The way home : tales from a life without technology

Title:

Author:

Boyle, Mark, 1979- author.

Personal Author:

Boyle, Mark, 1979- author.

ISBN:

9781786076007

9781786076021

Physical Description:

xix, 266 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Contents:

Knowing my place -- Winter -- Spring -- Summer -- Autumn -- The complexities of simplicity -- A short note on the free hostel.

Abstract:

"'It was 11pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.' No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce. In this honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life without modern technology, Mark Boyle explores the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the spring, foraging and fishing. What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire--much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring."--Publisher's website.

Personal Subject:

Boyle, Mark, 1979--Homes and haunts-Ireland-Galway (County)

Boyle, Mark, 1979--Homes and haunts.

Subject Term:

Cell phones -- Social aspects -- Miscellanea.

Home economics, Rural -- Case studies.

Internet -- Social aspects -- Miscellanea.

Mountain life -- Case studies.

Self-reliant living -- Case studies.

Self-reliant living -- Ireland -- Galway (County)

Self-reliant living.

Social media -- Social aspects -- Miscellanea.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	640 B792	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	640 B792	Searching... Unknown
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Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

An honest, radical and moving account of life off the grid.

It was 11pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.

No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce.

In this upfront and lyrical account of a remarkable life without modern technology, Mark Boyle explores the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the spring, foraging and fishing.

What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire - much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.

***

'Boyle's memoir of his first year off-grid is fascinating... A poetic meditation on the almost-mystical benefits of falling in sync with nature.' --New Statesman

'A warts-and-all look at an extreme way of life, but one that, by the end of this engrossing book, makes the world around it seem dysfunctional.' --Irish Independent, BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019

'A beautiful and thought-provoking story that will inspire you to live differently. Mark asks the most fundamental questions then sets out to live the answers.' Lily Cole, model and activist

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A candid chronicle of letting go of and living without the seemingly ubiquitous technological connections of modern society.For more than a decade, Boyle (Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi, 2015, etc.), aka the Moneyless Man, has been disconnecting from the virtual world of money and banks. At the end of 2016, he took the next step, abandoning "industrial-scale, complex technologies"i.e., anything dependent on or derived from fossil-fuels (cars, plastics, etc.), powered by electricity (water pump, refrigerator, TV, etc.), that facilitates seamless connections (internet, phone, laptop, etc.), or that requires any of the above (solar panels, windmills, etc.). In his latest book, the author takes readers along on his experiences during his first year, from one winter solstice to the next, living in a cabin he and his partner built by hand on three acres in rural Ireland. "To me," he writes, "the most beautiful place on earth is this unsophisticated half-wild three acre smallholding in the middle of somewhere unimportant." What Boyle's writing lacks in comparison to Henry David Thoreau's transcendentalism or Aldo Leopold's lyricism is made up for by his consistently earnest self-reflection. A visit to Ireland's Great Blasket Island, evacuated in 1953 and now a global tourist attraction, revealed to Boyle that nature was recovering and doing better without permanent residents than if it were still tended by the 19th-century hand-plow or axe. For the author, the main question is whether nature is better off with us living in it hand-to-mouth like our tech-free ancestors or apart from it in our urban cocoons. Unfortunately, neither is sustainable with our current population of more than 7 billion, an inconvenient truth that the author refers to only obliquely.There's not enough space on Earth for everyone to move off the grid and back to the land, but Boyle's pleasant book allows us to at least imagine the dream. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.