The Ragged Edge The Edge Of The World Afri-I Searches For Simplicity On His Northern Stevens County Retreat
Profile: Afri-I
One of the region’s biggest government critics sleeps on sheepskin in a battered Wonder Bread truck.
He has no gun. He doesn’t send faxes smearing the feds.
He lives in a 40-acre hippie haven called The Edge of the World.
“I’m into self-government,” says Boyd Knauss, a bearded, weathered man who says he was renamed AfriI by a wolf in a vision.
Afri-I, 56, and a woman named Shooting Star created the retreat on a rugged tract of land high above the Columbia River in northern Stevens County.
They spend their days with people named Fish, Life Has Meaning, Ocean, Swaneagle.
Dozens of young hitchhikers, aging beatniks and curious friends migrate there each summer, hiking the last 1-1/2 miles on a narrow, dusty path.
Afri-I ripped up his Social Security card and canceled his bank account long ago. He recently ditched his driver’s license and hasn’t paid income taxes for years.
“What are they used for?” he says. “They’re used for public schools, and I’m into home schooling. They’re used to build roads, and I’d prefer a world without any roads.”
Big changes for a former Boy Scout who joined the Army after high school.
But he never fit, hated spit-shining his shoes and saluting superiors. Government, he concluded, sold out to a corrupt military-industrial complex.
After a jumble of jobs from selling tools to building houses, Afri-I dropped out of the world at 33.
Big Brother forces far too many laws on people better off using common sense, says the Olympia native.
“When I see those signs, ‘Buckle Up: It’s the Law,’ it makes me want to puke. How about ‘Buckle Up, I want to be safe?”’
Afri-I would never buy a gun - won’t allow them on his land. Yet he despises gun control: “Guns in the hand of the government are more dangerous than guns in the hands of the people.”
He calls his lifestyle “voluntary simplicity” and earns money selling garden produce, handmade flutes and massages.
But he hasn’t achieved total relief from government. He’s been ticketed for cutting willow sticks and for pitching a tent on forest land not designated a campsite.
“That’s my trouble with authority,” says Afri-I. “They try to stop every creative spark on earth. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. They want to collect their fees.”
His ambition: Persuade others to try his lifestyle, even live on his property for a while, grow food, drink from the murky bear wallow, find their spirit in his sweat lodge.
Take charge of their lives.
“I don’t feel like anyone can govern anyone else with any success,” he says. “What we need to do is learn to get along and love each other.”
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