Urban couple moves to woods for experiment in self-sufficiency

One evening, a weary young couple looked at one another across their Pottery Barn-inspired dining room on the I-5 corridor and asked, “Why are we doing this? None of this means anything.” This frank realization didn’t signal the end of their marriage, but a conscious decision to simplify their lives, slow down, and stop excessive consumption. Within a year, Alex and Scott Mueller handed in resignation notices, sold their $30,000 car, their half-million dollar house and countless possessions, and signed their names to 44 undeveloped acres outside of Spokane. Today, approximately a year after purchasing their wooded plot, the Muellers are living what they call “an experiment in self-sufficiency.” So far, the couple has built a home and created loose plans for a vegetable garden, chickens, bees, solar panels, and three guest cottages. One cottage will be reserved for an “artist in residence” who can live on the property for a year, at no cost, in order to pursue his or her artistic aspirations. They are also documenting the entire process online at www.moosicorn.com. The Mueller’s story is not necessarily a new one, but shares a theme with many, who, for a variety of reasons, abandon the urban landscape to pursue a life closer to nature, where day-to-day tasks are directly linked to producing basic necessities. During the Great Depression, dismal economic circumstances forced families to grow their own food, build their own shelters, and live on bare essentials. Adopting such a lifestyle was a matter of survival. In the 1960s and ‘70s, a back-to-the-land movement again swept the nation. Rather than necessity, people moved to rural areas to counter the mainstream culture or end their reliance on the marketplace. Today, concerns over human health and the environment have prompted the back-to-the-land principles of living simply, locally, and sustainably in urban areas as well, via farmers markets, community supported agriculture projects, and backyard gardens. The Muellers don’t fit neatly into any of the above categories, and may represent a new generation of back-to-the-landers. They readily admit that their primary motivation for adopting a rural life was not survival, to protest consumerism or mainstream culture, nor end their reliance on grocery stores. Instead, they say their primary motivations were to have more freedoms and to be intimately connected with nature. Living sustainably and reducing their footprint is important, they say, but is secondary. To claim otherwise, Scott acknowledges, would mean ignoring an obvious paradox: “Ironically, our decision to live close to nature actually has a negative impact on it,” he says. “Obviously, if you live in the city, you have a way smaller footprint. If we shared walls with six people and could walk to the store, that would be better, but we wanted to be out here, to have a peace of mind that you can’t get in the city.” Recognizing this contradiction, has not discouraged the couple from trying to reduce their negative environmental impact. “Four or five years ago, we would have been guilty of being your average young yuppies that think they’re green,” he said. “We would go hiking from time to time and we would recycle, and occasionally use reusable grocery bags, but we probably wouldn’t go back to the car to grab them if we forgot them. But now we certainly would.” Alex explains that at the time, they didn’t even realize their habits were bad. “We used to use paper towels all the time, but gave them up about a year ago. The only time we miss them is when we make bacon,” she said. “It’s little things like that. We didn’t even realize how much trash we were producing and how easy it would be to change it. There are a lot of people doing what we aspire to do eventually, and we just try to learn and get better day by day.” The Muellers’ drastic switch from urban consumerism to rural self-sufficiency was in no way a return to childhood roots: Alex grew up in “posh” Sonoma County and Scott in the “ghetto” section of a small town in southeast Missouri. Living off the land was not a part of either’s upbringing, nor was it on their radars as they left home for college. Scott attended Truman State in Missouri, before relocating to the Bay Area, and Alex earned her bachelor’s degree in visual art with an emphasis in education at the University of San Francisco. The couple first exchanged glances at a mutual friend’s barbeque in California. “Not exactly,” Scott said. “We always say that it was a barbeque, because it sounds more respectable than a kegger, but it was definitely a kegger.” Regardless of the format of their first encounter, something stuck, and the couple married three years later. At the time, Scott was chasing start-up dreams in the Silicon Valley, a venture that didn’t necessarily ensure rent and food capital each month. When a home-building company near Seattle offered him a lucrative position during the housing boom, the couple decided it was time for Scott to give up his start-up dream to pursue financial security. It was a grown-up, responsible, parent-approving choice. As promised, the money came. “I was right in there when the getting was good,” Scott remembers. “It was easy and I just kept getting promotions.” With each new title, the couple had more incentives to stay. “It’s the kind of lifestyle that gets you hooked in. The paychecks are big and the fringe benefits of working in that industry are pretty significant.” Both enjoyed embracing this financial reality – they bought an expensive car, a monstrous house, and pricy possessions for it. “We were big consumers,” Alex confesses, “We would go shopping and do a dump run just to get rid of all the packaging. It’s embarrassing, but it’s the truth. We had a big new house and we were filling it up.” Between making and spending money, the couple rarely found the time to enjoy the purchases, or each other. “We lived right next to a state park.” Scott says. “We could walk out our back door and be in natural habitat, but we hardly ever did it because we were so busy. I was working 50 hours a week, commuting an hour each direction. It was miserable.” Eventually, the paychecks and fancy possessions could no longer suppress the discontent and emptiness growing inside both Alex and Scott. One night they decided to change.