To the Editor:

There’s always been a certain type of person who disappears—not out of fear, but out of clarity. You know the kind. They show up to barter at farmers markets with handmade tools. They fix your busted radio in exchange for fresh eggs. They know their way around a soldering iron and a hunting knife. And if you ask where they live, they just smile and say, “Close enough.”

They’re not running from society. They’re running on a different operating system altogether.

I think about them more this time of year—spring pulling the lids off root cellars, letting the wind blow through unplugged cabins. These people aren’t technophobes. Far from it. They’ve got solar-powered water pumps, 3D printers rigged from scavenged parts, mesh networks strong enough to survive a blackout. But their tech doesn’t serve profit. It serves freedom.

We live in a world that’s increasingly connected but deeply controlled. These folks—off-grid, off-script, and often just off the map—are writing their own code. Not to escape civilization, but to build a quieter, fairer one beneath its nose. One not dependent on the next truckload of processed plastic or the next terms-of-service update that strips away your privacy while pretending it’s for your own good.

They believe in the right to repair, the right to disconnect, and the radical notion that self-sufficiency isn’t outdated—it’s revolutionary.

They grow food in converted garages. They encrypt their communications. They share everything but their data. They are, in many ways, the last true citizens of a world too eager to turn everyone into a user.

And while you may never see them marching in protest or speaking on a livestream, their resistance is active and deliberate. A compost pile is a manifesto. A solar panel is a vote. A seed saved is a signal sent.

Not everyone is meant to go off-grid. But we’d all be better off if we knew someone who had. 

Martin Robert

Colton