After being sacked from two corporate jobs in a row for insubordination and bad attitude, the author tries homesteading ten worthless desert acres he bought at a tax default land auction for $325. Broke and desperate, he manages to build a weather proof little hogan out of salvage and sandbags, and lives more or less comfortably despite having almost no pioneer or survival skills such as carpentry or auto mechanics. His solutions are low-tech and he borrows heavily from some of the hard scrabble fellow residents of the sun blasted Smoke Tree Valley. Few will want to follow the author's journey, but the point seems to be that just about anybody can live a life of leisure and basic creature comfort for almost no money.

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