“Everybody comes here with a dream, and after about 4-6 months they find out that the dream doesn’t fit. The smart ones change the dream, and they’re the ones that stay here. The ones that try to make this place fit their dream usually don’t stick around.”

Couldn’t find skittles. All hope is lost. Tim Cresswells work is quite poignant, and offers less of a counter-to and more of a companion to Parag Khanna; it offers the human side to the logistical. As part of an assignment we were meant to view a documentary through the lens of the writings and draw connections between them. As a gaffe I settled on a doco on people so far removed from the global supply chain they had to build their own houses.

Life Off Grid is a documentary featuring the lives of people who live almost entirely self-sufficiently, building their houses, generating their fuel, and in some cases, their food. Filmed in the idyllic northern reaches of Canada, it features some of the hardiest folks a life of self-sufficiency can offer. As a result of their selected hardships, they have developed a sort of ‘us and them’ mentality separate from their nation of birth; forming their own region (Cresswell, 239). They present their own ‘anti-southern’ sentiments, each to their own varying degree and extent. A defining part of this is the fact that some of the people are getting more involved in ‘grid society’ than others. Where some make their living digging holes in the frozen wasteland to fish, others are taking up day jobs in the towns and cities, slowly reintegrating and losing their sense of place. This is compounded when the subject reveals that they may eventually give up their house so they might enjoy the benefits of living with supplied electricity and water. Most of the people featured in the documentary don’t come from a family line rooted in the area; rather they migrated to the regions themselves hoping to start afresh. This is important in that the area is undeveloped; the people moving there have little culture or tradition to maintain and instead elect to create their own.

Perhaps this provides an alternative to the example Cresswell puts forth using Karen Till’s writings on Rancho Santo Margarito in Orange County (Cresswell 230; rather than create their place through false tradition and culture, they instead seek to separate themselves as far as they can from it. Indeed, the ‘Off-Gridders’ have more in common with the protestors against gentrification that Reid and Smith note. Indeed, many of the outlying settlers speak of their communities laws preventing the settlement of smaller parcels of land;  as a way of defending themselves against the ‘yuppies’ that might encroach on their version of life. In this way, they can hold their version of place, yet at the same time maintain that which makes their parcels of land their ‘place’.

Consider Daniel, of British Columbia. Where Cresswell would say that Architects design building, it is, in fact, Daniel that develops his; yet, in the end, Daniel becomes the architect of his own place. From here we find a source of irony when Daniel states that he believes that most people’s houses are fantasies; where everyone is slowly and definitively creating the home of their fantasy. Implicit in this statement is the idea that he is not. Cresswell, however, would state that he has already created his own ‘place’. Indeed, one can detect a tone of pride from Daniel that he may be unaware that he projects. When he continues by saying that he believes that this is ridiculous, perhaps it comes from a sense that he has, in fact, completed his fantasy. For the rest of the documentary, this meaning of completion tinges the work. Every interviewee herein can be viewed through the lens of self-satisfaction- when a subject talks about their usage of resources in comparison to those who use fossil fuels, or resources ‘from the grid’, you get the idea that they aren’t taking into account the smoke released from their own wood powered heating systems. After all, it is easier to make theory level statements about home from the position of someone who has one (Cresswell, 201). From this foothold Cresswell’s statement that ‘Place does not come from a factory or as finished products’ (Cresswell 199) makes far more sense.

These are people who have achieved a sense of wholeness within their domicile; When one speaks of the people of the south, they speak from a place of thinking that their place, despite its obvious flaws and rough edges, is their own. While it may not come from a factory or from a place where the edges are hewn off, it is theirs. Their derision of those ‘on the grid’, therefore, must come from the standing that ‘their’ (the ‘gridders) houses originate from a mass produced, sterile place. The entire conflict, as a result, isn’t of whether or not someone develops their own resources, but whether or not they developed their own home. Cresswell doesn’t believe that this is where one should obtain a sense of place, however. In his presentation of the story of Mhay (Cresswell 201), Cresswell states that it is the little touches that matter.