Now is your chance to flee society. Drop off the grid. Pull a Thoreau. Be you a survivalist, an environmentalist or a cheapskate-ist, you can join the growing movement of Americans embracing off-grid living.

"There's a desire to step out of the rat race, and in America, that goes very deep in the national psyche," says Nick Rosen, author of "Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America" and editor of www.off-grid.net. "You know, the pioneering spirit and sturdy self-reliance -- these things which define the American character."