It's a theme we're all familiar with: being overworked, never having enough time for yourself or your family, always rushing to meet deadlines, stressing over one thing or another...
We can blame much of our 'living-in-the-fast-lane' lifestyle to the progress of our technology; Emails and cell phones make for faster and more convenient communication, each new car model can go faster than the last, computers help us get our job done faster, and we can even eat faster with fast food. Everything's getting done faster, and yet, we never have enough time for ourselves. Although technology is convenient, sometimes we just want to get away from it all.
Logan Ward did just that. His book See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America is the true story about the time Logan, his wife, and his son left technology behind. They left their city lives and bought land in a southern farm country, planning to live a whole year without any modern technology. To be more precise, they were going to live in 1900, and anything not invented by 1900, they would not use.
That meant no telephones, no computers, no cars, and no fast food. This wouldn’t be too bad, except that living in 1900 also meant no electric stove, no indoor plumbing, and no (gasp!) indoor toilet.
That's right, the Wards cut off their electricity and their plumbing, and had a manual well-pump installed and an outhouse built in their yard. They also bought a horse and wagon for transportation, two goats for their milk, and some hens for eggs. They grew their food from scratch, and cooked them over a wood stove, or preserved and canned them for the winter. It was a major 'roughing-it-out' adventure, and I admire that they learned so much from this experience.
Article comments
1 - Avid Book Reader
What an inspirational story. I've always imagined what it would be like to live 100 years ago - ever since reading Laura Ingall Wilder as a kid - and now I can find out. Seems like they came to a wise conclusion at the end, it is not how you live but about living that matters.