For almost 25 years, Baron Wormser and his family lived "off the grid," subsisting in a small rural home that lacked electricity and running water. Wormser was and is a poet (indeed, he's a former Maine poet laureate), but this backwoods stretch was no Henry David Thoreau experiment or environmental project. In Road Washes Out in Spring, he fleshes out the reasons for his rude accommodations and describes what it was like living without light switches, faucets, hair dryers, hot water heaters, or flush toilets. With a far sharper wit than anything exhibited in Walden, he ruminates about the mixed complications and blessings of living the simple life.