CU GRAD CELEBRATES NINE YEARS OF LIFE WITHOUT MONEY
CAVE-DWELLER IS 'LIVING PROOF THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY HAPPINESS'
By Jason Blevins
The Denver Post
November 21, 2009

Original Link

MOAB, Utah -- Daniel Suelo gets the same question, all the time.

"Why?"

The 48-year-old kneels in front of the desert cave he calls home, sips cedar tea from a chipped mug and explains, again, why he has intentionally lived the last nine years without using money.

It's instinctual to live without money; it's the way we were born, he says. It's political. The addiction to money fuels corruption, he says, and he refuses to support a corrupt system. There's also a spiritual basis for his life, a philosophical framework.

"The understanding that, really, we all possess nothing is the cornerstone of all spiritual endeavors and religions," he says.

And there are health reasons. Suelo, who was born with the last name Shellabarger, is unfettered with worries about a mortgage or bills or income. Tanned with a mop of gray locks framing his Buddy Holly glasses, he is a picture of contentment, his lithe frame stretched in the fall sun amid prickly pear cactus and red rock.

"I think taking things as they come naturally is the key to good health," he says.

A decade ago, Suelo was dizzy with depression. His University of Colorado degree in anthropology wasn't fulfilling. He had just returned from two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. He was disillusioned with his job working at homeless shelters and enclaves for battered women in Denver and Boulder.

Eventually, he concluded his growing despair was tied to fretting over his financial ability to maintain his stuff. Stuff, he realized, he didn't need. So, he gave it all away.

"We use all our energy to maintain our possessions, and it becomes an ugly cycle," he says.

He doesn't barter or work for food or rent. Barter is another form of money, and Suelo doesn't deal with any form of currency. Today, he embraces an ascetic life of "art and philosophizing." He's hardly the growling hermit, instead circling town on his trash-bin built bike, engaging a wide circle of pals.

"He is truly the happiest person I have ever met. He is so deeply peaceful, it's contagious," says Damian Nash, Suelo's college roommate and a high school teacher in Moab. "He is living proof that money can't buy happiness."

Every summer, when the heat in Moab reaches unbearable -- especially for a cave-dweller -- Suelo hits the road, visiting friends and gatherings along the West Coast, where he is known only as "Suelo."

"I have no idea what the future holds, and I don't worry about it. But the longer I do this, it seems absurd to go back," he says. "It would be like going back to slavery. There's just too much of a price to pay."

His cozy cave is an hour's stroll from town. Maybe 15 feet by 5 feet, the one-man crevice is crammed with buckets holding a few days worth of rice and beans, books and cooking pots.

The hole in the wall is tidy, with his bedroll neatly folded into a nook. Cupped ridges on the wall hold knick-knacks. While the cave carries a strong smell of patchouli oil, Suelo doesn't import any odiferous whiff of homelessness. He bathes daily in the stream below his cave. His clothes -- which he found in the trash -- are uncommonly formal for a man who camps year-round. Dress shoes and slacks, shirt buttoned to the top and a fresh wide-brimmed hat form a Suelo style that is more Bohemian chic than homeless bum.

Waste not, want not

Suelo lives an abundant albeit frugal life, thriving on the waste of a small town. Every week, he inspects Moab's trash, finding more than he needs. Supermarket throwaways keep him well-fed. He eats healthily, often eschewing the abundant supply of day-old donuts or expired sweets. Although, he says, chocolate is "my gold."

The wild onions, watercress, prickly pear fruit, service berries, globe mallow and pine nuts that grow near his home add fresh-grown flair to the trashbin-derived dishes he cooks over fire-branded coffee cans molded into stoves. He occasionally cooks roadkill gathered around Moab, but says he has never fallen ill from spoiled food.

The piles of trash behind Moab's half-dozen self-storage facilities provide a steady supply of clothes, tools, bedding and utensils.

"People don't realize how much perfectly good stuff is thrown away with just a blemish," he says. "Even after all these years, I'm still asking myself, 'Why would anyone throw this out?'"

'A parasite of sorts`

He used to bristle when he heard people call him a mooch, a leech or sponge off society. The occasional "get-a-job" comments from friends, family and readers of his blog (which he writes from computers in public libraries) don't bother him much anymore. He says he has stopped worrying about what people think about him.

Filmmaker Gordon Stevenson a few years ago made a short documentary about Suelo called "Moneyless in Moab". Response to the film was largely positive but varied. A few thought he was insane. Others saw a conflict in Suelo's rejection of money but dependence on a society anchored in commerce.

"His lifestyle does depend on a group of people using money, and some people saw this as a contradiction, but Daniel comes out pretty clearly that he is a parasite of sorts," Stevenson says. "Some people were angered by the idea that using money leaves you tainted or immoral. But I don't think Daniel thinks like that. You might think he is, but he's not judgmental."

Nash hears often from people who harbor hostility toward his friend.

"I think he makes people angry because they have this belief that if only they had a little more money, they'd be happy," Nash says. "His lifestyle is a challenge to their Holy Grail, the American consumer capitalist dream."

There is one thing that makes Suelo seethe: store owners or police who tell him he can't search a bin of garbage "for his own safety." He's had plenty of run-ins with both, but not as much in Moab, where he is well-known.

"They seem so mad about it. If they want to be livid about something, how about how much food we throw away," he says. "I know that there is enough food to feed a village in one Dumpster behind Wal-Mart or Sam's. All I'm taking is a few crumbs falling from this opulent table."

Suelo often bows to the generosity of others, while never asking for help. Self-sufficiency isn't a goal in his moneyless life, he says. So, he will sometimes house-sit, but it makes him antsy and he pines for his cave. If someone presses him to take something, he doesn't argue. He recently began taking yoga classes offered by a friend. If they insist on giving him money, he gives it away immediately.

"We are all completely dependent on everyone else. The point is to live freely, in the present, freely giving and freely taking, which is the way of nature," he says. "The idea is to give up control of credit and debt, and just trust the cycle of nature."

Suelo's friend Ray Pride nearly a decade ago took Suelo up to Alaska for two months of salmon fishing on his boat. After filling the holding tanks with thousands of pounds of bright red sockeye salmon, Pride tried to slip some cash into Suelo's stuff. Suelo was planning to camp and hitchhike around Alaska for a couple months before hitchhiking back to Moab. Pride was sure he could use the money.

"He found it and left it on the boat," says Pride, who lives in Moab. "So, I gave him $200 when I left at the airport."

Suelo gave it away right there in the airport, and the next day, he says, "I found a backpack." He toured Alaska for two months, penniless, living off the land. He ate mussels, kelp and seaweed while along the coast; mushrooms, berries and fish when he hiked inland. That was the trip that began his purely moneyless journey.

Suelo grew up in an evangelical Christian home and is well-versed in biblical teaching. He also quotes from the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon and an array of Hindu teachers. While hiking in Alaska, he mulled his spirit's direction and felt a sort of hypocrite.

"Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you," Suelo says, citing a passage from the book of Matthew. "Did I really believe that? The only way to know is to try it. I want to be able to talk from my heart and live it, too."

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MEET THE MAN WHO LIVES ON ZERO DOLLARS
By Christopher Ketcham
Details
July, 2009

Original Link

Daniel Suelo lives in a cave. Unlike the average American -- wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office -- he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face: CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE). From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo's been here for three years, and it smells like it.

Night falls, the stars wink, and after an hour, Suelo tramps up the cliff, mimicking a raven's call -- his salutation -- a guttural, high-pitched caw. He's lanky and tan; yesterday he rebuilt the entrance to his cave, hauling huge rocks to make a staircase. His hands are black with dirt, and his hair, which is going gray, looks like a bird's nest, full of dust and twigs from scrambling in the underbrush on the canyon floor. Grinning, he presents the booty from one of his weekly rituals, scavenging on the streets of Moab: a wool hat and gloves, a winter jacket, and a white nylon belt, still wrapped in plastic, along with Carhartt pants and sandals, which he's wearing. He's also scrounged cans of tuna and turkey Spam and a honeycomb candle. All in all, a nice haul from the waste product of America. "You made it," he says. I hand him a bag of apples and a block of cheese I bought at the supermarket, but the gift suddenly seems meager.

Suelo lights the candle and stokes a fire in the stove, which is an old blackened tin, the kind that Christmas cookies might come in. It's hooked to a chain of soup cans segmented like a caterpillar and fitted to a hole in the rock. Soon smoke billows into the night and the cave is warm. I think of how John the Baptist survived on honey and locusts in the desert. Suelo, who keeps a copy of the Bible for bedtime reading, is satisfied with a few grasshoppers fried in his skillet.

He wasn't always this way. Suelo graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in anthropology, he thought about becoming a doctor, he held jobs, he had cash and a bank account. In 1987, after several years as an assistant lab technician in Colorado hospitals, he joined the Peace Corps and was posted to an Ecuadoran village high in the Andes. He was charged with monitoring the health of tribespeople in the area, teaching first aid and nutrition, and handing out medicine where needed; his proudest achievement was delivering three babies. The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields -- quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils -- for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn't need, as Suelo describes it. They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. "It looked," he says, "like money was impoverishing them."

The experience was transformative, but Suelo needed another decade to fashion his response. He moved to Moab and worked at a women's shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest -- how real was help that demanded recompense? The answer lay, in part, in the Christianity of his childhood. In Suelo's nascent philosophy, following Jesus meant adopting the hard life prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. "Giving up possessions, living beyond credit and debt," Suelo explains on his blog, "freely giving and freely taking, forgiving all debts, owing nobody a thing, living and walking without guilt . . . grudge [or] judgment." If grace was the goal, Suelo told himself, then it had to be grace in the classical sense, from the Latin gratia, meaning favor -- and also, free.

By 1999, he was living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand -- he had saved just enough money for the flight. From there, he made his way to India, where he found himself in good company among the sadhus, the revered ascetics who go penniless for their gods. Numbering as many as 5 million, the sadhus can be found wandering roads and forests across the subcontinent, seeking enlightenment in self-abnegation. "I wanted to be a sadhu," Suelo says. "But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping nations on earth and be a sadhu there. To be a vagabond in America, a bum, and make an art of it -- the idea enchanted me."

There isn't enough space in Suelo's cave for two, so I sleep in the open, at the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. No worries about animals, he says. Though mountain lions drink from the stream, and bobcats hunt rabbits under the cottonwoods, the worst he's experienced was a skunk that sprayed him in the face. Mice scurry over his body in the cave, and kissing bugs sometimes suck the blood from under his fingernails while he sleeps. He shrugs off these indignities. "After all, it's their cave too," he says. I hunker down near a nest of scorpions, which crawl up the canyon walls, ignoring me.

The morning ritual is simple and slow: a cup of sharp tea brewed from the needles of piñon and juniper trees, a swim in the cold emerald water where the creek pools in the red rock. Then, two naked cavemen lounging under the Utah sun. Around noon, we forage along the banks and under the cliffs, looking for the stuff of a stir-fry dinner. We find mustard plants among the rocks, the raw leaves as satisfying as cauliflower, and down in the cool of the creek -- where Suelo gets his water and takes his baths (no soap for him) -- we cull watercress in heads as big as supermarket lettuce, and on the bank we spot a lode of wild onions, with bulbs that pop clean from the soil. In leaner times, Suelo's gatherings include ants, grubs, termites, lizards, and roadkill. He recently found a deer, freshly run over, and carved it up and boiled it. "The best venison of my life," he says.

I tell him that living without money seems difficult. What about starvation? He's never gone without a meal (friends in Moab sometimes feed him). What about getting deadly ill? It happened once, after eating a cactus he misidentified -- he vomited, fell into a delirium, thought he was dying, even wrote a note for those who would find his corpse. But he got better. That it's hard is exactly the point, he says. "Hardship is a good thing. We need the challenge. Our bodies need it. Our immune systems need it. My hardships are simple, right at hand -- they're manageable." When I tell him about my rent back in New York -- $2,400 a month -- he shakes his head. What's left unsaid is that I'm here writing about him to make money, for a magazine that depends for its survival on the advertising revenue of conspicuous consumption. As he prepares a cooking fire, Suelo tells me that years ago he had a neighbor in the canyon, an alcoholic who lived in a cave bigger than his. The old man would pan for gold in the stream and net enough cash each month to buy the beer that kept him drunk. Suelo considers the riches of our own forage. "What if we saw gold for what it is?" he says meditatively. "Gold is pretty but virtually useless. Somebody decided it has worth, and everybody accepted this decision. The natives in the Americas thought Europeans were insane because of their lust for such a useless yellow substance."

He sautés the watercress, mustard leaves, and wild onions, mixing in fresh almonds he picked from a friend's orchard and ghee made from Dumpster-dived butter, and we eat out of his soot-caked pans. From the perch on the cliff, the life of the sadhu seems reasonable. But I don't want to live in a cave. I like indoor plumbing (Suelo squats). I like electricity. Still, there's an obvious beauty in the simplicity of subsistence. It's an un-American notion these days. We don't revere our ascetics, and we dismiss the idea that money could be some kind of consensual delusion. For most of us, it's as real as the next house payment. Suelo doesn't take public assistance or use food stamps, but he does survive in part on our reality, the discarded surfeit of the money system that he denounces -- a system, as it happens, that recently looked like it was headed for the cliff.

Suelo is 48, and he doesn't exactly have a 401(k). "I'll do what creatures have been doing for millions of years for retirement," he says. "Why is it sad that I die in the canyon and not in the geriatric ward well-insured? I have great faith in the power of natural selection. And one day, I will be selected out." Until then, think of him like the raven, cleaning up the carcasses the rest of us leave behind.

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Suelo Blog

Suelo Website

Wikipedia on Suelo