Unfortunately, poverty sweeps across countries. The unemployment rate is rising, and debts are growing and growing. The person who will be discussed later lives in poverty, but not because he lost his job or home, but because he chose it. The values of his life took on a whole new meaning after some events.
Poverty forced to abandon the house, but revealed real values.
The past that made Dan so
The article will focus on Dan Price 50 years old. 20 years ago he had a wife, work and two children. Dan read the 1974 Payne Halloween book about the author's denial, Harlan Hubbard, of modernity and his simple home on the banks of the Ohio River.
Price’s marriage broke up. The whole family moved to Oregon. And he decided to move first to a small shack in the woods, and then to an overnight stay, a cheap hotel. And finally, to the underground hut on a horse pasture near the river, where Dan still lives.
Present, bringing him joy
With his one spoon, fork and knife, a man prepares modest dinners for himself. He adds oats, nuts and grains, as well as any cereals sold at a discount. Dan still does not have a refrigerator where milk could be stored. Therefore, it adds water to cereal.
Work in pleasure
Price is flipping through the Chronicle of the Moonlight issue, an illustrated magazine about his life adventures, which has been out for 20 years. The Chronicles serve not only Dan’s creative activity, but also his small income, which allows him to attract sponsors who supply the man with tents and clothes, which are later advertised in the magazine.
Living like Dan costs $ 5,000 a year, which he earns by publishing an online wildlife magazine and sometimes earning money in the city of Joseph, in northern Oregon.
“I like to do what I want. I do not believe in homes and mortgages. "Who in their right mind would agree to pay a loan for a house their whole lives, in which they really couldn’t live working from morning to night?”
The difficulties of life in joy
For a man who has neither a washing machine nor a dryer, washing means washing his clothes in the river flowing through his property. He dries clothes on the branches.
“When you get rich, your dream is to create your own paradise. I have it. ”
Care and profitability
Dan cuts one poplar each autumn and instead plants evergreen trees whose branches do not break during storms. He rents a property for $ 1,000 a year.
Price prefers not to buy new tools, looking for used items at garage sales and in electronic classifieds newspapers (Craigslist). He also uses all his things to the maximum.
For sports, Price raises the bar, which he himself made of waste and concrete.
The value of things and money
The man has not paid medical insurance for years. Three years ago, Dan received a $ 3,000 hospital bill after treating kidney stones.
“I said guys I don’t have 3000. Can I have a payout plan?”
For $ 6, Price bought a file to fix a friend a chainsaw to cut a tree in a meadow.
"People take shopping very seriously. That's why they buy something all the time. I'm different. When I buy a thing, I, on the contrary, feel sad."
Charity as a vocation
Dan helps disassemble the wigwams (dwellings of the Indians of North America) in the territory of the indigenous settlement of Nez Pers, where a photo exhibition in the city of Joseph takes place. He is an expert volunteer who lived in a wigwam before moving to his underground hut.
Price found a job ad as a caretaker at a local cemetery.
“For me it was a revelation. Caretaker. There is something in the word.A similar feeling is caused by the "monk". Like some destination. I like to mow and care for places. I so much wanted to get this job that I started to clean up (plots) before it was accepted. ”
Dan Price's life is full of mysterious events and thoughts for us. Although in fact, everything is quite simple. And perhaps this modern society is used to complicating things? And people like Dan, on the contrary, make something surprisingly light and happy out of life.
Did Dan's example make him want another life? At least for a second the thought flashed, how money and work are not important? Really live your life, constantly working, right?
Questions ... Thousands of them arise in my head after similar stories. Stories about the lives of people who are not like others. And then you think: what are the values of your path?
