most direct but not always the easiest path to inner peace. Because meditation allows us to quiet the mind and witness our thoughts, we learn to enhance the witness mind that can objectively view the world and in time learn to not react from our ego mind. As Swami Sivananda Saraswati says, “Fewer the thoughts, greater the peace.” But meditation can look different for everyone, so don’t assume it means sitting on a pillow and chanting Om, though that is my preferred method. There is walking meditation, singing meditation, dancing meditation, guided meditation, and more. Research and find one that works for you.

3. Yoga, tai chi, qi gong and the like are all moving meditations that allow you to practice being present in the moment.

4. Practice mindfulness. Watch your thoughts and emotions throughout the day. Notice your reactions. Notice when you are unable to accept the moment just as it is, when you get angry, triggered, agitated or start to complain. Take this opportunity to relax, reset and find acceptance with what is, perhaps even appreciation for what you are being taught about yourself. Even if you do react, this is progress for noticing, so don’t be hard on yourself. Next time you will take a deep breath and surrender instead.

5. When you feel activated, practice nervous system regulation techniques such as shaking, singing, chanting, and deep breathing.

6. Time in nature calms the nervous system and allows you to deepen into a peaceful state. Relax without rushing and allow the natural world to bring you peace. Meditating in nature is all the better. Visit green spaces as much as possible. Try a sit spot practice.

7. Eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep and take your vitamins. Rest often. When you are feeling good in your body, it is easier to feel good in your whole being.

8. Create what is called in yoga a sattvic environment. Sattva means a state of harmony and balance. So besides healthy foods, exercise, good attitudes and meditation, you can also create spaces that feel harmonious. This may include, uplifting or calming music, pleasing scents, uncluttered tabletops, beautiful art, plants or whatever you consider harmonious in your home.

9. Selfless service, or karma yoga, is a way to step away from yourself as the center of the universe and begin centering others. In the act of selfless service that is truly selfless and not as a way to make yourself feel good or stroke your own ego, you give your full effort without concern for the results. Acting in service of the greater good and making offerings to something greater than yourself, relaxes your ego, reduces selfishness and creates a peaceful state.

10. Be careful of what you watch. When we are watching television or the news or scrolling on social media, our mind enters a relaxed hypnogogic alpha brain state where images, sounds and ideas can enter your subconscious and affect your nervous system. I like a good thriller as much as most, but I am aware that it shifts my body out of peaceful mode and into a more excited state. Same for the news. Being aware of this, helps me to be more discerning about what is worth watching and disrupting my peace of mind.

11. Read books and listen to podcasts about finding inner peace to stay inspired, such as:

    Be Here Now – Ram Dass

    The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

    The Untethered Soul – Michael A. Singer

    Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda

    Peace is Every Step – Thich Nhat Hanh​

    True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart - Tara Brach

    Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

    Breath: Wake up to Life - Prem Rawat

    A Return to Love - Marianne Williamson

    The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book - don Miguel Ruiz

    Add your books and podcast suggestions that I missed in the comments:

    Leave a comment

    Our Uncertain Future is a reader-supported publication written by two people who live off the grid in the desert and hope to model a peaceful lifestyle in nature, living slow, stewarding the land, caring for community, and spreading inner peace.

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Santa Claus Versus Fairies

Before my daughter started high school, in the years before the 2020 pandemic, we used to travel a lot, about three months out of the year. Often, we spent holidays abroad. We figured out how to make Xmas and Chanukkah work in multiple lands. In some places, like Quenca, Equador, Christmas was built into the culture, a multi-day parade of people from villages across the country right outside the door of our little apartment. In other places like, Bali, Indonesia, there wasn’t so much going on. There were no Christmas lights decorating houses, no parades, and no Santa Claus with children lined up to sit on his knee. That might have been what made precocious ten-year-old Flora suspicious.

A couple days before Christmas, after I purchased local artisan toys to wrap in paper and assign to Santa, as was customary for our overseas holidays, Flora turned to me and asked if Santa existed.

“Tell me the truth,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes, “the absolute truth.”

This was a moment of reckoning. Do I continue to lie to this very intelligent child, knowing she will find out soon enough? Do I continue to justify my lie with half-truths about the “spirit of Santa in all of us” some such bullshit? Or do I give her what she is asking for and tell her the truth?

“No,” I confessed solemnly, “Santa is not real.”
“What?!” she exclaimed. “Why did you tell me? You should have lied.”
In that moment my heart broke. Seriously, that may have been one of the worse heartbreaks of my adult life. I could see that something broke in her too, her belief in magic. I stomped on her childhood imagination, her dreams of magical lands and mythical creatures. I was the worst mother ever.

“This means the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist either,” she concluded sadly without needing me to agree.

Oh no, I destroyed her innocence. I should have known better. Of course she didn’t want the truth. She was ten after all, and too smart to still believe in Santa Claus unless she was in conscientious denial. She wanted to believe. She wanted me to lie to her.

And that’s when I blurted out with all sincerity, “But fairies really do exist!”

She looked reasonably suspicious.

“I swear it!”

And I meant it. I have always believed and continue to believe in fairies. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. They’re everywhere. Not like Tinkerbell humanoids with translucent wings, but like glitter, puffs, flits and sparks (and sometimes translucent wings). You’ve probably seen them too, whether you knew it or not.

I’m not alone in my belief.

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You may have heard the saying that time is money, which is a great capitalist idiom to make sure that you aren’t wasting time being unproductive when you could be making money. But what about the opposite? Money is time. Which means that in order to make money, you need to invest time. And time is a commodity you can never get back. Time is our most precious resource. It allows us the ability to do the things we love that bring us joy. Most people want to make money so that they have more free time. But that’s the conundrum because making money uses up time. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote in Walden regarding cost and value, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

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You can work hard and hope to one day retire to a life of leisure. You can spend less and work less and live a life of leisure with less stuff. And/or, if you can figure it out, you can earn passive income, which is basically a stream of income that doesn’t cost you a lot of time.

The definition of passive income is earnings derived from sources or activities that require minimal ongoing effort or active participation after the initial setup. As an advocate of the slow living lifestyle, passive income is of great interest to me. Just the word passive gives off a certain vibe. You might imagine streams of money flowing towards you as you sit back and leisurely sip a cup of coffee or read a book or play with your kids

Why Do You Need Passive Income?

A great thing about passive income is that it allows you to make money on the side without burning out. You can keep your day job. With the economy as such, multiple streams of income are more important than ever. If you lose your job to AI or outsourcing, or if your company fails to keep up with recent tech advances and their stock plummets and they lay off 20% of their employees, you have something at least to float you for a while or subsidize your severance package while you look for more work or give up on the idea of working all together and buy an off grid home and grow all your own food.

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Throughout my adult life, I have had multiple income streams. I’ve never been the kind of person to have one full-time job. I usually work freelance or as a contractor. Because of this, I usually turned my hobbies into some kind of income generator. That doesn’t mean you have to capitalize on your hobbies. It’s nice to have some things that are just for you. But it does mean that you can. Some ways that I have received passive income include digital courses, resale, Airbnb, merch at local shops, books in print and online, crypto and my Roth IRA.

Basically, life is short. The whole point is to have more time to enjoy life, so pick something that you enjoy doing and see how you can make money from it on the side. Creating a new income source that stresses you out or you agonize over doing, is not worth it and is counter effective.

If you want to dive deeper into ways to make passive income, I have compiled an in-depth list for paid subscribers of 10 ways to make passive income based on research, 30+ years of adult life experience, and creative ingenuity. In this list I have included type of person who might enjoy this form of passive income, if you need a lot or a little investment upfront, if the return is minimal or high, and whether you need to invest minimal, mild, or mucho time to do it. Hopefully, this will help you determine which one or more is best for you.

Let’s dig in.

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If you’ve followed many of these posts in recent years, you might recall the lore: middle-aged couple and their tween uproot from comfortable life at the end of a cul-de-sac in a small mountain town less than one month into Covid and move into an unfinished off-grid home made of straw bales and cement.

It’s an adventure we’ve chronicled, told and re-told over and over because it seems to be, by far, the most interesting thing about me to other people despite not really being the center of my identity (yet).

We’re in year six of the experiment now and lately I’ve been running the numbers on how it’s gone so far. You can catch up on that here if you missed it:

The process also has me pondering alternate paths not taken. If this story were a Choose Your Own Adventure title, what would the alternate endings be? The Sliding Doors moment is pretty easy to imagine: what if we had simply never come across the enigmatic Craigslist ad selling a quirky shell of a straw bale off-grid home for the cost of a new car?

I asked a few LLMs to help me imagine two alternate scenarios. I checked in with Johanna and we agreed on what the two most likely pathways would have been:

Scenario 1 - Our family continues to stay in our rented home through the duration of Covid lockdowns and quarantines. During this period we focus our energies more on our love of travel. We surely would have taken lots of road trips as so many people did to escape the claustrophobia during those pandemic years. This was also already our pattern prior to Covid; we struggled to save much money, frequently choosing present experiences over future security.

Scenario 2 - Covid could just as easily trigger a strong nesting instinct (we did carry this out in our off-grid homestead to a significant extent) leading us to opt for a more conservative trajectory. We may have been able to strike a favorable rent-to-own arrangement with our friendly landlord for the home we rented in our small mountain tourist town.

I asked the AI models to help game out these two alternate adventures and compare and contrast them with the current reality, including lifestyle and financial impacts. I spent some time with Perplexity, correcting the off-base assumptions included in its original analyses, giving it as much real data as I could to work with. I even specifically asked it to take off its rose-colored glasses and refrain from blowing smoke up my ass.

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Three feet of snow lines my trail as I snowshoe up a steep mountainside. The sun is shining so warm and bright that I remove my hat and sweater to cool down. It is midway between the winter solstice and spring equinox, and I can feel the liminal space between the seasons here. Pine trees laden with clouds of white snow drop their slushy loads in intervals that cascade from branch to branch like a sprinkling of dust up ahead. The air shimmers with the snow’s dispersal before it collapses on my head and I laugh at the joke. The sun’s reflection on the snow’s surface creates sparkles of glitter of the winter forest floor, revealing the spring yet to come.

This weekend is Imbolc. This is the midway between winter solstice and spring equinox. This means the days are getting lighter and winter is nearing its end in the northern hemisphere. The warmth is causing the sap to rise. The birds are returning north from their southern migration. The bulbs are cracking open beneath the earth and sending up green buds to the surface not quite yet ready to break through.

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Imbolc Reflections: Inner Seasons and Intentions

In this time of late-gestation, when the land is in a state of pre-birth, there is a moment to reflect on what is in a state of pre-birth in your own life. You might recall intentions you set at winter solstice and see how they are beginning to show up already for you now. Energetically, we might begin to check in with how we feel about the seasonal shift. In the winter, the desire is often to stay inside, sleep more and to be more introverted. But now we are moving toward spring, and you might feel a shift in yourself of wanting to be just a bit more social. Perhaps maybe yearning for more time with friends, a weekend retreat, or a night out at the movies.

Imbolc reminds us to slow down and be patient. Things take time. When we try to rush transitions, they often don’t go as smoothly as they might if we were to sit with what is and allow changes to reveal themselves on their own time. Listen deeply to the living world around you and allow situations to unfold without rushing forward into the future. The earth is taking its time coming into bloom and giving us permission to do the same. Trust that all will fall into place at the perfect timing for you.

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Living Seasonally: Honoring Your Inner Winter and Emerging Spring

By noticing the movement of the natural world around us, we can notice the movement within ourselves as we are deeply connected to nature. Living seasonally allows us to go through all the seasons with intention and also the between times, noticing how it feels to transition from one season to the next. As we are experiencing the seasons externally, we are also having our own seasonal adjustments within. You might not feel like you are ready for spring just yet. You might still feel deep in the winter and not ready for change and that’s completely fine. Other people might be feeling like they are bursting at the seams and can’t wait for winter to be over.

I am personally enjoying winter this year. I am enjoying the quiet and the cold. That’s unusual for me. This year, I’ve really been able to use winter to be more creative and as Imbolc rolls around, I feel now that I can share that creativity with others. Take a moment to check in with yourself. See if you’re feeling inner winter or if you’re ready for outer spring.

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Rituals and Ways to Honor Imbolc at Home:

1. Go on a nature treasure hunt or solo medicine walk, searching for the first signs of early spring, the spring before spring.

2. Catch every sunrise and sunset in a week and notice the two extra minutes of sunshine each day.

3. Start planning your garden and ordering seeds.

4. Take a ritual bath in candlelight, representing rebirth and new light.

5. Journal prompt: What seed that you planted in winter is ready to slowly unfurl into spring? How can you be patient with it?

6. Light a fire and burn what no longer benefits you.

7. Clean your house and cleanse energetically with salt, herbs, incense, etc.

8. Grains, seeds and milk represent nourishment for new life. Cook something simple with dairy and grains, like oatmeal with cream, fresh bread and butter, seed cakes, or a hearty soup. Or make pancakes with syrup to represent the rising sap. Share it with loved ones.

9. Do nothing. Put on some relaxing music and allow yourself to rest deeply, knowing that your restoration will ease the transition.

   Thanks for reading! Our Uncertain Future is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts about nature connections, seasonal living, off grid life and sustainability, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Peace Through Outdoor Mindfulness

This is a sit spot practice. The more you do it, the more you will come to enjoy the feeling of doing nothing and the resonance you feel with the environment around you.

In time, you will notice that the beings around you are also noticing you. Feel how this changes your perspective. In time, you may begin to realize that you and the grass and trees and the bushes and the mountains are communing together with each other sharing that space. And then perhaps two ravens cross flight overhead and you feel for a moment the spectacular awe of something greater than yourself that connects you to everything.

Dogs bark. A siren screams. You get up and return home somehow changed. You feel just a little bit different. Something has shifted. The world looks different to you now and you look forward to your return.

This may sound like a simple exercise but consider how much effort it takes for modern people to put aside time in their lives to sit down and do nothing. Consider how we fidget and grumble. Consider how our minds wonder, and we think of all the other things we have to do. And yet, slowing down to do nothing may be the most worthwhile activity of your day. As the wise sage Winnie the Pooh said, “Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

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What is a Sit Spot?

A sit spot is a place in a natural setting (forest, park, backyard, etc.) that you go to and sit with no other intention but to be present and observe your surroundings. It is meditative and allows you to connect deeply with your environment. As a practice, frequently visit this spot, at different times of day and throughout the seasons, to observe the subtle changes that take place in this relatively small and immediate space.

I have a sit spot in my front yard where I go to often, but I also have a sometimes sit spot. Sometimes when I have time to spare, I walk to the guardian pine and lay down my blanket and rest.

I chose my spot for the shade of a pinon with her wide canopy of branches. This tree is at the start of a path where the hill begins to rise, and the juniper and pinon begin to populate the sagebrush fields. Higher up the forest becomes denser, but here trees are sporadic and so this tree seems to me a guardian tree, a guardian of the forest beyond, the protected public lands where it is illegal to cut down trees, though humans do it anyway from time to time. I visit her occasionally and she grants me not just shade but clarity of mind. Sometimes new ideas, but usually a clearing out of the clutter to give space to growing ideas.

Sometimes if I’m having a bad day, this tree will lift some of the burden of carrying heavy emotions. On a good day, this tree will gift me small balls of resin on the floor beneath that I can burn later for the grounding scent of pine. I give the tree water from my jug, then myself.

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Reconnecting with the Other-Than-Human World

The distant Sangre de Cristos are framed in the pine boughs. I sit away from the trunk to avoid where the black ants gather. I notice after a while when there is a shift in the bird sounds. I don’t presume to know what the birds are saying, but I notice when the alarm ceases and a new chirp proceeds.

Pauline Oliveros writes in her book, Deep Listening, “When you enter an environment where there are birds, insects or animals, they are listening to you completely. You are received. Your presence may be the difference between life and death for the creatures of the environment.” If you are always passing through, climbing your way to the scenic lookout, you may not realize that birds sound differently when we enter their territory; their songs heighten with alarm.

The general agreement is that it takes about 20 minutes for the creatures in your vicinity, like the birds, to determine that you are not a predator and lose interest in you. It is at this point, when the other-than-human world returns to business as usual, that some of the most exciting watching might occur. So, a minimum of 30 minutes is usually recommended for a sit spot practice.

The more often you visit your sit spot, the more you build your practice. Similar to meditation, sit spots bring a sense of peace. They also enhance your relationship to the other-than-human world and your ability to more easily connect in an embodied way with your surroundings wherever you go. You can visit your sit spot daily or weekly.

If you would like, you can spend time reflecting at the end of your sit spot practice, journaling about your observations or nature sketching.

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The Gift of Simplicity and Gratitude

Finding quiet moments in nature doing nothing but observing the world around you is the greatest lesson in contentment. In this way, we can appreciate the little things, have gratitude for simplicity and feel the bliss of being fully present with our world.

From my sit spot, I watch a dozen planes pass overhead. Their engines roar as they pass above me, and they leave tight contrails in the haze, filled with kinetic energy. But once the plane is long gone, the trails unravel and fade. They loosen and disperse into the clouded sky.

The sit spot teaches me how to do nothing. How to blend in, how to loosen and disperse into my ecosystem, even how to tolerate the buzzing flies and the raucous winds. I feel a sense of returning to myself, to my true nature. I am covered in dirt. My braid has come undone. I have an ant bite on my neck. It has only been 30 minutes.

Bonus for paid subscribers only: In appreciation of your loyalty to Our Uncertain Future, I am offering a downloadable audio meditation called Sensory Presence Meditation, perfect for listening to while in your sit spot. In this guided meditation, you will move through a grounding, sense-based practice that helps you arrive fully in the present moment. Through breath, body awareness, and subtle shifts of attention, you can tune into your inner guidance and your relationship with the world around you. Enjoy!

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When Covid shut the world down in 2020 my family and I lived in a traditional ranch-style suburban house at the end of a cul-de-sac in our small town. At that height of uncertainty, my family took a big risk on a major purchase and lifestyle U-turn: we moved into a small, unfinished home off the grid in the high desert here in New Mexico.

It was unclear when we signed the paperwork in week three of Covid lockdown -- while standing in a local bank parking lot-- whether we were making a savvy or stupid investment. Emboldened by the historical gravity of the moment, we nonetheless liquidated our savings and went all-in.

Over five years later, the verdict is now clear: it was an accidentally savvy move that has already paid for itself three times over.

Big Off The Grid Numbers

Conservatively we’ve saved roughly $150,000 in rent and another $25,000 in utility bills over the past five and a half years. That easily covers the $35,000 purchase price of the property and structure, plus another $15,000 - $20,000 to complete the home by installing a solar power system with generator back-up, adding rain catchment, water storage, efficient appliances and finishing plumbing and electrical installations.

The remaining savings has made it possible for us to begin expanding and in the past 18 months we’ve nearly doubled the square footage of the home while adding an attached greenhouse.

Breaking Down The Savings Off The Grid

During the nearly 6 years since Covid first struck the US, housing costs in our county in New Mexico have more than doubled. Statistics bear this out (by some measures the cost of rental housing is actually up 130 percent), as does the actual rent being charged for the previous two places my family lived prior to Covid. The 66 months of rent we didn’t have to pay comes out to around $150,000.

We no longer have a monthly electric bill. Our solar system is the most magical part of our lifestyle, thanks to the especially abundant sunshine in the US southwest. After setup, maintenance is essentially zero with the lifespan of panels at a couple decades and batteries and other components lasting a decade or more.

Water is also free when it rains and hauling from a nearby spring for free is also an option, but the road to that source is rough so we’ve opted into a community deep well that’s much more convenient. We pay a few cents a gallon for that water, but we’re much more efficient with our water use than the average household, recycling all of our grey water directly into garden beds on the property.

We’ve opted for wood pellets and propane for heat and cooking, and our home is made of thick straw bale walls that are also uber efficient. This keeps the cost of these energy sources minimal. We’re considering installing a conventional wood stove and gathering our own firewood to drive the cost down and increase self-sufficiency (stores do run out of pellets) even more.

Add all the utility savings together and it comes out to around an additional $25,000 since April 2020.

The Catch(es)

There’s a number of reasons we were able to purchase our off-grid home for what many households typically spend on a new car. Increasingly, off-grid living is a topic of fascination and even romanticization, but supplying your own power, water, heat and other utilities takes a significant amount of effort. So unsurprisingly, off-grid properties are just cheaper by their very nature.

On top of this, the raw land where we are could (somewhat fairly) be described as “wasteland” by some. The soil isn’t very arable and is typically covered in sagebrush. It’s high desert with plenty of sun (and wind in spring), more precipitation than you might think but still less than most places. A big deal breaker for some here is the rather ridiculous lack of surface or ground water (you’d likely have to drill at least 600 feet to reach our very deep water table).

One red flag that many conventional property shoppers can’t get beyond is that our subdivision and many in the area were also part of a massive land scam in the 1960s, compounded by numerous missing public records, which makes it very difficult to get title insurance or financing for purchasing or developing property here.

All these factors combined have driven prices for land and properties in our neighborhood way below what we would expect to pay in the famed tourist town 20 minutes away where we lived before Covid.

The Big Question Off The Grid (and Answer)

We didn’t fully understand it at the time we signed the papers and took ownership in early April 2020, but with the benefit of hindsight and some key numbers I can now say it all came down to one critical calculation and question: Is taking on the responsibility of independently sourcing and maintaining all the infrastructure and amenities most Americans offload to local governments or utilities worth a 90 percent discount on the cost of purchasing a home (without even factoring in the reality of mortgage interest and other financing costs)?

So far, the answer has been a resounding yes. When we first made the move, I was not nearly so sure. In fact, had the opportunity come up just a few months earlier, I’m quite sure I would have dismissed it as too big a risk and a poor fit for my skills and situation.

I wasn’t wrong about the risk. Plenty goes wrong out here, from a rare extreme wind event that tore the roofs of multiple neighbors’ homes, to crime and other nuisances that could be encountered anywhere. I do think that some of the risks and annoyances associated with home ownership can be heightened when you live in both a manner and an area considered to be at the social fringes. Response times for help are longer, resources are fewer and the fringes can attract some pretty interesting and occasionally challenging characters. My entire adult life has been lived off the beaten path, where I’ve learned that the fringes of society are paradoxically where you’ll meet both its most depraved and most admirable individuals.

I also wasn’t wrong about moving off-grid and jumping in to full-time self-sufficiency mode being a terrible fit for my skills. Fortunately my wife and I had a willingness to acquire some of those skills and that’s proven to be sufficient.

Off The Grid Savings: The Bottom Line

If something were to go catastrophically wrong with our house (that isn’t covered by our homeowners insurance - yes, standard policies for off-grid homes aren’t hard to find), at this point I would still feel good about the purchase. Based solely on the amount we’ve saved on paying neither rent nor a mortgage for over 5 years, it’s been very worthwhile.

And that’s to say nothing of the wealth of skills and experiences that we’ve gained over that same period. As a friend once remarked during a visit - “maintaining this place is like learning multiple trades at once.”

It’s true. It’s not easy off the grid. It’s not for everyone, but for the right person it pays major dividends.

Now Here’s What I Left Out (Paid Subscribers Only)

Necessity isn’t just the mother of invention, it also spawns independence, resilience and many DIY projects with varied results.

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Editor’s Note: I’m working on a few longer posts that aren’t ready yet, so in the meantime I wanted to share one of our more popular posts from a few years back when 95 percent of you hadn’t yet subscribed to Our Uncertain Future. If you’re one of the few that’s already read this one, please find a new epilogue at the end. More to come.

When I was a kid, my stepdad lost his job as a middle manager at Keuffel and Esser, a defunct company best known for making slide rules. As you may remember, slide rules were computers for dirt poor kids in the 1980s. I never really understood what the company did or what my stepdad’s job was there.

But suddenly, after playing the archetypal role of 20th century breadwinner for much of my young life, he was on the couch every day for several months. He was in his mid-fifties at the time and just a couple years removed from buying a house with my mother. There was a mortgage and a snotty stepkid. An early retirement was not in the cards.

My stepfather found another job as a data entry drone that he held for years, but he never fully recovered from the mid-life blow to his career and identity, although he rarely talked about it.

The last two decades of his life were relatively fine. He was a solid, dedicated dad and husband, but there were constant struggles, either with finances or his health, up until succumbing to a prolonged and excruciating deterioration from emphysema.

My teen years are a blur of trips to the hospital, learning about something called a colostomy bag, and all the different ways to transport and store oxygen.

Living with someone on oxygen is to be forever haunted by a chorus of unnatural sounds — loud whooshes of gas, rhythmic mechanical clicks, labored inhalations — that relentlessly remind of our ultimate frailty.

The closer my stepfather got to the end of his life, the more he was replaced by those sounds. During his last days in hospice they filled the room, the whole building.

Click. Then a faint rush of air followed by a weak inhalation. The cycle repeated endlessly. Until the moment it shifted to just a series of clicks and silence.

If I’m totally honest, part of the reason I’m here, writing about these strange lifestyle choices my wife and I have made recently is some anxiety that I’m approaching a mid-life crossroads similar to the one my stepfather faced when he was laid off.

I should say I’m objectively in a much better position than my stepfather was. I’m ten years younger, I finished college and I have a strong portfolio of two decades of work as a freelance journalist. And yet, I work at the intersection of three industries — media, tech and crypto — that have not had a great time of it over the past year. What’s more, the world is seemingly filled with much more uncertainty and existential anxiety than it was in the late 1980s.

I’m not sure what’s worse, having to sort through Help Wanted ads and pound the pavement looking for jobs that don’t materialize as my stepdad did, or perusing an ocean of possible gigs on LinkedIn. The process may be simpler, but knowing that my “only” 85 percent skills match means there’s no chance any algorithm will surface my application from among the 800 other applicants to be seen by human eyes can drive the most resolute optimist to nihilism.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my stepfather this summer. How could he have known, the day before he was laid off, that day was his pinnacle?

This isn’t to say that his last two decades weren’t worthwhile, valuable and filled with great moments. One of my most treasured memories is coming around the bend in one of the few track races I won in high school. There was my stepdad, leaning against the fence at the edge of track, canula in nose, oxygen tank on hip, cheering me on. I’ve never run faster than I did that last 50 meters. We were both elated afterwards.

If he doesn’t get laid off in the late 80s, he’s likely at work that afternoon rather than at my track meet. Losing the best job he ever had was probably good for our relationship, and for me, really. But the flip side is that society and the economy never saw him as quite so valuable as he was before 1988.

This is the harsh reality I’ve been contemplating. For a number of reasons, I’m now a bit like a ten-year-old Kia or a middle manager in the late 1980s — not exactly in the highest demand.

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Can I interest you in a gently used 44-year-old white dude from the suburbs? No? I can throw in a 15-year old collie who isn’t totally deaf and a 2005 Subaru Outback with some tastefully worn bumper stickers… Are you still there? You swiped left again, didn’t you? (Note from 2026: RIP to both the collie and the Subaru. One of you is missed much, much more than the other.)

The weird thing is that my ego tells me the world is wrong. I know I’m valuable. I’ve been working at this media game for a quarter century, amassing some truly unique experiences and insights.

And yet, this isn’t how value is determined. Your own opinion, or those of your family or your first dozen paid Substack subscribers don’t factor into the equation. Instead, it’s up to the rest of the wide world that so clearly doesn’t get it and is, frankly, just a little tired of your face.

My stepfather used to spin fanciful stories from his younger days when he was a successful competitive square dancer. To hear him tell it, he was a sought after partner during this period, and often for more than dancing.

But society moved on from square dancing. It moved on from slide rules. It moved on from a man named Charles Henry that I called Chuck but thought of as Dad.

Now there’s a very real chance it’s moving on from me.

This doesn’t mean it’s all downhill and deterioration for me. It means I’m exploring new and more interesting areas where my value might be more appreciated. At the same time, I’m taking a hard look at the notion that the world is right and I’m not as valuable anymore as I’d still like to think.

Is the best use of my time on Earth to be yet another all-too-online writer tossing an endless stream of words into an already literally bottomless ocean of content?

I still think the answer is actually yes.

But, I could stand to up my game as a human at the same time. So I’ll be here, trying to figure out how to navigate a different kind of life off-grid, in pursuit of ever more independence, more decentralized systems and justice for all.

I also plan to make it to as many track meets as possible.

Epilogue from 2026: It’s been two and a half years since I wrote the above. At the time I was transitioning from nearly two decades as a full-time freelance journalist to a new career. I spent a year in a completely new role that I enjoyed and almost exactly 12 months after starting I was told I would be laid off during a major company “restructuring.” I was prepared to return to freelancing and I thought again about my stepfather and how grateful I was to have a feasible backup plan. I had even more gratitude for the new trajectory in our lifestyle and our ability to weather more rough times by living more minimally, independently and as debt-free as possible.

Within a few days my manager reached out to ask if I would be interested in a new role in another part of the company. She had called in a pretty big favor for me in the process with no real benefit to her. I guess sometimes people do look out for the 45-year-old white dude.

This new role has been arguably a better fit for me than the first one. Thinking back now on when I first wrote this essay and what’s happened since, I can see my ego has taken a healthy step back. This is likely from working as part of a team over the past few years without getting my byline attached to every little thing I write every day like I did for decades as a freelance journalist.

I also got something wrong about my stepdad. He never actually said that the day before he was laid off was his pinnacle. That’s my inference, based largely on the fact that I know his income never matched what he made at his old job ever again. And his health was nothing but downhill from that point, too, but that’s not unexpected.

He had many good years and great times, especially before the emphysema really got brutal in the end. He could even seem weirdly satisfied to my young, clueless eyes, considering what appeared to be the losing hand he had been dealt by the world. He used to tell me how he enjoyed making a sort of game out of the lower-paying order entry job he eventually found later in life. Being a self-obsessed teen at the time, this sounded painfully lame to me.

What it actually was, of course, was him performing dignity, as a verb. Maybe even hoping I might take the lesson. I guess I finally have.

I should report that I stopped going to track meets. Because my daughter switched to the mountain bike team. Each race was more than just a trip to the local track, it was a full weekend family adventure to a far-flung course. They were the absolute best. Chuck would have loved them.

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This year, we sent about fifty letters, guides, and slow living dispatches into your inbox, from muddy shoes to capitalist angst to tree talk. Some posts quietly made their way into your mornings, and others loudly exploded with shares, new subscribers, and loads of comments. These ten rose to the top, thanks to a mix of analytics, intuition and personal preference.

Pick one you missed, make something warm to drink, and read it all the way through. Which is your personal favorite? Did we miss one?

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Collapse Awareness

Before we talk about preparations for our uncertain future, we need to be honest about the ways things are now. These first couple of pieces look at collapse, money, and the societal programming we’ve inherited, without getting stuck in doom.

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Live Off Grid

These next posts are for people who Google land prices and wonder if there is another way. These are the how-to guides and reframed versions of what life can be like, redefining success and happiness.

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Slow Living

The last few posts reference everyday life: how you wake up, how you walk among trees, how you let a season imprint on your body instead of scrolling past it. Instead of leaving your life behind, you can shift how you live the life you have now.

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Happy New Year!

2026 is going to be filled with inspiration and we promise to keep it informative, positive and chill, as always. Stick with us, the work has just begun.

Upcoming Events with Johanna in New Mexico

Well, the time is nigh.

As the holiday lights brighten the dark days edging toward Yule, AKA winter solstice, we can finally take a deep exhale into winter.

Firelight, dark skies, cozy early evenings with friends and family, snuggling under blankets, hot drinks, slow time, rest, creativity, intuition, quiet, listening, solitude, sweaters, fuzzy hats, walks in the snow, evergreens, stews—it’s a vibe.

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Seasonal Living

Living cooperatively with the seasons instead of fighting them is luxurious. Being in relationship to the living world outside my doors is synonymous with being in relationship to my body, my psyche and my spirit. I cannot dismiss the change in light any more than I can dismiss my hungry belly. Every part of my being is shifting with weather, hibernation, sunlight, temperature, foliage, migration. I long to follow these rhythms. More than follow but honor them. And I encourage everyone to do so.

Here are a multitude of ways that you can ritualize the change of seasons including, creating an altar, harnessing your creativity with a writing class, practicing a ceremony, listening to season-inspired music, yoga nidra and reading insights. I hope at least one of these things inspires you

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Our Uncertain Future is taking next week off for our own winter celebration. We’ll be back the following week with more seasonal writings, off grid guides and inspiration. Have a wonderful holiday season! We are so blessed to have you in our community

How to Create a Yule Altar

Creating an altar for the season is one of my favorite ways to honor the passing of time and to connect my interior space with the changes happening in the exterior world. Creating a Yule altar pairs well with all the other traditional holiday decor you are most likely accustomed to. This is my way of doing it; I keep it really simple. Of course, I don’t believe in buying anything for your altar. You have everything you need around you. If you do build a Yule altar, please send me photos or post in the comments below.

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Creative Winter Inspiration

Darkness is fertile. We plant our seeds deep into the dark earth so they can begin their germination. We float in the dark womb as we gestate. In the same way, winter is a time to germinate and gestate our creativity.

This 90-minutes class is divided into three parts. Part one honors darkness, part two honors the pause of the sun along the horizon at peak solstice, and part three honors the return of light. Intuitive EcoWriting uses meditation and embodiment practices to supersede overthinking that causes writer’s block. Have your journal and a timer ready for some generative writing activities that will get your ink flowing. Only $15.

Cozy Winter Solstice Ceremony

For people who want a full-on winter solstice ceremony with guided meditations, journaling, dancing, and burning stuff, this is for you. I love ceremony, as you’ve probably figured out about me. I used to do a lot more online. Fortunately, I recorded them.

This was recorded over Zoom in 2023 and is an hour and 45 minutes long. There’s time at the start of the video to prepare with information about what you need as people start gathering for the event.

Music includes A Long, Long Night by Crow Women, I Am the Beginning and the End by Dorothy Tsatoke and Web of Life by SnowRaven.

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Winter Music Playlist

Whether you’re baking, wrapping gifts, building a fire or going for a wintery drive, this playlist is a great companion. Absent of any Christmas songs, this playlist is pure winter inspiration.

Winter Solstice Ritual Yoga Nidra

Winter is a time for rest and quiet and what better way to do that than with yoga nidra. Yoga Nidra is a state of consciousness that can be used for deep relaxation, creating new habits, releasing old programming, or reaching states of spiritual awakening. This yoga nidra is great for life transitions or for any time you are ready to release what no longer serves you and renew yourself for new beginnings. Jump into the fire and from the ash, a new fire will alight.

Practice in savasana (corpse pose) with a bolster under your knees and a pillow under your head in a comfortable quiet room or sitting up if you tend to fall asleep. Get cozy, put in your headphones, press play and relax.

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Inspiring Winter Articles from Our Uncertain Future

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Upcoming Events in Taos Area with Johanna