 Walking, camping and foraging, the last natural refuge outside of technological society. The last commons open to all irrespective of wealth, albeit one that's always under threat. I know I'm not alone in that position, more importantly I know there are many more who want to downshift into something else, other than where they are now, but have not the first clue how. What you have to ask yourself is, how can I most easily let go of this, before you are forced to? Perhaps that seems a bit dramatic, but it's a good summary of where many people are these days. If the Covid crisis has got people rattled, that's more about the way it exposed the insecurity of their daily lives, rather than the direct risk of the virus. People need options, but all popular options take today's technical dependency as a given, something not to be questioned. At the root of this is a simple discussion. What if, one day, everything just stopped? Could you live happily? The reality of mass consumption is that the lifestyle it supports is dependent upon the ability to consume. Losing your economic status, or if the system falls into a crisis, will quickly mark the end of that lifestyle. Every ordinary person in the system secretly knows this, and a lot of political and media fodder, from fashion to election messages, exploit that fear to get attention. Generally though we don't think about it, except as apocalyptic disaster films or mind-naming TV documentaries. The moment you raise this question seriously, you invalidate the daily, mindless, carefree consumer resistance that affluence projects. And even when TV shows or newspapers occasionally open this box of horrors, there's always an, and finally, at the end, when they give some abstract and unlikely techno-fix that will save you, enabling you to go back to sleep once more. How is it possible to learn to live when the lights go out, and do that very easily and cheaply, but to still learn how those same ideas can create a safer route outside of this absurd system before that crash happens? Most ecological issues can be solved with less, less consumption, less pollution, less extraction, less waste, and combining all of those, less technology. By accommodating affluence from consumption as a given, radical movements of struggle to make any meaningful change in the last few decades. From modern slavery to climate change, too many campaigns focus on the bad results of the global technocratic economy, ignorant of how the positive effects of consumerism, and especially the screen-based digital world, warts people's perceptions in order to protect and perpetuate itself. For example, take the simplistic phrase often repeated by deep ecologists in the Neoludites. Turn it off. Okay, turn it off and do what exactly? Let's say I turn off the power and gadgets in my life. Now what? How does the average person work, travel, or buy and cook food? The idea of dropping out of today's technologically-enabled society represents a double-bind. You can't exclude yourself from society because the way it functions prevents you from doing so safely. Rather like a closed religious sect, turning off the technology in your life creates an automatic social death that cuts you off from everything else in your life that you value. For that same reason, the opponents of environmentalists or anarchists always use this argument as an attack that turning back progress is impossible and so continuing with ever more technology is the only viable option for all humanity. The very naivety of the turn it off statement, the assumption that people can just put down their gadgets and walk away, embodies the reasons for its failure. On the positive side though, by solving that failure, we might begin to make deep ecology or anarcho-primitivism a practical option for the average person to seriously adopt. Technology is not neutral. Technology reinforces the economic and political culture of the present day by allowing the corporate economic system to operate in the way it does. Just as many people on the political right dismiss poverty or unemployment as a lifestyle choice, so those on the left dismiss economic exploitation or polluting industries as a choice of capital. The fact is all science are trapped within this system because, by its nature, you can't disengage the unwelcome side of the modern economy without disavowing its benefits too. Again, it's a double bind for them too. Anyone who doesn't act like a good businessman or capitalist will be put out of business by the ones who do. You can't leave the system, even though your prospects in it are dire. What you must do is replace it with something else, something that you can maintain yourself. In my kitchen, or sat on a hill, the core of my simple life revolves around the kinds of basic skills that can be learnt from walking, camping and foraging. Yes, there are lots of reasons why getting outdoors is good for you, but beyond all the health and mental work being stuff, walking and camping creates a physical space in which you can learn the skills required for downshifting, exiting this high-tech, high-cost, dead-end modern lifestyle. A perfect example of the domination of society by consumer actions, which in turn reinforced the economic interests that have created them, is Britain's favourite drink, tea. Tea consumption isn't just a result of colonial trade, it's intrinsically tied to the urbanisation of the British people alongside industrialisation. That tea was once an exclusive product, imported in small quantities from distant lands. It was symbolically a drink of the wealthy. The agricultural revolution forced people from the land in step with the industrial revolution. That's because, as urbanisation created a market for bulk food commodities, it allowed agricultural estates to modernise production with the machines produced by industry. The plant-based flavours people added to boiling water would have traditionally been harvested free in the landscapes around in rural communities. As land clearance and enclosures took hold, the new populations and cities had to buy their tea, and that gave rise to a mass market for imported teas from the growing empire, which in turn reinforced the economic power of empire, promoting the evils it inflicted upon the world. Today, this historic process has turned full circle. Most ordinary people drink imported black tea. Afluent consumers are more likely to drink herbal teas made from specially produced herbs. How to escape this situation? The anarcho-primitivist solution. Do what our ancestors did and collect your own wild tea. It ought to preserve ancient common rights. The theft act grants the exemption for the picking of wild plants. Foraging is not stealing, it is your ancient right. With access by public road or right of way, you can pick what grows by the highway and make tea, or take it home and keep. Black tea represents a single flavour. By collecting your own herbal tea, you can experience a range of flavours, as well as the high level of nutrition compared to highly processed black tea. It sounds absurd, but having the ability to go outside and brew a bowl of rosehip tea on a hill is a gateway towards a lifestyle revolution. It's not literally the tea brewing, it's the mindset created by regularly and enjoyably undertaking such uneconomic activities. In a sense, walking and camping are the workable alternative to the simplistic turn it off message. That's because walking and camping rely on developing skills through practical experience. Rather than a hard break, you are creating a space to decompress, to learn the skills to create a parallel lifestyle outside of the consensual economic restrictions of society. Even if that does not lead you to rethinking your lifestyle in the immediate future, as the inevitable breakdown of normality grinds inexplicably forward over the next 10 to 20 years, these skills will give you options to deal with those events as they arrive. Everything must change. Going with the flow has no viable future. As the extent of the ecological crisis becomes clear, that we are past the point of no return and there is no going back to mainstream normality. People need to find a means to progress from that technological trap of modern lifestyle to find their own alternatives.