- ISBN13: 9781577318972
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? To find out, writer and activist William Powers visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back from a decade of international aid work, then accep… More >>
Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
Tags: american dream, american physician, honeybees, permaculture farm, running water
William Powers’ memoir “Twelve by Twelve: A One-room Cabin Off the American Grid and Beyond the American Dream” is an intimate account of his journey to find answers to the questions: “Why would a successful physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity in rural North Carolina?”and “How can we learn to live in harmony with each other and nature?”
Dr. Jackie Benton (not her real name), a mother, peace activist and “wisdomkeeper” who mostly lives off the produce from her permaculture farm, struck Powers as someone who had achieved self-mastery in confusing times. To avoid war taxes (fifty cents out of every dollar goes to the Pentagon) she accepts only eleven thousand dollars instead of the three hundred thousand she could make as a senior physician.
Powers needing a way out of despair from a separation from his young daughter and a decade of challenging international aid work accepted Jackie’s offer to stay in her cabin next to No Name Creek for a season while she traveled.
He said Jackie’s 12 X 12 and her unique approach to living in todays world seemed full of clues toward living lightly and artfully. He hoped it would help him learn to think, feel and live another way.
Having worked in Africa and South America Powers asked Jackie how we can stop the northern economies pillage of the Global South’s forests, mines and oceans. He later came to synthesize Jackie’s vision as “see, be, do.” Before acting on a problem we must “BE.” Take time in solitude to reflect, meditate or pray. Only when we SEE with clarity can we act (”DO”) fearlessly. Powers says this blending of inner peace with loving action is sometimes called God, intuition, the “still small voice,” grace or presence. He knew Jackie was right, “The world’s problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created.”
At first it was difficult for Powers to live without a shower and toilet in the 12 X 12. He said Jackie did not leave an “Idiot’s Guide.” However, as the weeks passed in the 12 X 12 he found a deeper appreciation for the preciousness of water and the natural world. He said, “Instead of listening with one ear, as I sometimes do when faced with deadlines, with multitasking, I used both ears. Real listening is prayer.”
Jackie’s instructions were to “simply sit” and “to not do, be.” Her stack of hand written cards with sayings or questions like “The Strenuous Contours of Enough, Trade Knowledge for Bewilderment” and “Simplify”
brought him into mindfulness and deepened his daily life. She said earlier, “The joy of simplifying one’s material life is you don’t have to work long hours to buy and maintain a bunch of stuff.”
Concerning anger Jackie advised, “When you become so enmeshed with the fullness of nature, of Life, that your ego dissolves, emotions like resentment, anger, and fear have no place to lodge…you still feel these emotions but more like a dull thud against the mind…When you see worthiness, praise it. And when you see unworthiness, trace it. Don’t judge. Trace anything you don’t like in someone else back to their unique history; then trace it back to yourself because anything you dislike in others is somewhere in you.”
Jackie’s “wildcrafter” life and her eclectic neighbors of organic farmers, biofuel brewers and eco-developers helped Powers synthesize the wisdom of indigenous people. Their idea is not to live better but to live well: friends, family, healthy body, fresh air and water, enough food and peace. To ask what is enough? To see how genuine well-being is not linked to material possessions and productivity.
Powers’ chapter on “Noise and War” reminds us that humans have slaughtered one hundred million of our species in twentieth-century wars. Powers fears America with its massive military industrial complex with 721 official military bases in foreign countries, and over one thousand unofficially, has chosen empire over democracy.
Powers and Jackie’s story show how we can reshape ourselves in the face of globalization. We can decide what get globalized: consumption or compassion, selfishness or solidarity, war or peace.
Their penetrating insights offer clues for a smaller footprint, the joy of ordinariness and a more meaningful life.
Rating: 5 / 5
William Powers allows us to accompany him on a journey winding inward as he spends time in a tiny off-the-grid cabin in rural North Carolina. Powers, who travels and works around the world, was only borrowing the cabin for a short time, and we repeatedly see the contrast between his expansive life and the different kind of expansion brought by the external contraction of the cabin. In the early pages, I worried that he was being overly romantic about this lifestyle, the cabin’s owner (a local physician), and his neighbors. However, as the book progresses, a more complete, and sometimes difficult and disappointing, picture emerges. It is a thoughtful and lovely book, which deserves to be read slowly. Powers writes: “There is a point where we must let the feel of water on bare feet replace books and spiritual practices. They can be very helpful as guides, as structures, as inspiration, but can also, if we hold on to them too tightly, obstruct the most important thing: an unmediated facing of the world as it is, which is to say, as we shape it.” (198-199) With lucid grace, Powers leads the reader toward putting down the book, and facing the world with renewed vision.
Rating: 5 / 5
I was drawn to this book because was once similarly drawn to WALDEN, THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG, and FIVE ACRES AND INDEPENDENCE. I had even purchased a small parcel of land in the northwoods and planned to live in a cabin even smaller than 12′ by 12′. Perhaps that is also why I held off actually reading it after I received it. I knew how tough it is to live off of the grid. This knowledge depressed me and I at least subconsciously didn’t want to be reminded of inconvenient truths. However, once I started reading I could not put it down. On the one hand, my old ideals and optimism were rekindled to some degree. On the other hand, some of my old doubts were reconfirmed. In other words this isn’t a simple book with a simple, uncritical message. It is complex and moves you to think- or rethink.
There is a rewarding mix here of facts, description, and philosophy. It flows without preaching. While I did not always agree with everything expressed I could still identify with the concerns as something that I had often thought upon. More often than not I seemed to find my own thoughts reflected in other and better words. I knew exactly what was meant by the disease of flat world globalism and McWorld. I also knew the importance of being over doing. The advice to remain maladjusted to Empire rang with truth. So did the view of both Einstein and Jung that the world’s problems can’t be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created….
It is pointed out that living 12 x 12 is not for everyone. But perhaps, just perhaps, there is coming a time for serious application of permaculture, wildcraft, sustainability, and appropriate technology. Just perhaps we can come up with a viable solution to our global McHell before it proves the doom of us all.
It doesn’t surprise me that much that this book is set in the Old South- there always was a tradition of genteel poverty in the South based more on what you were than what you had.
Rating: 5 / 5
Within the first few chapters I immediately thought of my old Myers-Briggs (MBTI) classes. I certainly don’t consider myself an expert in the subject, but I would immediately peg the author as a “SF” or (S)ensing (F)eeling type. These people are innately focused on their surroundings and it shows in the book as each moment of his experience in his 12×12 cabin is written in explicit detail. From the sounds and texture of the nearby creek to the placement of the sun to the smells of the places he visited, author William Powers is acutely aware of his immediate physical environment. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that this book was written as SF’s like Mr. Powers are also commonly referred to as the “Composers”.
That’s not to say this book is about Mr. Powers feeling through the dark trying to light his candles each night. He also spends a surprising amount of time thinking about the impact his and his neighbors’ actions have on the world. For a “big-picture rational” like myself, I find this part the most difficult to slog through as I disagree with many (but not all) of his conclusions. He is much more effective when he’s writing about the here-and-now and letting his experiences drift through the pages so we can experience the world through his eyes as he lives it.
I found the book difficult to read at first because the man is grounded to the extreme and time moves really slowly in his book. I eventually warmed up to it because he offers a detailed account of his difficulty attempting to live a completely sustainable life yet still he still manages to find peace through it all. Sometimes it’s difficult to live for the moment when we are trying to work toward some invisible future goal. This book may give you pause.
Rating: 4 / 5
Having grown up during the 1930’s on a farm that had no electricity and no running water I have experienced the life that Bill Powers lived in that 12 x 12 cabin. Our house was probably 700 sq ft and we had 10 people living in that house. We lived off the land, growing vegetables to eat, and killed hogs and calves, and chickens for meat. I milked cows every morning before I went to school and at night too. We gathered eggs to eat when the chicken would lay them. It was a simple life but a hard life. We all worked in the fields in the summers. We never had a vacation. When we moved on the farm in 1936 my father didn’t have a car. We moved to the farm from another farm in a wagon with mules. I was four years old.
There are pros and cons about this kind of life. It is a simple life to live off the land, but it is a hard life that I don’t to repeat. I am 78 years old and I think back to those days, and would take electricity and running water any time! But there has to be a way we can have some of both lives. I don’t want the Tyson Chicken farms. I buy my eggs from a local farmer and my vegetables and berries and fruits when I can get them, from local farmers. I buy meat from a small town meat market who buys grass fed meat…local ranchers..and I see the cattle on the farms around here grazing in the fields and it makes me feel good. I buy milk from a local dairy that does not add hormones to the mild. I pay more for it, but I love the taste and I know it is pure.
There is way to live a simple life. You just have to make up your mind how to do it!
I liked the book and I liked how Bill Powers intertwines his personal life into the narrative of writing about global warming, permaculture and the environment.
Lois Zook Wauson
Rating: 5 / 5