new zealand memo - vol. 1 - moving to the bush

If you would have asked me four years ago about my life goals, I probably would have talked your ear off about building a simple home somewhere in New Zealand, and sustaining my own life, isolated from the destructive systems of contemporary society. Lofty goal, indeed, and one that I have since tweaked, reconsidered, bordered on abandoning, etc. Not that I don't still in principle agree with the idea that I should play no supporting role in current agricultural, social, and political practices, I'm just not as sure that moving to the bush and ignoring it all is the proper way to solve our problems as I used to be. I still believe the most important practice to pursue in life is relying more on yourself and less on destructive practices, but I now think that you need to do this in a city, not isolated in the wilderness.

But this memo is not about my beliefs on the topic, rather it is about my experiences with someone who holds my former beliefs, and is actually pursuing them. Keiran is the real deal. He is currently building his simple home in the bush, where he will live with minimal impact on the earth, and for the most part not contributing to the trouble the rest of us are causing.
Keiran picked up a 47 acre parcel of land about two hours north of Auckland for the astonishing price of NZ$65,000. The property is surrounded by cleared pasture land, but has itself been left for about 30 years, and has subsequently returned to bush (causing the government to put a ban on clearing it for sheep pasture, and the reason it was so affordable.)

I had the pleasure of accompanying Keiran out to work on his home for a couple of days. He, Sondre (sp?) and I clambered into his big blue van on a wet early morning and made the trek north through horrendous morning rush hour Auckland traffic. The land we traveled through was once covered by massive Kauri forests, only small pockets of which still remain. (For the record, Kauri trees are probably the most amazing trees I have ever seen.) Keiran's land was once covered in Kauri's but now sustains more modest recently regrown forest. Even so, it's amazing how much the forest can return in roughly 30 years.


We passed through the nearby town of Paparoa, and then traveled about 12 km down gravel road to a small driveway off to the side. From here, Keiran's property spills down the hillside, fills in a boggy marsh at the bottom, and then climbs up the opposite ridge. The surrounding terrain consists of nice rolling hills. The house site sits about about a three minute scramble down from the road. The building is completely un-permitted, but by far the lowest impact building site I have ever been to. All the materials and tools are carried in by hand, all digging is done by hand, and the house lies tucked right into the surrounding trees. If you get more than 10 m away from the house, it totally disappears into the forest.

It's amazing to see a house actually being built the way I have imagined doing it so many times. I am usually skeptical of people with high-minded talk of just going out and building a house in the wo0ds (including myself), but Keiran is extremely serious and definitely knows what he's doing. In two months of working by himself one or two days a week, he has framed the entire house, and almost completed the second story flooring. The house is modest size, one big room downstairs, with a kitchen coming off the side, and then a large room upstairs. It looks fantastic; Keiran is using whatever building materials (recycled or otherwise) he can easily come across, but the house doesn't have the hodge-podge look that projects like that tend to take on. All the water will be collected from the roof of the house and nearby shed, and the gray water will be used for the garden. Cooking will be done on a wood burning stove, and solar panels will provide small amounts of electricity. This is going to be bush living in its pure form.

We started working as soon as we got there. Keiran was working on framing the kitchen off to the side of the main room, and Sondre started putting weather boarding (walls) on the frame. Due to limited tools, we couldn't all work on carpentry projects, so I was given tasks working on the land, which was quite suiting to me. My first job was to survey and cut out a new, less steep trail to the building site. The existing trail is quite steep in spots, and not suitable for carrying down some of the larger items that will come later. It took basically the entire first day for me to scope out a suitably graded path and the cut it out from the bush using the machete. The end result then required a serious amount of hand digging to level it out. I had leveled about a 2 m patch when darkness fell and we had to quit for the day. Dinner consisted of a delicious salad , complete with venison sausage, washed down with about half a bottle of cheap red wine. We were in bed before 10 pm. Due to tent problems, "bed" consisted of the three of us curling up in the back of the van. I had been extremely skeptical of the feasibility of this project, but was happily surprised by how miraculously it ended up working out.

Day two consisted of the guys continuing their respective projects, while I worked on a new drainage ditch for the freshly cut driveway. My entire body was burning when Keiran announced that we'd be quitting early (5 pm), taking a walk, and then heading home. Even so, I was severely disappointed that I had not been able to fully complete the ditch. Keiran took us for a tour of the property, including the original house site, which was across the valley on the far hill, and would have been a disaster to get materials to. Keiran has eventual plans of building a community in those trees, with other families moving in, a community building, and even an internet cafe at the top of the hill where you can get cellular reception. I hope to return to NZ to see how his dreams shape up.