****, you knew this was coming. 🙂

Another idea that just wouldn’t let me sleep through the creativity of the morning hours.  Between 3 and 5 am I give all credit for my work to unknown muses.  Jesus I’m lucky!

In short: A course for the sons of the ultra-rich teaching them the meaning of being a good man through the example of a group of mature and experienced men (the 3 of us plus whoever.)  $300k/6 weeks a year split into at least 3 periods, plus travel/expenses.  Each boy/young man travels with our group which consists of a consistent core supplemented by the many good men and women we know.    The parents/guardians or our group can set the itinerary, once the train leaves the station we run the show.  Campfires in the mountains are as appropriate and necessary as flying the G5 into Bhutan to meet the royal family.  Exposure to good authors, good whiskey and a big rainbow on a 4 weight are all desirable yet only starting points.  Projects to consider involve as much manual labor and mistakes as they do perfection and management of privilege.  The end goal is to induce our clients to become good men within their sphere of influence.  While the $300k (or more) covers one year, we should expect to act as lifelong mentors to every client and their parents.

WEBSITE WRITING… A tribal approach

It takes a village to raise a child, yet it takes something more to raise a good man.  From time immemorial mature groups of experienced men have ushered boys into manhood leading by disciplined example.  Widely practiced yet rarely captured in writing, these teachings have resurfaced through the millenia.

Today we know it as cooperative learning, yet it has many names; the Greeks developed the Socratic method, Native Americans called it coyote teaching and it has revealed itself in the styles of modern masters Bruce Lee and Lama Ole Nydahl.  Across time and cultures the fundamentals of shaping a good man have remained the same; tell me, show me, watch me.

The qualities required to bring up a young man vary widely and include much beyond the discourse and influence of one human, hence we provide group and individual examples.

In every culture there has existed a small and dedicated group of teachers who have consecrated their lives to raising wayward boys of potential to men of power and influence for good.

Using multiple experiences alternating between diffuse example and intense learning our group provides a collective model for privileged young men to emulate.  As the young elephant knows not his own capability and so is capable of doing much harm without intention, ending up hunted and driven, so too may a young man with the many blessings of power and wealth be led astray from doing good in the world.  Our purpose is to show each young man his power and ability for good through a living example of excellence in mind, body, and spirit.

Made up of mature men from all walks of life, our group embodies the fundamentals of honor, integrity, and excellence.  Each man brings a breadth and depth of experience in discipline that is constantly demonstrated in every action.  The requirements to teach our method include the lifelong test of performance and are varied across disciplines; our experience range from wilderness fire management to degrees in astronomy and medicine, from military special operations to non-profit work. Through all this we provide a level and quality of teaching and example unmatched in today’s educational arena.

The power of such a group should not be underestimated, a lone swimmer feels not the speed of a wide  river yet the banks pass swiftly by. ********************************************

Undeveloped Ideas: ‑All of us have made mistakes and believe/know those mistakes are as important in the learning process as the dedication to excellence

Executors: A core plus the usual (and long) list of suspects acting as guest stars with various lengths of exposure: **** etc.  Your best men, I’m not worried about finding good dudes.  With 2 weeks at a pop to shape the young gun we’re probably limited to 5 or 6 mentors at a time…

Cost: Initial assessment: $10,000 over 3 days $300,000/6 weeks spread out over a year, 10–14 days at a time

What this ain’t: ‑We’re not out to show rich people poor people.  We understand that the children of the world’s wealthy do not have to ever experience lack, and we wish to teach them to live in their world with.…arete.  If we come across lack or it makes sense to introduce a young man to the rigors of poverty we execute that mission without mercy and every intention of good, but we ain’t doing non-profit work.

Guiding Quotes & Thinkers (Feel free to add your own in here and send it back):

There is nothing good or bad yet thinking makes it so ‑Epictetus

Man, know thyself.  ‑Oracle at Delphi

What is your profession?  Being a good man.  ‑Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.  ‑Eleanor Roosevelt

Folks, Am facing significant resistance on the homefront to the idea of.…well, I’ll define it in a minute (resistance email is at the bottom.)  I think of it as Shangri-La, but I also think shitting in a 5 gallon bucket for compost is totally the right thing to do.

If I’m truly serious about this, I’ve got to address these issues or redefine my goals.

**** and **** and I have talked for a while now about creating some kind of cool way to get a bunch of hard-chargin’ people together to live in a beautiful and wild place where we could hunt and garden and sip coffee and whiskey (for ****) and read great books and build houses and generally just have the best damn life imaginable.  Not a commune or a hippie community or our own little 1,000 acre plot a hundred miles from anywhere, but I’ll get to more of the description in a minute.

I haven’t been able to sell the idea to Lee yet, she’s got some different ideas about what constitutes the good life, and it’s important that everyone who might be involved has their say, so…

Some points to consider:

-Having not lived in one for a while, I still think small towns are pretty cool.  Still, I’m not tied to a small town, although I like the idea.  If we were near enough to a bigger city would that be OK?  It seems to be pretty important to a “clean” life to live near wild and pure places, and by their very nature those are usually far away from big cities.  If we could find a small enough town that had the pure lands around it, but was big enough to hold whatever it is that’s important to a large group of people I think that’d do it.  Not sure where that is, but I’m looking forward to the search.

-I don’t think anyone is talking about a commune setting with backrubs and bathtubs and bullshit, the idea that I think we’ve come up with is pooling resources to buy land or buying separate plots of land that are near to each other in a cool area that we all dig.  After that it’s each family takes care of their basic needs.

We have talked about building a shared workshop, whether that’s for wood or metal or mechanic stuff.  We’ve also talked about a shared work-out area, and maybe a shared gear prep/storage area, but I don’t think those are go/no-go criteria for any of us, just things that are nice to have and share with other cool people.  ****, ****, chime in with anything I’ve missed, I’m sure there’s a lot.

The big picture here is to create a community of friends (not a commune) who really enjoy their neighbors and enjoy doing stuff with like-minded people.   The question that started this was along the lines of, “How cool would it be to be able to share a meal or a construction or art project with your neighbor, or work on a bread-money project together, or go skiing or surfing or hunting or whatever with people who would also hold a kick-ass conversation or be equally into a “living” quiet?” and have all that be a neighbor away instead of few states.  The answer for me is pretty goddamn awesome.

From what I can see it will require a change for all of us, a real change.  If we’re serious about it than we have to have conversations like these that clearly define what we want and how we’re going to make it happen.  If we don’t do that we might as well take a few bong hits and focus on more important topics like how to save the entire world.

Back to change…All this seems to require a change of where we live and a change of how we live with and communicate with other people, but it’s a change from good to great.  If we want great and glorious things in our lives we have to be proactive in making them happen.

-Visiting vs living, well, shit, I’m not sure myself what I want right now.  I love to visit people, but right now I don’t spend enough time with some of the most stimulating people I’ve met and I think that would change if I lived closer to them.  On the flip side of that coin, I’m so damn busy with work right now that I barely see any of my friends outside of work, so maybe it’s more of a commitment/focus thing than it is distance.

In the background of all of this is a throbbing hum of money.  To do this will take money, and it’s money I don’t have right now.  To make it happen I have to decide along with Lee how to make that money, and if the “why” is worth the “how”.  At 32, it seems like the best time to make that kind of decision; I still have lots of time left, I’m still strong as a goddamn ox and I seem to get smarter every day (with the usual minor setbacks.)

-I have almost zero interest in buying in Europe.  I am American and intend to have my home in this country as long as I live.  Doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend a year at a time somewhere else and learn a new language and culture, but I want a rock-solid base camp here in the States.

So with all that said, A1: Is this something we want to entertain as a general idea, and if so, then A2: How do we want to define it?

NFH

****, excellent recommendation.  Just read these lines from Chatterton’s experience as a medic walking point in Vietnam.  They ring true with my own limited experience.  Dig it.

-If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it. ‑If you follow in another’s footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving. ‑Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average. ‑Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives with these decisions forever. ‑Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you. ‑It is easiest to live with a decision if it is based on an earnest sense of right and wrong. ‑The guy who gets killed is often the guy who got nervous.  The guy who doesn’t care anymore, who has said, “I’m already dead–the fact that I live or die is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the accounting I give of myself,” is the most formidable force in the world. ‑The worst possible decision is to give up.

The book is called Shadow Divers and is about the guys who discovered a sunken U‑boat off the New Jersey coast in 1991.

NFH

Yep, I’m with you on the indecision re. town vs country.  I feel right about just cogitating on it a little more.

Leaning toward a “best of both world’s approach.  You have your house in Bozeman proper with all amenities close by, and then you share a parcel of land out back of beyond with one or two like minded fuckers.  Maybe it’s like you say and we go in on a 100 acre property, keeping 1 acre lots (max of 5 or something like that) and then the rest of it wild.  Build what you want, fuck The Man and live it “real,” although I like the Spanish pronunciation and connotation of that word better for this application.

I keep swinging back and forth between believing something will happen money-wise for me (Paleo Treats or Lee’s art or whatever) and thinking big and then going back to staying small, living way inside my means, saving up so I can live large when I’m 50.  But that’s got to be wrong, I mean, I’m Alive Now, man!

So I guess I just keep working on self-reliance (not the same as isolation) and being able to take care of myself and my people and charge hard and just enjoy the ride.  It’s good right now.

NFH

CR, This’ll take some time, but thanks for starting it.

A short version of what I’m looking for, see if it jibes with your interests.  This is for a tinkering/get the hell out of dodge/hunt & fish and hike and explore and ski kind of property, and a place to live for…a while.  Maybe a summer, maybe 5 years, maybe retire to.  Someplace safe.  Something to be able to build a couple of small buildings on with strawbale or rammed earth etc, owner accomplished, some kind of kick ass workshop,  a place to retreat to and be refreshed by.

About an acre, a little more or less either way is fine no water through property, at least 12″/year of precip no power backed up to BLM or other gov’t /unpopulated / public land dirt road or slightly worse, as long as there’s access.  I’d like it to be a labor of love to develop the road a little. low density housing views and solar access to south close to fishing/hunting less than 20 minutes to a good grocery store/amenities (once the road is developed, and by that I mean gravelly smooth, not fucking paved)

Ideally some little piece of a much larger ranch owned by a cool outdoorsman private individual who is just as curious and kick ass as the rest of the crew.  It would also ideally be a place that no one wanted for some stupid reason that involved a lot of manual labor to get it “worth something”, a diamond in the rough kind of gig.  Process has as much to do with this as outcome.

I’ll send MLS picks after I’ve perused ’em.  Thanks again, looking forward to seeing you. NFH

Rad, glad you’re diggin’ old Dot’s stuff.  I think she’s a total star.

I meant to write no water “to” property, meaning I don’t need a line run in, I’ll do my own catchment or well.

I don’t think holding out is a waste of time; that’s how we get what we want sometimes.  Unless the deal of the century comes along, I’d rather wait.

Probably the best thing to do is to refine some definitions of what we want/need.

I was thinking on the drive home about who I want to buy it from, and it’s probably someone that doesn’t need to sell it, but who would sell it to someone who will take care of it.  Those people are harder to find than just getting a parcel of land, but hell, that’s what makes the eventual homestead so special.

An abandoned quarry, an old butcher shop, a place where I can make engine noise during the day, a large enough place to have a workshop…all those are parts or possible parts of the perfect site.  When I think about it, I don’t know if I really want to be 20 miles away from everything, I *like* the comforts of civilization for my every day life.  Old thick timbers, industrial strength “stuff”, simple and powerful and clean lines, natural light…there’s a lot to list, and finding it may take a few years.  Even if it is close to town I’m not super worried that I’ll “urbanize” up there, hell, it’s not like Montana is lacking public wilderness to explore.

Equally important is the financial side.  I won’t borrow money to buy land, and right now I won’t use the money I have to buy land, so…that means I’ve got to come up with a plan of how I am going to pay for it.  Maybe it’s not just money, maybe we find an old Warren Buffet type who wants a steward, I don’t know…

I’m interested in pursuing co-purchasing land with you, but I can’t say Lee is as stoked about it, and hell, you’ve got your own decision to make as to whether you want to buy land with Lee & I.  I’m pretty sure I could tuck away $100/month, but I’d want to write out some kind of definition first of why I was saving and what I was saving for, and how much I wanted to save before I started looking, and those just aren’t clear enough to me right now.

Maybe I should start anyway, the longest journey starts with 1 step and all that.

More to follow around a campfire or on the phone.

NFH

Dude, Of course she is one of my favorite women.  She’s a total stud, after her first house burned down she just built another one.  We have her listed as a Paleo Treats hero on our Wisdom page.

Stoked about your buddies experience with a Lister.  Talked to Lee about moving to India and setting up a plant there.  So many projects going on right now that this one will probably get put on the back burner, but…it’s damnable interesting.  Like all of ’em.

I ordered the utterpower.com CD and book that they sell just to bone up on general power generation and electricity stuff.  The guy that runs that site has a hard-on for CHP (combined heat and power) generation right now, so of course I’m looking more into that.

Was looking around inside a mini conex box today and thought “You don’t need any more space than this.  Maybe 20′ x 20′.  Shit, I have GOT to get a little place out in the middle of nowhere where I can fiddle and mess and potter about and hunt and fix stuff and break stuff and just build my own little empire of Nik-dom.”

Ok for now, NFH

“7. You’re pretty hard on the activists, aren’t you?

Well, I’m tired of people projecting their fantasies onto me. If you want to be wise and benevolent, that’s fine, providing that you do it for real and not as an exercise in self-delusion. Go make the world a better place in your immediate vicinity, with your own hands, so you can tell whether it’s really helping or not. Anything else is just make-believe.

You don’t really know anything unless you’ve done it with your own hands. I wish people would stop giving money to big Scam-O-Rama organizations and would get their hands dirty instead. You can’t save the world by writing a check or by believing what you’re told. You have to see and do things for yourself. And when it doesn’t work, you should clean up your own mess before moving on. You can’t do that when you’re not involved in the day-to-day reality of the problem. ” R Plamondon

“The other thing that bugs me about the welfare groups is that they think that keeping livestock can be reduced to geometry. They like to write rules that hens need a certain amount of perch space, some number of square feet of floor space, and so on. (It reminds me of the incredibly lame propaganda coming over Radio Moscow and Radio Peking in the Seventies, which couldn’t tell the difference between steel production and quality of life.)

But in reality, rules are largely just a distraction from the serious business of paying attention to what’s going on, and changing what you do accordingly. It’s the difference between managing the process and managing the outcome. You can often get the same outcome using wildly differing techniques, depending on how you balance different trade-offs. Actual skill is involved. ” ‑R. Plamondon

My kind of guy.  Down to earth, out there doing the good work, getting after it.  Reminds me of Steve Solomon.

Dig it.  http://www.plamondon.com/faq_welfare.html

NFH

Gents, Sir Albert Howard is the father of the organic gardening movement.  The Soil and Health is worth the read if you ever get into gardening.  Simple and in-depth, this is a man who delved deeply into many subjects to understand the unified concept of growth and life on earth.  Awesome. "The main characteristic of Nature's farming can...be summed up in a few words. Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted in humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease." -Sir Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament The same can be said with few substitutions about a good man.  That last phrase, "...both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease" really resonates with me.  It's not as if he advocates throwing "plants and animals" out on their own, but instead that he has total faith that if the basics are taken care of then there is no need for band-aid care. This is one of those works that reaffirms to me the many beliefs we share in common, whether you are a soldier, a fire-fighter, or simply living a clean life.  The idea that with enough practice you don't need "tricks" is sublime wisdom.  Drive on! NFH