On Vacation And Off The Grid, An Old Map Pointing The Way

By Chris Belland

Against the backdrop of the greatest man-made environmental disaster in history, born of our insatiable need for all things automatic and plastic and, in the ultimate sense, wasteful, I remember a place and time when it was not so.

I lived in it.

When I was a boy I had the good fortune of growing up in South Florida, very rural at the time. Most of the food we consumed came from within an approximate 10-mile radius of our house, except perhaps for beef that, while it may have come from Florida, might well have come from other places outside the state. We had a well on the property for our fresh water. In our neighborhood there were numerous fruit trees, not just for show but for actual harvesting. We enjoyed fresh mangoes, avocados, grapefruit, oranges, cherries, limes and bananas. Within about a mile from our house they grew pineapples, melons and strawberries and there were tomato and bean fields as far as the eye could see. There really was a dairy on Milam Dairy Road running along Miami International Airport (but don’t go looking for it today).

I remember distinctly one day my father exclaiming to my mother how amazing it was that our total utility bill for the month was only $30. He was impressed that we managed to live on $1 a day for our electricity. We had no air-conditioning and no television. We did, of course, have a refrigerator and the lights of the house but that was about it.

The other wonderful thing about our life in the area was the more than 200 acres of property that my father owned on the Keys north of Key Largo, including Totten Key, Rhodes Key and Elliott’s Key. Those were the places where my off-the-grid experiences were honed to perfection.

Elliott’s Key was inhabited at the turn of the century by some truly hardy souls who made their life by growing pineapples, fishing and probably salvaging wrecks. When I was growing up there were several homes on the island that dated back to that era. The great adventures of my life were going over to Elliott’s Key from Black Point in Homestead, directly across the bay to our property where we spent countless weekends and summer vacations. The houses still left on Elliott’s Key had no electricity, running water or sewage, obviously. It was truly off the grid. Some of the homes had generators but because fuel had to be brought over, they were used very sparingly, mostly for an hour in the evenings. Fresh water was captured in cisterns on the island and sewage waste went into … well, actually I don’t know where it went because I was just a kid and didn’t really think about such things.

I do remember the water, however, as a particular thing of interest. I recall going out one night and opening the access door to the wooden structure over the cistern that served our house and shining a flashlight into its black recesses. What I saw were probably 20 to 30 pairs of eyes from the many snakes that lived inside the cistern. They lived there to avail themselves of thirsty rodents. I probably don’t need to say this but, of course, we boiled all the water that came from the pitcher pump in the kitchen before using it for cooking or consumption.

Living off the grid is something that today has a very romantic sound to it. It seems mysterious how one can live without electricity, water or sewage produced by a public utility for the use of all. But I have done it and I can tell you, it really is what you get used to. I didn’t know any better. This same house where we enjoyed lights (from the generator) and kerosene lamps and the miracle of screens was previously occupied by inhabitants who lived there year-round with no screens at all. They survived — and I mean survived in the most extreme sense — the onslaught of mosquitoes by burning smudge pots inside the house with the shutters closed!

Pictures of these hardy bygone pioneers can be seen in Ralph Munroe’s photographs reproduced in Ava Moore Parks’ book, “The Forgotten Frontier.” They really make you think.

I mention all this because I am about to go to Ojibway in the lake country outside of Toronto. We will be living in a cabin on an island where there is no air conditioning, electricity, running water or sewage.

I am looking forward to seeing how living off the grid has changed when, today, this particular cabin is outfitted with solar panels that charge a DC electric system from which we can still charge our cell phones and computers.

So consider this an introduction to what I hope to report on upon my return from “on vacation off the grid.”