The Education of Axel Heyst

[AxelHeyst]

I should clarify that my goal is to be able to speak intelligibly and not pretentiously about this philosophy of lifestyle design that has radically altered my life trajectory, when and where appropriate, without coming off as a proselytizer. I don't want to evangelize where unsolicited, but I have no personal motive to play my ERE cards close to the chest.

Also, the circles I run in seem to be full of people who are genuinely interested in interesting people doing interesting things. I rarely run into people who give off a defensive vibe - 80% of the people I talked to last weekend pressed me for more information to the point they pulled out their phones and wrote down the url for the forum/book/blog. When I engage with these sorts of people, I'd like to be ready to answer their questions well.

Eta: if I'd met an ERE person before I found it myself, and they didn't give at least some hints that would have led me to this stuff earlier, I'd be pissed.

[jacob]

It's worth recalling that the ERE WLs came about specifically to address the Overton window when talking about personal finance in order to avoid people putting their foot in their mouth when enthusiastically talking about "that new thing they're into". Now that you're out there talking about "other things" maybe it's time to revive project green map. This may take a lot more data (conversations/journals/narratives) to put together than we currently have.

[Scott 2]

It's the "How do you know someone's ___________" trope. Vegan. Into CrossFit. Etc.

Jacob's lift up the corner tactic looks wiser, as I get older.

[mountainFrugal]

Nearly all of the people that you likely interacted with are smart nerds and interested in weird niche topics. Smart nerds interested in niche topics find one another online. This is why your hit rate for follow-up questions as well as not finding that strange with our friend group was so high. Many of my friends know I am on here. I have no idea if any of them read my journal. Some of them know I was interviewed on your podcast. I only specifically mention ERE if at some point we previously discussed MMM and/or finance stuff in general. They also know I am into ecology, was a plant biologist, and am a generally frugal adventure dirtbag. All of your descriptors likely had higher hit rates because of this. So in some ways this was actually easy mode. .

@mooretrees, DH, and mooretrees-mancub also had similar interactions. They are leading interesting lives and seamlessly blended into our friend group. Mooretrees-mancub gave a natural history lesson to two of my engineering friends. He had them find ant-lions and feed ants to them for over an hour! Both my friends REALLY want to raise children as free-range, curious, and exploratory as mooretrees-mancub. Although we talk about WOGs mingling, lots of other folks have WOGS even though they do not define it in those exact terms. The two engineers thought it was interesting that we had met online and it was the first IRL meeting. mooretrees-DH hung and shredded with the MTB crew.

Add: antlions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antlion
Add2: The overton window was already closer with this group... sticking with that idea.

[AxelHeyst]

...
So in some ways this was actually easy mode. .

Yes! But actually... Maybe the fact that so many of the people I talked to there were borderline natural WL6+ thinkers, which I knew, which caused me to attempt to 'enter' the conversation at that level of complexity, made it more difficult to feel like I was nailing it? Because of lack of shared vocabulary? Sort of a rare problem.

But thinking it through generally has me convinced (for now) that for more common interactions the 'very early retirement from full time work' is the approximate right place to start.

Eta: I mean, it seems like I could start with that kernel and add/elaborate/etc as appropriate on 'up' the Table to the edge of the Overton window as a basic strategy. I'll try to keep this in mind for future conversations and see how it goes.

[mountainFrugal]

Haha. Shoot from the hip into the other person's WOG and hopefully you will find some common ground. I do like @Scott2s strategy.

I find that I only occasionally talk about finances and spending with friends. We much more frequently talk about time... the only non-renewable resource. Along these lines, I like to ask what people are interested in doing BESIDES work. This has a high hit rate because it tells you a few things immediately... if they only are interested in work ... then follow-up there and ask increasingly specific questions until you get to the limit of your understanding of the concepts that are foundational to their work, you learn something new, they get to talk about work AND explain it to a new person. If they have interests outside of work (I think all of my friends do), then I drill down on that with questions. This shows that you are interested in them beyond a superficial level. Then they might feel more comfortable drilling down on some things in your life...eventually leading to ERE discussions sprinkling in concepts and jargon along the way.

[Bicycle7]

Another variable to consider besides WLs in selling ERE that has been talked about here and on the blog is personality type. I have a friend who's an ESTP around WL 6 and we talk about not having to "work for someone else doing boring stuff" and "all the different things we DIY" and "the last backpacking or bikepacking adventure". I don't bring up WOG or other ERE theoretical jargon, even though I will with my rational friend who is at a lower WL.

Another friend who's an ESTJ, hasn't worked a traditional job in years, is around WL6 and has read YMOYL. I've mentioned ERE by name a few times and gone into it a little with him. It doesn't exactly seem to hold his interest though, I don't get a lot of follow-up questions. I know for him he's interested in how concepts are immediately applicable and concrete, it's a good challenge for me to explain ERE in these terms.

[AxelHeyst]

I got back from my bikepacking trip on Friday. May 18 - June 23.

820 miles to Bend, 25 of which I got a lift for between Truckee and Reno. I rode on dirt to Bishop and then it was highway from then on. From Bend I rode back down to Klamath Falls (140miles) and then pieced my way back home on trains and buses. So I pedaled a bit over 1,000 miles. Longest day 108miles. I had three zero days in Truckee, a week in Cascadia somewhere, and then another week in Bend.









It stormed on me most of my riding days. A typical riding day was get up, ride until 1400 or 1500 when the clouds threatened, dip into the forest and set up shelter, and then get rained and thundered and lightning'ed on for several hours, then read/write until dark enough to go to sleep.

I sewed a bivy bag and a tarp for my trip, first time using this setup. The first few setups were sketchy but once I'd figured out the gist of it I love the system. I'll use it preferentially for three seasons and mild fourth season for sure.

This was my first trip doing cold-soak. I'm sold. I'll do this every trip from now on. Breakfast: oats/muesli, granola, milk powder, peanut butter, and then instant coffee. Midday: tortillas and pb or cheese. Dinner: Ramen or instant mashed potatoes with nutrional yeast and extra spices with olive oil. A big improvement would be to dehydrate veggies ahead of time. I resupplied at gas stations and grocery outlets along the way. Riding on highways means I'm rarely far from a store. I probably spent $10/day on food and coffee (if I rode past a decent coffee shop, particularly the ones I already knew from previous travels, I'd stop in and buy a coffee and recharge my phone).

I wanted to stick to dirt roads. I rode dirt all the way to Bishop, but the road up to Mammoth was miles of sandbox hike-a-bike so I bailed and rode up to Mammoth Lakes. I tried to get on a forest road there and I got a quarter mile before a massive (mammoth?) snow bank blocked the path. I got back on the road and was on highways the rest of the trip. I had some paper maps but I mostly just used google maps downloaded so I didn't use any data. Logistics for "go north, on highways" in early summer was pretty mellow.

I didn't train. I got in shape as I went. I never stopped because I felt I couldn't exert anymore, I typically stopped because my butt, knees, hands, elbows, or all of the above hurt. (Well, typically I stopped because of storms, but on the few days when I didn't get stormed out those are why I stopped). I'm really impressed with my body. A few chronic complaints of mine *went away* within a week, which is a great endorsement for high levels of physical output I guess. And for not letting minor complains stop me from setting out on a trip. Just go!

Everybody likes bike tourers. I think if you're on foot (in an area not along the PCT where people know what's up) people might wonder if you're a vagrant, but nobody thinks that about bicyclists.

By day 5 I couldn't fathom how anyone would bike around the world or even take the time to thru-hike. So much time doing just one thing! By day 20 I 'got' it. I can see dropping into the rhythm of it and just... going. But I felt I wouldn't want to do that, and decided that about a month would be the right trip length for me. I've got stuff to do.

I hung out with the mF's and scores of their people for several days. I took the long haul trucker on a couple mountain bike rides on their local trails. Super fun, super good people.

In Bend I stayed with my friends there. We went to the steampunk music festival (500 or less total people?). I volunteered and worked two 4hr shifts so I got in for free, and just ate what I'd been eating all along on the trip, so there was no extra $$ involved in having an incredible time with new people. I danced my face off all weekend.

That felt like the best way to end the trip. I'd thought to go through the Bay and meet up with people there, but after spending a month in beautiful remote locations the logistics and vibe of going through the Bay felt unattractive. And I wanted to get home to get on with my life.

I feel like I packed a solid six months of living into the past month.

[sodatrain]

Hell yeah dude! Sounds like a great trip. Thanks for the update and pics!

I'm currently looking at some backpacking gear for more or less the first time. Shit is expensive! And I'm ogre sized. Like... Do I fit in the tent because I'm 6'6"! Been scoping quilts, sleeping pads, packs, etc. I'm curious in tent alternatives - hammock or maybe buy/tarp?

I'm planning on doing some several week walks in the next couple years. And thinking now might be the time to start investing in some gear - in time for ERE Fest. What more might you say about the bivy/tarp setup? I do not plan cold weather camping (below freezing) and I always run warm so being cold typically isn't an issue.

Welcome back!

[jacob]

Do I fit in the tent because I'm 6'6"! Been scoping quilts, sleeping pads, packs, etc.

Would you incidentally also happen to be scoping for a MTB set up for touring? I have one (hardtail Trek with racks and bags) that's a bit too big for me (I'm 6'2.8") that I'd like to sell.

[theanimal]

Sounds like a really fun trip! Bikes make for the best travel, when you're tired of a place you can move on pretty quickly. They are also really good conversation starters. A year and a half ago Mrs. Animal and I did a tour through SoCal we had a number of nice conversations and people offering to help/let us stay at their place. I doubt the same would've happened as much if we were on foot.

Are you back to considering doing a section hike through the Sierras at some point?

[jacob]

There used to be a site written by a perma-biketourer called downtheroad on the blogroll. It appears to be dead now, but maybe someone can dig it up/out. It was much in the ultrafrugal style of cheaprvliving except on a bike riding through continent after continent after continent.

[sodatrain]

Would you incidentally also happen to be scoping for a MTB set up for touring? I have one (hardtail Trek with racks and bags) that's a bit too big for me (I'm 6'2.8") that I'd like to sell.

No, sorry!

[AxelHeyst]

I'm currently looking at some backpacking gear for more or less the first time. Shit is expensive! And I'm ogre sized. Like... Do I fit in the tent because I'm 6'6"! Been scoping quilts, sleeping pads, packs, etc. I'm curious in tent alternatives - hammock or maybe buy/tarp?

What more might you say about the bivy/tarp setup? I do not plan cold weather camping (below freezing) and I always run warm so being cold typically isn't an issue.

Thanks!

A couple thoughts on getting into gear, others feel free to chime in/disagree:

• A lot of gear choice is personal. What works for some might not work for others. Also, what might not work at first might work later. For example...
• I really prefer using a closed cell foam sleeping pad (CCF, common maker is zlite) over any of the inflatable variations. It takes up more volume, but it's impossible to kill. Throw it down on pine cones, sharp rocks, cactus, no worries. You'll never wake up freezing on a 'flat' CCF. Many people find it difficult to sleep on a zlite - it's thinner and less cushy than inflatable pads. The ERE-esque solution there is to a) slowly shift your home sleeping situation to firmer and firmer, see Katy Bowman for more on that, and b) just tough it out. In 2021 I did a 2 month road trip and slept on the zlite every night. I didn't sleep well the first two weeks, then I slept like a baby. At one point during my trip I slept on my zlite on a concrete patio. I've slept on the roof of a shipping container (which has ribs, if you happen never to have been on the top of a shipping container). This is the 'get tougher/more resilient' approach, which takes time and patience. Like barefoot running, rushing it can result in injury. Easy does it.
• I'm a huge fan of quilts vs sleeping bags. Remember your sleep system consists of pad, bag/quilt, bivy/tarp/tent, AND clothes. A quilt plus baselayer bottoms plus puffy and then wind protection will do you well down to quite cool conditions.
• Ultralight tarps are oddly expensive. After sewing my own I kind of get it. If you have access to a sewing machine and zero skills, sewing a tarp is a good first project. It's hard to screw up. You can make your own tarp for $50 or $60.
• The bivy I made is basically the Borah Bivy: https://borahgear.com/ultralightbivy.html and the materials cost me only slightly less than buying one.
• Bivys definitely have condensation issues in most weather. In dry climates a little bit of condensation isn't a big deal. Just hang your quilt out for a few minutes while you eat breakfast and good to go.
• A bivy and tarp setup is going to be my preferred system for Ft Dirtbag + 100mile radius. It almost never rains here so the tarp will rarely be used. The main thing to deal with is wind. The wind typically dies down at night but in some places it rips all night. In this case the best thing is careful site selection. Find a place to bivy out of the wind. If you can't find one you can stormpitch the tarp to give you wind relief. In high winds if you have a tent you can't modify its shape and it can whip loudly.
• I love how quick and easy it is to 'set up camp' with a bivy. I throw down my CCF pad, then the bivy, then get half into the bivy, then push my quilt in and wiggle in and zip up. 30 seconds.
• A tent is nicer in bug country. My worst night was when my spot was super infested with mosquitos and it was warm. I got into my bivy at 5 or 6pm and it was hot and the mosquitoes kept getting at me where I touched the bivy. It sucked! If I were to head into warm bug country in the future I would get/make a net shelter... basically a tent shape but netting that I could hang under my tarp.

That was a lot of text. My base recommendation for a frugal, adaptable, etc sleep system is:
.A zlite CCF sleeping pad
.Bivy like the Borah Gear UL bivy
.Tarp (MYOG or buy). Don't forget lots of paracord. Stakes often come in handy but sometimes the ground wont take them. There are alternative ways that you should know. Give yourself a half dozen pitches per type of terrain to consider yourself 'skilled' at erecting the tarp. My first pitch took an hour and it wasn't good. By the 17th or so it was 5 minutes.
.Quilt.
.A puffy. These are expensive but I ALWAYS use my puffy. Even if its very warm I use it as a pillow.
.Warm layers
.Sacred socks. This is a pair of socks that are on the large size (so they don't restrict blood flow in your feet) and you only wear them when in your sleep system.

Also - I'm sure lots of people around here would be happy to give you really detailed ERE-relevant advice on gearing up if you started a thread or in your own journal. It's not exactly rocket science but when you go on r/ultralight etc it can seem really overwhelming. Again, a lot of what you wind up liking is going to be personal/idiosyncratic, so at some point you've got to just satisfice, get some gear, and then evolve your system over time.

[AxelHeyst]

Are you back to considering doing a section hike through the Sierras at some point?

Definitely! They're literally in my backyard and it's bizarre that I haven't explored them more. It's a big priority for me. My idea is to do a 7-20day trip every three months, with shorter trips more frequently than that (overnights, long dayhikes, etc). And I am going to focus on my 'range' - which I consider to be Mammoth Lakes/Reds Meadow to the Needles to Jtree to Mojave National Preserve to Death Valley.

[AxelHeyst]

There used to be a site written by a perma-biketourer called downtheroad on the blogroll. It appears to be dead now, but maybe someone can dig it up/out. It was much in the ultrafrugal style of cheaprvliving except on a bike riding through continent after continent after continent.

I could easily see giving perma-bike touring a go if I didn't really enjoy making/building stuff. I still might want to do much longer trips later down the road when my desire to spend time on infrastructure is at an ebb.

ETA: Tim Travis. https://www.amazon.com/Road-That-Has-No ... 0975442708 and his site is https://ftp.downtheroad.org/ but looks pretty abandoned in place.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064392295883 He seems to be RV living now.

[AxelHeyst]

While riding I brainstormed what a good-enough routine would look like when I got back. I thought a lot about what's important to me and reflected on what has and hasn't worked well for me in the past. I began the new routine the day after I got back and so far so good. It is:

.Wake, coffee, write for two hours.
.An hour block for Yoga/movement and breakfast if I'm not IF'ing.
.Craft for two hours. (Craft is my umbrella term for make/build/design/tinker/fix).
.Work out (MWF is bwf strength workout, TRSat is hill sprints, ruck, fast hike, bike ride, etc).
.After the workout the afternoon is typically unstructured. If there's something I have to get done I'll timeblock it.
.In the evening is an hour of Study. At the moment I'm reading Weinberg Into to General Systems Thinking, but once that's finished it'll be primarily permaculture related stuff.

The mornings are internet-free unless I need to look something up for whatever I'm tinkering/designing.

So far after working out and some downtime, I typically just go back to whatever I was Crafting in the afternoons. But I only do this if I'm psyched on it.

The structure/unstructured balance feels about right. If I'm not feeling it/having an off day, it's not terribly daunting to just get through what I know I want to be doing consistently anyway. I can faff off for the rest of the afternoon but not feel bad because I still put in effort in the morning. But it's not so much structure that I feel overly constrained and like there isn't enough slack to deal with unforeseen events that crop up. Since I don't check the internet in the morning, the only possibility of interruption is if e.g. my dad comes over and needs a hand moving something heavy, which is infrequent enough it's not a problem.

---

That's the daily structure. I also thought about setting a tempo of traveling and trips. The intention is that these trips challenge me in some way like my bike trip did, and familiarize myself with my bioregion - the Mojave and Southern Sierras.
Weekly: A longer day hike or bike trip.
Monthly: An overnight or couple night trip.
Quarterly: A 7-15 day trip.
Annually: ?

I'm still tinkering with how to have my trips tick my desire to explore my region, do difficult physical things, and my desire to socialize intentionally. I've 'failed' to visit my Bay friends twice now because I wound up just not feeling like hassling with Bay logistics. I might have to just set aside dedicated time to visit those people I can't entice to visit me, separate from my desire to explore/do hard physical things.

---

Tracking:
I'm tracking hours spent writing, doing craft, and studying, and I'm tracking yes/no for strength, cardio, and mobility sessions, in my main spreadsheet.

[AxelHeyst]

I'm focused at the moment on getting my personal space set up well for me and holding myself back from jumping to larger projects that may or may not be justified. e.g. installing windows in my studio before letting myself jump into building a whole bioshelter/sunroom structure off of it.

• I chopped the legs off my desk so it sits 17in off the floor. I sit on the floor to do computer stuff now.
• I got some sheepskin seconds (sheepskin rugs that have some slight defect and so are reduced price) and sleep on those now instead of a mattress. I got the idea for the sheepskins from Katy Bowman, of course. After a month sleeping on a zlite in the woods the transition was immediate. I sleep like a baby.
• My pillow is already very thin but I'm working on not needing it.
• I'm halfway through darkstaining the interior of my studio. I soak steel wool in vinegar for a few days and then foam-brush it on my cedar walls. Going dark in a tiny house is against conventional wisdom, but a) I like dark spaces and b) literally everything for a hundred miles is bright and tan colored and it's sunny almost every day, so the contrast is pleasant.
• I'm about to install a diy louver in my south window which will create a crossbreeze in the studio. This might be all I need to do to make the studio comfortable through the summer. I keep having elaborate ideas for dirtbag-engineered systems but I also keep returning to the wisdom that there is nothing more wasteful than executing well that which does not actually need to get done.

[AxelHeyst]

• I'm actively building/installing my south windows, which will enable me to a) have plants inside and b) get the studio warmer in winter.
• I'm working on DIY shade sails for the west facade and over the 'south outdoor room'. I moved Serenity to be on an EW axis and so that her rear door drops down to be a part of the south outdoor space situation. The composition of Ft Dirtbag is starting to cohere a little bit more... although mostly it remains an aspirational vision in my head.
• Summer weather finally came. It's ~105F/40C with mild breeze and <20%RH and I'm pleased that the weather is quite bearable with no active cooling systems besides fans. A few more improvements like the shade sails will make it even more pleasant. This is confirmation that it's best not to assume what you need. I had all these plans for sophisticated active cooling systems like night-sky radiant panels with thermal energy storage tanks and horizontal ground source heat sink blah blah blah but... a little breeze, a little shade, acclimatization, and some minor lifestyle modification, and all that stuff is totally unnecessary. I can use that time for actually useful/interesting endeavors instead.
• I'm ramping up into a major focus on drylands permaculture education. I did 3-4 years of a big investment in my ERE education 2020 till now, and that's settling down into a more mature phase of education that requires less energy to move along. Now I'm ready to invest time and attention into a permaculture education. Most of the open loops, sources of friction, and heterotelicities in my WoG seem like problems that the tools of permaculture design are very well suited to address. I suspect my ERE education will be very complementary to a permaculture education since both are so rooted in systems thinking and analysis etc. I suspect there is an argument that ERE is just permaculture principles applied to [x] and permaculture is just ERE principles applied to [y], but I don't understand both disciplines well enough yet to comment.
• I've been consuming Peter McGraw's podcast Solo. I'd come across Bella Depaulo's Single by Choice stuff a while ago and wished there was a meatier corpus of content and, possibly, community I could tap into. McGraw's podcast and community are that, I just hadn't found it until I went down a internet rabbit hole seeded by learning about the relationship escalator. Much gratitude to @RoamingFrancis for tipping me off to that.
• I 95% deappified my phone and keep it turned off unless I find a need for it. So far I've only used it to edeposit a check, take some pictures of builds, and I brought it along to town today to pick up my Azure order because sometimes they change the truck dropoff location at the last minute and group text the updated address.
• I got stuck in a yt shorts rabbit hole for four hours a couple nights ago. Two days later I watched the entire first season of Stranger Things in one season. I don't enjoy falling into these holes and I experience pretty significant existential anxiety at the realization/reconfirmation that my mind is susceptible to this kind of distraction loop. It makes me ponder whether I should work on being more disciplined, whether I should work on environment design to make it harder to begin one of these loops, whether it's a sign I should take major steps towards a Boyle lifestyle, whether it implies there is a whole realm of hidden internal work I'm blind to, whether it's a good sign because the presence of Resistance is an indication that I'm getting closer to my important Life's Work (Steven Pressfield's The War of Art), or whether it doesn't mean a damn thing and I should just chill. I suspect it's all of the above. But what's the ratio?? Ah well. Fall down six, get up seven.

[ertyu]

[*]I got stuck in a yt shorts rabbit hole for four hours a couple nights ago. Two days later I watched the entire first season of Stranger Things in one season. I don't enjoy falling into these holes and I experience pretty significant existential anxiety at the realization/reconfirmation that my mind is susceptible to this kind of distraction loop. It makes me ponder whether I should work on being more disciplined, whether I should work on environment design to make it harder to begin one of these loops, whether it's a sign I should take major steps towards a Boyle lifestyle, whether it implies there is a whole realm of hidden internal work I'm blind to, whether it's a good sign because the presence of Resistance is an indication that I'm getting closer to my important Life's Work (Steven Pressfield's The War of Art), or whether it doesn't mean a damn thing and I should just chill. I suspect it's all of the above. But what's the ratio?? Ah well. Fall down six, get up seven.
[/list]

I vote environment design. Imo that susceptibility cannot be engineered away. In its core, it's adpative: the love for sweets and salt gets us to consume calories and micronutrients, the susceptibility to distraction is our natural intellectual curiosity -- oooh what is that?? etc. These essentially adaptive functions have been highjacked. So highjack them back.