{"id":7927,"date":"2010-07-20T13:02:49","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T18:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=7927"},"modified":"2017-09-19T20:16:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T00:16:39","slug":"twelve-by-twelve-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/twelve-by-twelve-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Twelve by Twelve — A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream, by William Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s Note: A free review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher, New World Library<\/a><\/em>, which is part of the Green Press <\/a>\"18972\"Initiative<\/a><\/em>. Like most of their titles, the book was printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.<\/em><\/p>\n

The modern age has given birth to scores of how-to books, and the environmental movement has played no small part in that. There are \u201cgreen\u201d how-to books, magazines, and websites on nearly every topic: how to garden organically<\/a>*, how to create the perfect compost, how to keep bees<\/a> and produce your own honey, how to cut your energy costs\u2026<\/p>\n

William Powers\u2019 book, Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream<\/a> <\/em>(affiliate link), is quite different. It is not a book about how-to-do in a time of environmental, social, and personal perils, but about something more important: how-to-be<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Powers tells the story of his stay in a 12×12 \u201chouse\u201d in rural North Carolina, a house that is really a shack, since it has no electricity, running water, heating or cooling system, or other modern conveniences–and its diminutive size legally qualifies it as a shack or shed, not a residence. Instead, it offers an abundance of natural beauty, food from the nearly year-round (and nearly self-perpetuating) garden along with productive neighbors, and solitude in which to cultivate a greater awareness.<\/p>\n

Like the shack itself, Twelve by Twelve<\/em> is a book of 12 and 12: 12 chapters divided into two parts. The division is interesting, splitting up roughly a journey to the center and then a rise to another level of awareness and understanding. Throughout, however, we witness the constant interplay of different emotions; just as in real life, in this book we move so quickly from the beauty of a butterfly to the horror of an industrial chicken farm (which constantly looms nearby, its physical and olfactory presence appearing at various key moments).<\/p>\n

This not being a how-to book: you will not be taken through the intricacies of permaculture or the day-to-day joys and struggles and living off the grid. Indeed, Powers spends as much, if not more, time recounting his journeys around the globe as an aid worker and offering his philosophical insights during and after his stay than he does describing the minutes, hours, and days of his solitude. Yet his sabbatical in the shack is the ever-present foundation for these aspects of the book, whether it is mentioned explicitly or not. The result is a masterful weaving together of past, present, and potential future(s) into one timeless story that speaks to both head and heart.<\/p>\n

Into the Woods… and Off the Grid<\/h2>\n

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\"Rustic
Rustic shack near Baraboo, Wisconsin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Powers begins his 12×12 sabbatical shortly after returning to America, at which point he feels like \u201ca man without a country.\u201d Despairing over the signs of overdevelopment and globalization, which make a beautifully textured world so dismally \u201cflat,\u201d he wonders if his work has been for naught. \u201cHave the well-rounded objectives of America\u2019s Founding Fathers–life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–been flattened to a single organizing principle: the unification of greed?\u201d (7). At the same time, \u201cThe world had lost its shape,\u201d he reflects, \u201cand I had lost mine\u201d (12).<\/p>\n

But in the quiet, underdeveloped setting of the shack and the thriving natural world around it, Powers is able to journey into himself and reconnect with the world as a whole–one of joy and sorrow, failure and success, destruction and creation, individuality and community, death and life. He meets other local \u201cfree-range people,\u201d who have opted out of the \u201cEmpire\u201d of modernity and are instead conducting a profound \u201cexperiment to create a fruitful life on the margins\u201d (41). Powers thus comes to learn as much from them as he does from nature and the utter solitude in the shack, all of which serve as opportunities for insight and self-discovery.<\/p>\n

A large part of this insight involves finding a way to be in this world, as it is, and then to act in an appropriate manner, driven by mindfulness and compassion rather than greed on the one hand or anger on the other. The steps towards this sort of enlightened action are see, be, and do:<\/p>\n