Book Review: Possum Living - Live Well Without Job and Money

I grabbed the book titled "Possum Living" over a cup of coffee at the Barnes and Nobles, one of my best pastimes on a Sunday afternoon. The book title immeidately attracted my attention. Did I just name possum one of the annoying animals in my last blog? They sneek around my yard sometimes, leaving their dog-like dungs. Yike. What is possum living?

The author of Possum Living is an 18-year old girl who lived off the land with her father on their half an acre. They managed to spend about $1700 a year in the 70's. She argues in the book that even the most stupid and laziest animals like possum can live off the land, why can't us humans. "The Gods gave man an easy life, but man has complicated it by itching for luxury", says she.

For a lot of us, our well-being is at the mercy of fluctuations of the economy. This living off the land notion, especially in this economy, is very appealing. No more taxes and insurance. Layoff? No, you are fired first! Republicans or Democrats? Who gives a rat's ass! You build your own house from scratch using the resources off the land (that's to say no electrical, plumbing or inspection required for this type of primitive house). You grow your own vegetables, and go fishing and hunting. Of course there are still some essentials such as toilet paper or tooth paste you will need to buy from stores, but you'll have to do so very frugally. In return you live free and independant from the money economy. Shall we say greener too? It's not an utopia. I guess some people are really living like that. In my past real estate dealings, I have run into a couple of the buyers who asked me to find them a cheap remote rural parcel of land. They didn't care about whether the land had improvements or not because they didn't need power and septic to live. One of them showed me a book on how to identify edible berries, claiming he could live off the land. This kind of off-the grid self-sufficient possum living is eaiser than you think. It's for you if you are a combination of the following people:

- do not want to work as a work stiff in the 9-5 rat race
- do not want to accept charity/welfare/foodstamps
- do not have interest in joining a hippie communue
- do not intend to pioneer into the boondocks
- do not want to committ crime
- do not want to wheel and deal in business

Yes, I can identify myself to be one of  those "do not" groups. The book was an interesting read until I moved on to the step-by-step possum living instruction pages half way through.  The advice started to get on my nerves. The "Living Well" (so she thought) means reading her account books for evening entertainment since TV, car and vacation are out of the question. Ouch! That hurts. They won't work for me and most of the people who are flipping the pages of this book because of the promised title. Possum are really just giant rats. Even for all the "do not" people, we'd choose living with mortgage and marraige over living like a rat any day. I think the correct title for the book should be "Rat Living". Somehow I suspect if that book was titled as "Rat Living" instead of "Possum Living", it would have had a hard time hitting the bookshelf or ever becoming a hit.