From: Treehouse Arts

I first came across John Brantingham’s work when he sent in a poetry submission to TreeHouse Arts, which I quickly accepted (you can view that publication here). Obviously, I liked his work, but what truly caught my attention was that in his bio he mentioned that he spends summers “living off the grid in a tent in the High Sierra, teaching poetry and writing for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.”

As an admirer of the great outdoors, the written word, and anyone who spends their time surrounded by both, I was intrigued. And so I promptly asked him for an interview. I hope you find our following conversation (or more accurately, his insightful answers to my somewhat fangirl questions) as fascinating as I do.

Natasha Ganes: Talk to us about your summers living off the grid. What initially moved you to do that? Are you out there alone? There must be numerous pros and cons to taking such a leap – what does your life look like now in comparison to before and how has the change affected your world views and writings?

John Brantingham: The point of living off grid for us is to help us enter a state of radical amazement for the world. My wife, our dog, and I go to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park where we teach free week-long poetry and art classes, so it’s not that we’re isolated, but we are away from the Internet, the news, Facebook, electricity, plumbing, and all the rest of it for ten weeks or so.

It happened organically. I offered to teach some classes in the park, and the park offered me a spot in one of the campgrounds, and as the popularity grew, I kept adding weeks because the experience of living in that way, in my van with no contact to the outside world, was powerful.

So much of the time, we simply can’t see the world, what’s really there because we’re looking at it through lenses of pain, stress, or self-doubt. I find that when I become too overwhelmed by the world, I am incapable of seeing the profound beauty of existence. Of course, a person does not need to live off the grid to enter this state, but it helps me, and it reminds me to look at the world when I am back living in my town outside of Los Angeles.

The transitions back to the city are often shocking to us. The world seems to feed on distraction. Those first few weeks back, my wife and I find the city to be surreal. There is noise everywhere, and everyone seems to be on a mission and not awake to what is extraordinary as they pass it. The most surreal aspect of it is the low-level evil that people engage in. So many day to day encounters with strangers, colleagues and even my friends contain moments of pointless meanness that I don’t understand. What is truly baffling to me is when I engage in those moment for no good reason. What reason could I possibly have after all, but it comes from a place of self-doubt and distraction. If I were truly alive to the beauty of the moment and the needs of the people near me, I wouldn’t act in that way.

Living away from the white noise of the city helps me to get into that state of greater clarity for the world so I don’t feel the negative emotions that would make it possible for me to cut someone off in traffic or say something condescending, but instead allows me to see the extraordinary beauty that surrounds all of us every moment. Read Rest of Interview Here