Somewhere, Away From It All

Somewhere, Away From It All
Dr. Goetzen said that what keeps people from pursuing an off-the-grid lifestyle is “this really puritanical, overly hygienic life.” People think, Dr. Goetzen said,
that they will “get sick from looking at a compost bucket.”
For many, the decision to leave the grid is born out of economic necessity; urban areas become uninhabitable, as both the resources
and the number of people who can afford to have access to them dwindle.
Photographs by Lauren Field
Produced by Eve Lyons
OLYMPIC PENINSULA, Wash. — Somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, which extends from the northwest coast of Washington, a community
has chosen to live independent of the public supply of water, electricity and other utilities on which most residents rely.
Dr. Goetzen acknowledged the erasure of indigenous genocide inherent in some modern homesteading movements: “It’s important to note what the native tribes were doing here before,
that they’re still here, that this kind of semi-utopia we’re building is on settled, colonized land.”
Eight federally recognized tribes reside on the peninsula, physically relegated
to narrow strips of reservations, mostly along the peninsula’s west side.