This morning at 6:30 a.m., I turned on the television to one of my favorite movies Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Being a lifelong Bruce Lee fan (well, almost), I love this movie, but I was also impressed by the performance of Jason Scott Lee (no relation to Bruce). I started wondering what happened to him. He was in some high profile films in the early part of the decade, but I never hear about him anymore.
After doing a bit of searching, I found that Jason has been living off the grid in Hawaii. A documentary titled Living Pono documents his adventures of living green. Jason’s farm, Pu Mu, is 4,000 feet up the slopes of the Mauna Loa. Jason’s philosophy is that his career meant nothing without an inner happiness and joy. By saying he is living off the grid, Jason isn’t kidding! He and those in his community practice water catchment. That means they catch rain water and store it in two tanks. Their toilets and sinks run off that water, but only what is needed is used because if they have no rain, they have no water, so they cannot waste it. They take bucket baths – warm up a little water, put it with cold water in a bucket and scoop up the water to take a “shower.” Clothes are washed by hand and hung up to dry. Jason is also a natural farmer, using traditional rather than commercial methods of farming.
Jason admits he knew nothing about agriculture when he started this adventure, but he wanted to get back to nature and get his hands dirty. His community has to be extra conscious of their trash because there is no garbage pickup to just whisk the trash away. He is mindful of fuel as they have to refill propane tanks or chop firewood. All this makes the community more aware of their footprints that are left on the land. While he does admit it is hard work, he also says they play hard as well.
For those that say he has abandoned his career – he hasn’t. He has been in one film each year for the last three years. He also built the Ulua Theatre in Pu Mu.
Jason has also worked with reforestation efforts in Hawaii and is aware of how his culture is disappearing in certain areas. Last year, he served as keynote speaker and was given an award at the annual “Who’s Keeping Hawai’i Green”event.
I can’t really tell if Living Pono (which as far as I can tell translates into righteousness or goodness) was a short or still a work-in-progress, but you can see almost 10 minutes of it at the Internet Archive site.