Self Reliance IS the most important part of WILDERNESS LIVING IN THE GREAT NORTH

 Self reliance is the most important part when wilderness living in the great north! It seems one of the most common questions about remote wilderness living in the great north is:

What will I need?...To bring, To do, To know, To prepare for...All these can be summed up in one answer, we discovered....             
 YOU NEED TO BE SELF-RELIANT!

When we began homesteading a couple of decades ago we had 7 kids living at home. We were still very accustomed to grocery stores, clothing stores and various supply houses like MENARDS, HOME DEPOT, and TRACTOR SUPPLY COMPANY.  You could get any answer you needed with a little $ and a quick trip around the corner.  As many of our family members began dying off from various forms of cancer we took a closer look at our lifestyle, and assessed where our current situation was failing. We began thinking long term instead of on a day to day basis and quickly realized we were consuming and acquiring way more than we needed to be happy. In fact we realized that the "MORE" was actually making us less happy, so the logical thing then was to have "LESS" to be more happy.  We decided the best way to "reduce" our stuff was to move far away, and travel "light". As we packed for our move we realized how much stuff we truly had!  So, on our first trip to the new property we took only the bare essentials since there was no dwelling waiting for us. We had nowhere to store things except on a small aluminum trailer we pulled behind the pickup truck.  This stage helped us realize how little we really needed to get by.  We spent about 6 weeks putting up a couple structures, a small cabin 16'x16' and a second "just in case of an emergency" cabin that was half the size of the first, 8'x16'.  We quickly realized all of our possessions would not fit in our new wilderness dwelling. It was a "cosy" bungalow as a real estate agent might say.  When we returned for our left behind possessions we realized these were not needed and rapidly found new homes for them through craigslist, ebay and local charities like St. Vincent de Paul. What we truly discovered is that we had A LOT of stuff we didn't need, and not much of the stuff we did need.  Which brings me back to our question up top... What did we need? SELF-RELIANCE. 
                                        LESS STUFF AND 
                                                 MORE KNOWLEDGE.
We discovered that the more we knew the less we needed. The less we needed, the more affordable our new lifestyle became. The more affordable our lifestyle became, the easier it was to make it a reality...slowly we discarded our dependence on society and became more self-reliant. This self reliance interpreted into successes and an overall pleasure in our new surroundings and lifestyle.

Self reliance becomes a necessity as most wilderness living is in remote locations or areas of low population density.  This translates to less suppliers and less supplies. Often what meager supplies that might be available are many many miles distant. That makes utilizing those resources prohibitive for small projects or singular items needed because of the long distances involved, cost inefficiency, and it is literally too time consuming to go for such things.

Necessity is the mother of invention! ~Plato

Well, It's TRUE! The frontiersmen, mountain men, explorers, Native peoples, settlers, loggers and early farmers all knew they had to rely on their own wherewithall to survive. I will try to link you up with some of this knowledge tomorrow on my blog, there's some really great stuff/ideas/methods/tools etc. you're going to like! So be sure to check in!
Good night to all!