Article content continued

But Dick, whose weathered face and knobby fingers betray years of rugged living and slicing and dicing logs, says he can’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

Forget the city. Too much anxiety. Why bother with rent?

The West Coast has attracted a number of off-gridders over the years — those without access to electricity, indoor plumbing and other conveniences.

One of the best known was Sechelt Inlet’s Bergliot Asta Solberg, nicknamed the “Cougar Lady.”

In a 2014 biography, local author Rosella Leslie wrote that Solberg, who died in 2002, climbed mountain trails to hunt for goats, wrangled cougars, and once spent a night in the woods wrapped in the skin of a bear she’d shot.

Some off-gridders are professionals who were fed up with the urban rat race.

About a decade ago, David Cox and his wife, Sally, moved from the suburbs to middle-of-nowhere Read Island and built a home using how-to books from the library.

“I was bored. I thought the routine of driving in traffic and living to work just wasn’t satisfying,” Cox told CBC Radio last year.

Cox said they found great satisfaction doing everything themselves — installing solar panels and a wind turbine for power, gathering water from a creek, even attending to basic medical problems.

“It really makes you feel alive,” he says.

“You could give me a house in the British Properties (in West Vancouver) worth $5 million and I would not take it.”

That’s not to say he and his wife don’t enjoy their creature comforts: movies on Netflix, martinis with dinner and a home furnished with antiques and Chinese carpet.