This is going to be my last blog post. I made a commitment about two months ago to start weaning myself off of computer usage after being inspired by an article that one of my fellow community members, Ethan Hughes, wrote as a critique on technology.
I’ll include the article here for your reading pleasure. It was printed in the St. Louis Catholic Worker newsletter. The article as printed is a bit paired down from what Ethan initially wrote, but it still conveys the original meaning well.
There is one mistake in the article that I saw: it said that 200,000 miles was almost equal to 100 trips around the earth. It should have been 10 trips around the earth, either way, its really far.
Anyway, the article, along with living with Ethan and living with everyone else at the Possibility Alliance has been incredibly inspirational for me. I feel that as I have simplified my life more and more through living at this community that is electricity free and petroleum fuel free on our land that my life has been making much more sense. I am more at peace, more connected with God and with other people and with nature, more joyful, more happy, more passionate, more energetic, more motivated, more alive, more open, more in touch with who I am, and more in love with life. It has been a great challenge so far to transition into this lifestyle, but it fits so well that the challenge is joyful. I have been learning so much about how to live off the land and how to provide for my basic necessities. I still have much more to learn than I probably will in the rest of my life about how to live in a way that fully embodies my ideals, but I’m making progress and that is good. I am remembering now that with God all things are possible, so maybe someday I will have learned how to live this life fully, but I’m sure there will still always be more to learn.
The last several months of living at the Possibility Alliance have been great. We made a lot of progress on building our new house, and there is still a lot more to do so it probably won’t be finished until next fall. We hosted and inspired and were inspired by a lot of visitors. We taught a bunch of classes on homesteading and other related things. We got a milk cow. We made all of our preparations for winter including bringing in the harvest, preserving food, putting away firewood, and weatherizing the house. We have some new neighbors/friends that are getting started with their own homesteads. We processed the sorghum that we grew with some friends nearby and got about 10 gallons of sorghum mollasses syrup (its really sweet good stuff), and harvested about 8 gallons of honey from our beehives. That basically means that for the first time in our projects’ history, we are going to be self sufficient for sweeteners for this next year, yay! Things slowed down a lot when fall came around and it was great. We had a lot less visitors and were able to take a little bit more time to recover from the fast paced spring and summer. I harvested my first two deer which has provided us with about 100 pounds of really healthy meat and a lot of soup stock. I didn’t get the deer with my bow, I borrowed a rifle from a friend, but I am committed to improving my skill with a bow so that I’ll hopefully be able to successfully hunt with a bow next year. We have made plans to set aside the month of February to do a lot of visioning and planning and restructuring and organizing of the project and I’m really excited to see where that takes us.
I have decided to make my home at the Possibility Alliance and to put down roots there. I could see myself living there for the rest of my life, but we shall see what happens. Something pretty huge would have to change for me to leave so for the foreseeable future, my home is at The Possibility Alliance at 28408 Frontier Lane, La Plata, MO 63549. So it seems that this man’s search for a life that makes sense has reached its conclusion. Well, at least as far as writing about it on the internet is concerned. Thanks for joining me on this journey. Writing about all of this has been very valuable for me and I hope it has been valuable to you readers out there. Don’t worry, I’m not done writing about my journey, I’m just done writing on this blog so if you want to continue this conversation, write me a letter or give me a call.
Thanks again,
Dan Truesdale
28408 Frontier Lane
La Plata, MO 63549
660-332-4094
My search for a life that makes sense 