For nearly twenty-five years, poet Baron Wormser and his family lived in a house in Maine with no electricity or running water. Over the years, they settled in to a life that centered on what Thoreau called "the essential facts." This memoir spurns the ideology in favor of observation, exploration, and reflection.

"When people contemplated the way we lived, the outhouse was what stopped them. Wood heat was bearable; the lack of a refrigerator was a bother but bearable; but an outhouse was not bearable. Even a pleasantly appointed outhouse like ours, a two-seater with screened windows that offered a view of the piney woods that sloped down to the road and that stood at the end of a winding path lined with ferns and striped maples, was still an indignity. Even an outhouse with a sizable overhang to keep off the weather and a toilet paper holder that consisted of a nail on the back wall that was high up enough to deter mice from nesting in the roll was still an outhouse. Even an outhouse that displayed a laminated invitation to a Paris Review cocktail party and that had a bucket of lime in it to throw on what was gathering below to kill off any offensive odors was still an outhouse. 'What about January?' people would ask. You could feel the dread in their voices."