I often find myself standing in the middle of a quiet forest, leaning against the tailgate of a truck that cost more than some people’s down payments, and yet, the shadow of self-doubt follows me even there.
By most objective measures, I’ve “made it.” I have a solid career in middle management, directing data services and developing products by linking public records—a niche skill set that has provided me with a high income and a secure future. I have a million-dollar net worth, a brand-new SuperDuty, and the freedom to spend my weekends exactly where I want: in the deep wilderness, away from the hum of the city.
Yet, the doubt creeps in.
It stems from the optics of my life. I’m 43 years old, and I’m a renter. I live in a run-down apartment because it’s cheap and close to work. I watch every single dollar. I live a life of aggressive saving and investing, funneling resources toward a vision of a 2040 retirement and an off-grid homestead that exists only in my mind and a few bookmarks on land-search websites.
When you reject the standard consumer lifestyle—the plastic suburban house, the 72-degree climate control, the constant “buy-buy-buy”—it’s easy to feel impoverished. When I’m riding my bike to work or taking the city bus while my peers are signing 30-year mortgages, there’s a nagging voice that says I’m falling behind.
The truth is the opposite. I’m actually coming out ahead—not just in my brokerage accounts, but in my mental health and physical well-being. But that doesn’t stop the critics. Everyone has advice on how I should spend my money or where I should live.
Ultimately, though, I am my own deepest critic. My own judgment of my life choices cuts deeper than anything a coworker or a social media post could say. It’s the “perfectionist” in me, the part that analyzes technical specs and data points, suddenly turning that analytical lens on my own soul.
I’ve chosen a different life. It is a frugal existence, yes, but it is an intentional one. I’ve realized that being “financially responsible” doesn’t mean depriving yourself of everything; it means spending ruthlessly on the things you actually care about—like a reliable rig that gets you to the backcountry—while cutting the fat from the things you don’t.
I am a work in progress. I’m learning to trust the data of my own life: that I am secure, that I am capable, and that the path to the off-grid cabin is being paved one intentional dollar at a time. The gray hair is coming in, and the world is getting louder, but I’m choosing to listen to the birds in the pine barrens instead of the doubt in my head.
For a long time, I viewed industrial solar through a lens of skepticism. To me, it looked like the violent, ugly consumption of thousands of acres—open space and prime farmland sacrificed to power distant cities. It felt like an imprudent response to the climate crisis: a trade-off where we exchanged the soul of the rural landscape for a few megawatts of power. I saw it as a “woke conspiracy” driven by do-gooders who, in their innocent rush to save the planet, were inadvertently creating an industrial hellscape.
But as the technology evolved and I dug deeper into the reality of land use, my perspective shifted. I stopped framing solar as a “green” crusade and started seeing it for what it actually is: an affordable way to generate electricity that protects the long-term integrity of rural land.
One of the most significant realizations I’ve had involves the permanence of land use. People often think the problem with residential subdivisions is the difficulty of tearing down houses or the compaction of soil. In reality, structures are temporary; we have the means to demolish and haul away debris. The true “irreversible commitment” of a subdivision is the fragmentation of ownership. Once a large tract of land is split into dozens or hundreds of hands, it is nearly impossible to ever consolidate it again for a different future use.
Solar farms are different. They represent consolidated land—usually leased in large tracts from a single farmer. Because the ownership remains intact, the land’s future remains flexible. Furthermore, a solar farm is remarkably easy to clean up. Most of its volume and weight is valuable scrap metal—copper wiring and steel frames. Even the panels, despite the fear-mongering about hazardous waste, are largely inert glass, plastic, and silicon. If push came to shove, you could bury them in a hollow with minimal environmental impact, though their secondary market value for off-grid users and the developing world makes that unlikely.
When you live a rural life, you quickly realize that your neighbors define your freedom. Rural life is often dirty, loud, and smelly. If I’m out on my land shooting guns, burning garbage, or tending to my hogs, I don’t want a neighbor in a residential development calling the cops. Residential neighbors suck when it comes to the realities of a working rural landscape. They don’t want to smell manure or hear the late-night hum of a harvester.
By comparison, a solar farm is the perfect neighbor. It doesn’t complain about the smell of livestock or the sound of gunfire. It doesn’t spread chemicals or glyphosate to control pests like many farms and managed forests do. It doesn’t create the toxic stench of a regional landfill. It sits there, quietly, producing a remarkable amount of power with zero ongoing gas emissions or ash.
The climate crisis is real, and our demand for electricity is skyrocketing. While solar is land-intensive and capital-heavy at the start, its fuel is unlimited and its maintenance is low. We don’t need to paint it in a “green” light or pretend it doesn’t consume resources. We should see it as a pragmatic tool—one that generates the power we need while treading lightly enough on the land to ensure that, when its twenty-five or thirty years are up, the land is still there, whole and ready for whatever comes next.
