The D.B. Cooper Effect
The Turning Feral Journal - Day 46
Day 46 - Over the last few years living in the most remote town in the lower 48, I have come up with a new gauge of community. I call it the D.B. Cooper effect. This measurement is designed to let you know if the community circle you run in is too large or too small.
Ok, Ok, let me explain. When I moved to the woods I had no interest in building a community… I came from an oversaturated urban environment and had dreams of being left alone. As I detail in my book, Turning Feral, that changed when I realized that community is necessary for survival – especially in austere environments. But, as I have grown with my community situated at the end of an eighty mile dirt road with a year round population of just thirty-seven people… Some questions have popped up in my mind regarding my neighbors.
You see, it takes a certain type of person to live in such an isolated place and the few who do all have interesting backgrounds. Ex-professional motocross racers, ex-Amazon execs, ex-military vets, ex-fire professionals, ex-ballerinas, ex-helicopter pilots, ex-NASA engineers, etc. All people who traded in their unique careers for peace and a heaping dose of relative solitude. Yet, none of these people (including myself) are extremely open about their past lives. The past is just that, the past and everyone here seems to live in the present, and this phenomenon is what has created the D.B. Cooper effect.At any given time and in any given conversation with my neighbors I have thought at least once, “Oh shit, [insert neighbors name] is D.B. fricken’ Cooper!!!”
Now, for those not in the know, D.B. Cooper is a famed thief who robbed a plane in 1971 for several hundred grand in cash, only to then open the aft door mid-flight and parachute out into the dark Washington state night, never to be seen again. And what better way to enjoy that hard-earned skyjacking money than to move to the most remote town in the U.S. and live a quiet life with no law enforcement? You see where I am going with this…
So, are any of my neighbors actually D.B. Cooper? Maybe. Maybe not. Only they know, but the D.B. Cooper effect has become my new measure for finding the perfect community size. My goal is to always live in a place where I know my neighbors just intimately enough to have the D.B. Cooper question pop into my head. If that question starts to fade, then it may be time to shrink my circle of acquaintances. You, the reader, can seek the D.B. Cooper effect wherever you live, too. Even if you live in an urban environment with hundreds of people per square mile, you can relegate your social circle to a manageable size where you start to regularly question the storied past of people you meet!
Daily Prompt: How large is your community circle? Is it so small that you know every detail of your acquaintances lives? Is it so big that you only have a surface level intimacy with them? How can you start to add or trim to your social circle to get the D.B. Cooper effect?:
Motivational Passage:
“Fear is an emotional upstaging of our common sense.”
-Andrew Pacholyk ‘Barefoot - A Surfer’s View of the Universe’
Rewilding Action: In keeping with the D.B. Cooper theme, I have always been proud that I used to skydive. A reckless sport? Sure. And it’s one that I have since quit after having kids, but it’s still nice to know that if I were caught in a plane that I could (theoretically) escape if I had the right equipment with me. Today, that interest in the sky has transformed into wanting to get my pilot or helicopter license. The pilots I have met in the backcountry have the ultimate freedom of travel and possess a priceless tool in access. And the great thing about getting a pilot license? You don’t have to live in the backcountry to get one. In fact, wherever you are today you could start and be one step ahead of the competition when you begin your own Turning Feral journey.