Most people do home canning, and a lot of families are set up with their own reloading presses. Lots of them homeschool their kids. Home birth with mid-wives is popular, and a lot of families do what they call ‘home churching’—small congregations of one to four families, meeting at home. All in all, they are just a lot closer to the land than your average city dweller, and they are about ten thousand times more self-sufficient.”
The next person brought into the group was Kevin Lendel, a shy, bookish electrical engineering major. His only claim to fame, and virtually his only form of exercise aside from bicycling, was foil and saber fencing. His constant fencing practice gave him a wiry build, tremendous flexibility, and lightning-fast reflexes. Kevin was a member of the University of Chicago fencing team for three years. He was never a phenomenal fencer, but he was good enough to help the team win several tournaments.
Kevin was not like most of the other members of the Group. He wore glasses with thick lenses, and had a mop of black hair that he constantly brushed out of his eyes. When he fenced, he wore a green bandanna to keep the hair out of his eyes. Kevin was Jewish. All of the other Group members were devout Christians. He was not particularly interested in the outdoors, and until he joined the Group, he had never fired a gun. However, Lendel did see the wisdom of preparedness, and changed his lifestyle and spending habits accordingly.
Lendel influenced the Group in a number of subtle ways. Most importantly, his cautious, well-considered approach to conversations and life in general tended to “ground” the group. He often said things like, “Hold on, let’s not be hasty” at group meetings, and even in the field during training exercises, and in planning patrols. Another influence he had was on the importance of quality knives and sharpening stones. His saber fencing experience made him “edged weapons conscious.”With his guidance, each of the group members eventually bought two or three skinning knives each, as well as a defensive knife.
Kevin taught several classes on knife fighting, and one on saber fencing.
The latter was more or less for fun. Kevin also individually taught each member the art of putting a fine edge on a knife with a soft Arkansas stone. For skinning knives, most of the members bought standard mass-produced Case and Buck knives, but a few opted for custom knives made by Andy Sarcinella, TrinitY Knives, and Ruana. Most of them also bought a Leatherman tool and a CRKT folding knife. For fighting knives, most purchased standard factory produced knives made by Benchmade or Cold Steel. Kevin bought an expensive New Lile Gray Ghost with Micarta grip panels.
Against Kevin’s advice, Dan Fong bought a double-edged Sykes-Fairbairn British commando knife. Kevin warned him that it was an inferior design. He preferred knives that could be used for both utility purposes and for combat.
He observed that the Fairbairn’s grip was too small, and that the knife’s slowly tapering tip was too likely to break, particularly in utility use. Dan eventually wrapped the knife’s handle with green parachute cord to give it a more proper diameter. Because the Fairbairn did indeed have a brittle tip, Dan did most of his utility knife work with a CRKT folder with a tanto-type point.
Kevin Lendel was very quiet at most of the group meetings. Typically, he had his nose in a book during most of the meetings that were dominated by discussion. This unnerved the others until they realized that Kevin was not missing a word being uttered. He could actually maintain two points of concentration simultaneously. On the few occasions that Kevin did speak up during meetings, it was either because he had been asked a question, or to make a point that everyone else had missed.
One of Kevin’s favorite phrases to use at meetings was, “I’ve just had a blinding flash of the obvious.” Many of his suggestions later ended up in written form as SOPs. For example, it was Kevin who first suggested that during times of crisis, every trip outside the perimeter be treated as a patrol, and that as such, the “two-man rule” be used. Kevin was also the initiator of group regulations on sanitation and the oft quoted, “Every injury or illness, no matter how slight, will be reported to the group medic as soon as possible.”
Kevin’s motivation as a survivalist was never fully understood by most of the group members. Todd, in awe of Kevin’s intelligence, but with doubts about what made him tick, referred to him as “a riddle wrapped in an enigma.”
After graduating, Kevin put his degree to use as a software engineer for Y-Dyne Propulsion Systems in Chicago. He started out in 2007 as a junior programmer with a salary of $85,500. By 2009, he was the senior systems analyst, and made $122,000.
In 2002, Kevin launched a second career as a freelance software writer. He offered his services in Pascal, Fortran, C, and Ada, the specialized programming language used in many projects by defense contractors. When he started doing freelance software, he was not sure if he could make enough money for his sole source of income, so he stayed on half-time with Y-Dyne. After six months of doing work for a variety of companies, he found that he actually had more work than he could handle. At this point, he resigned from his position withY-Dyne, and he started working entirely at home, using a Sun Microsystems Sparc-20 workstation—which was loaned to him by Y-Dyne—and two computers of his own: a Macintosh tower, and a hybrid IBM clone later upgraded with a 2-GHz processor.
Many of Lendel’s contracts came from outside of the Chicago area. He generally sent his software using a modem, since Bovill was not in a DSL service area, and it was just beyond range for the local wireless broadband service. Occasionally, he would send the programs on Zip disks via Federal Express. FedEx came right to his doorstep, since his house was just off the county road. To his surprise, nearly a third of Kevin’s contract dollars came from his former employer, Y-Dyne. They couldn’t get along without him.
Although he did not make quite as much money as he had withY-Dyne, Kevin enjoyed the escape from the mindless process of daily commuting and working 9-to-5. He told the other members of the group that it felt good to get back to working the “hacker’s hours” that he had enjoyed in college. He often worked as late as two or three a.m., and slept in until noon.
Most of Kevin’s contracts were to write software for industrial applications.
Few of the group members could relate to or even understand the complexity of Kevin’s work. It was not until he showed off a dazzling fractal graphics program that he had recently written, that the other group members got a full appreciation of his skills.
When Kevin saw Todd and Mary’s house in Idaho for the first time, his eyes lit up. He quickly realized that he was looking at his future, as well. Because he worked almost entirely from home, it did not matter if he lived in the suburbs of Chicago, or Outer Mongolia. All that he needed to work on his software writing contracts was power, a telephone line, and an Internet service provider.
He started looking for a place near the Grays’ farm almost immediately.
Kevin soon found a place that he wanted to buy. Ideally, Kevin would have liked to have bought a parcel contiguous to Todd and Mary’s. Unfortunately, all of these farms were 120 acres or more, and none were likely to be on the market anytime soon. In fact, on three of the four sides, adjoining farms had been owned by the same families for two or more generations. The fourth adjoining parcel, to the east, was a full section of land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management, part of the federal government. Beyond that was National Forest. Gray was told that B.L.M. lands were sometimes put up for auction, but that this piece probably never would be because it had historic significance. It was a traditional site for digging camas bulbs, a staple food of the native Nez Perce tribe. In fact, the camas plants still grew there, competing with the non-native grasses that had all but taken over the area.