Somewhere, Away From It All<br />Dr. Goetzen said that what keeps people from pursuing an off-the-grid lifestyle is “this really puritanical, overly hygienic life.” People think, Dr. Goetzen said,<br />that they will “get sick from looking at a compost bucket.”<br />For many, the decision to leave the grid is born out of economic necessity; urban areas become uninhabitable, as both the resources<br />and the number of people who can afford to have access to them dwindle.<br />Photographs by Lauren Field<br />Produced by Eve Lyons<br />OLYMPIC PENINSULA, Wash. — Somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, which extends from the northwest coast of Washington, a community<br />has chosen to live independent of the public supply of water, electricity and other utilities on which most residents rely.<br />Dr. Goetzen acknowledged the erasure of indigenous genocide inherent in some modern homesteading movements: “It’s important to note what the native tribes were doing here before,<br />that they’re still here, that this kind of semi-utopia we’re building is on settled, colonized land.”<br />Eight federally recognized tribes reside on the peninsula, physically relegated<br />to narrow strips of reservations, mostly along the peninsula’s west side.
