Less than one year ago today, having just returned from the wilderness of northeast Washington, I sat in a local coffee shop in a small town in Kentucky, perusing the Internet.

I had just returned from spending the summer in the Washington wilderness and I was hell-bent on figuring out how to live there full-time.

Not just live there, but live there in a certain way - I wanted land, a homestead, not to be crippled by the intense winters from lack of proper equipment, I wanted to be able to make a lucrative income so that I could establish an off-grid homestead in the wilderness and enjoy daily life on this landscape I loved so dearly, without it always feeling transient.

In a place with only three people per square mile, jobs are few and far between. Especially good ones.

But even if there were jobs available, I wanted to escape the morning alarm ritual, living life by a clock, wearing busy-ness as a badge of honor, commuting to work each day feeling like a cog in a machine.

To build out the dream that existed only in my imagination, though, was going to require money.