Utah Caveman's Example

All you need is focus and determination:

He may be the only man in America who has not lost a cent to the recession. That is because Daniel Suelo, a 48-year-old hermit from Utah, decided eight years ago to stop using money. He has spent the past three years living in a cave but still manages to record his experiences in an internet diary.

...Judging by some of the responses to the website and blog that he maintains via a free computer at a public library in Moab, Utah, plenty of Americans wonder if he is also totally without sense.

“You live in a cave?” commented one of his readers. “Forgive me if this doesn’t sound like the future of mankind.” Another added: “You are out of your mind.”

...It was during a trip to Alaska more than a decade ago that Suelo first realised he did not need money to live off the land. With a Basque friend named Anders, “we speared fish, ate mushrooms and berries and lived very well ... then we hit the road, hitchhiking, and realised how generous people were”.

Suelo, who was raised in a strict evangelical family, said he had long wondered why so few Christians who considered themselves devout were prepared to adopt the ascetic lifestyle espoused by Jesus. After a visit to India and Thailand he became fascinated with Tibetan Buddhism and Hindu sadhus, the holy men who wander the country without money or possessions.

Suelo began to wonder if he could become an American sadhu — a wandering ascetic in “one of the most materialistic money-worshipping nations on earth ... to be a vagabond, a bum, and make an art of it — this idea enchanted me”.

In 2001, fed up with a series of low-paying jobs in Colorado, he turned his back on civilisation and headed to the hills where he has lived, on and off, ever since. His home is a 5ft by 15ft cave in a desert canyon an hour’s hike from Moab.

...Living off a diet of desert plants, squashed animal carcasses and leftovers scavenged from rubbish bins, Suelo alternates long periods of solitude in his cave with hitch-hiking trips around the country.

“I’ve eaten squirrel, raccoon, rabbit and deer,” he said. “I’ve also eaten ants, grubs, grasshoppers, crickets, termites, lizards and snakes.”

He is used to being treated with contempt when restaurant owners catch him going through their dustbins, but Suelo retorts that what is really contemptible is how much perfectly good food Americans routinely throw away.

While much of his blog and website is filled with unreadable anti-corporate rants and long meditations on “the institutionalised bastardisations of Christianity”, he also provides a useful primer on living rough, from which tree bark makes the best tea to the tastiest parts of the thistle.

There are plenty of provocative asides that have generated spirited internet discussion. Many have identified with Suelo’s remark that “as I let go of useless possessions, I found more and more that I needed less and less ... It was like a tree dropping its leaves”.

He has also ignited an angry backlash from others who complain that he is only too happy to make free use of the costly internet facilities that others are paying for through their taxes.

“Who do you think pays for the internet at the library where you write this blog?” complained one reader. “You have the qualifications to get a job but, instead, you choose to leech off society.”

Suelo said he had no idea how long he would continue to live in his cave: “But the more I live this way, the more absurd it seems to go back to living in the prison of money. I was unhappy with money and I’m happy free of it.”