28 July 2023
BECKER COUNTY, Minn. Visiting Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer isn’t for the faint of heart. Once you leave the paved and well-worn highway outside of Waubun, a sharp right takes you onto Southeast Juggler Road. Paved only in earth, it’s rugged, narrow and hilly. The kind of road you might see in a Subaru commercial.
Oak, maple and pine trees line the path. They are nearly untouched by man, except for the ones sporting signs nailed into their trunks that read: “Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again.”
These are remote woods. But at the end of the dense northern forest, past a rusty gate and another painted in Minnesota Vikings purple and gold, you find one of the nicest couples you’d ever care to meet people who offer you a rhubarb crisp and coffee before you even shut your car door and insist they dig up a lady slipper from their garden to give you before you go.
Johnson and Sauer live in a cozy, one-room cabin here, nine months every year when temperatures outside range from 20 below zero to 100 degrees above it.
And they do so without electricity and running water.
How and why in the world do they do it?
Keeping it simple and small
Johnson knows the well on their property very well. It takes a few pumps of the handle before cool, crisp water comes gushing out.
“It’s some of the best water you’ll ever taste,” he says, handing visitors a glass. And it is. But it wasn’t too many years ago that Johnson and his partner, Sauer, got their water from an ordinary old faucet like the rest of us.
Both were divorced with children when they met while working in Clay County government. He was the county assessor. She was chief deputy recorder and later worked in the auditor’s office. He lived in an apartment in Moorhead, and she lived in a townhome in Fargo. He retired first and wanted to start taking long trips, and he wanted Sauer to join him.
“He wanted me to retire at a young age so we could travel, and I said, ‘The only way I can do this is if we moved to the cabin because I didn’t want to have a house payment or rent or any of those things,’ ” Sauer says.
The cabin is a rustic, one-room place on Juggler Lake in Becker County. Johnson built it with friends and his ex-wife around 2004. At just 336 square feet (14×24), it’s about as cozy as you get, a balance of rugged and quaint, with furs hanging on the walls and delicate, antique china on the wooden dining table.
“I always wanted to keep it simple and small,” Johnson says. “I fear projects that I can’t complete.”
So simple, in fact, that the cabin doesn’t have running water or electricity. It’s bare-bones living right above the still waters of Juggler Lake down the hill below. The 66 acres it sits on hold five other buildings, including sheds, an outhouse, a summer kitchen and a sauna.
Taking the plunge into off-the-grid living
It’s one thing to stay at the cabin on weekends, but to make it a full-time lifestyle? Many wouldn’t be up for the challenge. But not so for Sauer, who grew up in a family of eight on a dairy farm in Bertram.
“I grew up without running water until I was 12 years old, so not having water in the house or having plumbing and that was not new to me,” Sauer says.
Seven years ago, she and Johnson moved here for good. The plan would be to live in the cabin from around May 1 to Feb. 1 and travel the world in February, March and April.
Some friends and family were skeptical.
“Your brother-in-law said, ‘I’ll give you a year, and you won’t be back there anymore,’ ” Sauer says to Johnson.
He adds, “And then I think another family member was a little bit more favorable and said ‘Maybe you’ll last for two years.’ ”
While they’ve outlasted all the predictions, they admit their new life can be challenging. Winters are tough with them having to maintain the 3-mile stretch of road leading up to their cabin, plowing snow and trimming trees and branches downed from blustery northern winds.
Propane and wood keep the cabin warm in the winter. Windows provide the only air conditioning in the summer, but cooking in the separate summer kitchen across the yard helps keep the heat down in the main cabin.
How do you cook, bathe or go to the bathroom?
So, how exactly do Johnson and Sauer survive and thrive living the way some of our great-great-grandparents did?
The couple has propane-powered appliances, including a stove and refrigerator in the main cabin. Nothing is plugged in. Even coffee is made the old-fashioned way, percolated on an old pot on the stovetop.
They have a generator to occasionally plug in a KitchenAid mixer Sauer uses to make homemade bread. And while they have no television, radio or computer, they do have cellphones, which they occasionally use.
Bathing is done in a separate sauna right alongside the house.
“Most people don’t understand that the sauna started out as a bathing system for Finlanders,” Johnson says. “And we do have (a) supplemental shower, battery-operated, that we drop in a tub and stand on the front deck and use.”
Now to the nitty-gritty of when nature calls. There is an outdoor urinal on the property, as well as a nicely decorated and heated outhouse.
Funny enough, it also features framed photos of friends back in Fargo-Moorhead, including Johnson’s longtime pal and former Moorhead Mayor Mark Voxland.
“The picture ended up in the outhouse because we don’t have any room in the cabin and we liked the photo,” Sauer laughs.
“That’s why it’s in the outhouse. Mark hasn’t even been told that it’s in the outhouse yet, either, but it’ll be fine,” Johnson adds.
Watch Loren and Karen’s story:
What do you do all day?
The couple says with no television or computer and neighbors miles away, people often ask, “What do you do all day?”
“Things that people don’t realize when they ask that question is, when you’re in town, you turn on the faucet and you have water. We need to pump that water. We need to boil the water on the stove to do the dishes. We need to do everything the hard way. So, we don’t have a microwave. So, all those little things that people just take for granted, we can’t do that here,” Sauer says.
Johnson adds that summer is also full of yardwork and gardening; they have a huge crop of vegetables they grow for their food. They also go for rides and fish off their boat, “Lil Tug,” docked on the lake below. In the winter, there is always wood to chop, and evenings are spent talking and reading.
It’s a quiet life, but they love it. It’s the isolation they appreciate, along with the wildlife. They take the time to feed wild turkeys who stop by, and often spot bears, foxes and bobcats nearby. But there’s no fear.
“We respect them, they respect us,” Johnson says.
They make occasional trips into town for various appointments and grocery shopping but always look forward to coming back to the solitude of the woods.
Traveling the world
Every February, Sauer and Johnson do a complete 180, leaving the isolation of their Minnesota cabin to travel the world for approximately three to four months. They’ve visited dozens of countries but count among their favorite sites the icebergs of Newfoundland, the public bathhouses of Japan, and kayaking the Sea of Cortez.
“We were the only ones that were leaving Fargo-Moorhead with kayaks on top of our pickup truck in February,” Johnson says with a laugh.
The months they spend abroad are hardly overplanned. In fact, they don’t make plans or reservations at all.
“We don’t do tours ever. We’re off on our own, and we get to live there. People will say ‘Why are you going for so long?’ We’re going there to live for a couple of months. We get to meet the most wonderful people. We feel the heartbeat of the local people, and we love that,” Sauer says.
Similar to their life at home in Minnesota, they keep it pretty simple. No five-star hotels. They often travel in a minivan/camper with a bed and kitchenette.
“In one van, the bed was only 37 inches wide, and we slept in that thing together for four months. When I turned over, she had to turn over. When she wanted to turn over, I’d turn over. So, it was choreographed,” Johnson says.
Cramped quarters aside, the couple says it’s the people and the excitement that are the best parts of travel.
Looking back and ahead
Do they miss anything about their old lives working 9 to 5, living in town?
Johnson says he misses a good shower, but Sauer says she doesn’t miss a thing.
“The longer you’re back here, it really sets in. You don’t want to be anywhere else. I fear having to move back to the city at some point. As you get elderly, it’ll probably have to happen, but not yet,” Sauer says.
It’s a lifestyle not for everyone, they know that. But if you’re interested, they say, “What are you waiting for?”
“People ask, ‘How do you do it?’ Well, you don’t plan, for one thing,” Johnson says. “And you have to have the nerve and the gumption to just do it. Take a risk.”
Scroll through more photos of living off-the-grid Living off the grid Loren Johnson said there are close to 19 hundred feet of lakeshore on his property. In the bay is Johnson’s boat, “Lil Tug.” “It chugs along at about six miles per hour,” Johnson said. A view of the property owned by Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer from the sole access road on their 66 acres of property in Becker County, Minnesota. There are six buildings on the property: a cabin, a sauna, a shed, an outhouse, a summer kitchen and a woodshed. The cabin Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer live in doesn’t have electricity or running water. There are six small buildings in their “village,” as they call it. The cabin is 14’ x 24’ and 336 square feet. Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer have lived off the grid in their little “village” in Minnesota for seven years. They pump their water from a deep well, and there is a generator for tools. The couple said they chose to live a minimal lifestyle in order to afford traveling. Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer’s cabin is 336 square feet. On the lower left is the bed. Above it and to the right are areas for storage. They hang coats and clothes from the ceiling and use a stick with a hook to hang them and get them down. The cabin Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer live in is 336 square feet. They heat it in the winter with a wood-burning fireplace from Ireland. Loren Johnson gets water from a deep hand pump. The pump does not freeze in the winter. The cabin Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer live in doesn’t have electricity or running water. There are six small buildings in their “village,” as they call it. The cabin is 14’ x 24’ and 336 square feet. Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer added a wood shed a few years ago to their property. With no electricity or running water, Loren Johnson and Karen Sauer use an outhouse. ]]>