The Way Home

Tales from a Life Without Technology

By: Mark Boyle

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

It was 11:00 pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.

No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce.

The Way Home is a modern-day Walden - an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing.

What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire - much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.

©2019 Mark Boyle (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

One of my new favorite books

This is beautiful in the simplicity of it. it's wonderful how nothing is everything and everything is nothing.

Rambling disjointed story

No idea about the author or anything else. I do believe this has some good ideas but it’s just not any kind of coherent story.

Review

A modern day Walden! An intriguing view in a modern day of seemingly numerous conveniences.

Very thought provoking listen!

He makes great points of where do we draw the line between man & machines.

Thoughtful Assessment of Our “Lost in Cyberspace” Dilemma

Mark Boyle covers more ground than our relationship with our devices. In fact, to use a play on words, he mentions planting hundreds of trees. He counters criticism with his year long experiment living using only simpler and older technologies than the myriad gadgets and energy that runs em that most of us surround ourselves with. Tells about an increase in feeling alive, appreciation of friendly exchanges between people, and awareness of natural surroundings. He quotes Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters’ phrase about becoming “comfortably numb”.