Photos: Living off the Grid

Amish children head to school April 2, 2007 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. (Getty Images)

Rejecting the modern world and living "off the grid" is an American ideal stretching back to Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Now photographer Lucas Foglia has photographed several of Thoreau's descendants for his new book, A Natural Order.

"Many of the people were motivated by environmental concerns; others were driven by religious beliefs or predictions of economic collapse," Foglia told Slate.com. The project took him four years and includes photographs of a variety of communities and independent families or individuals from Virginia to Tennessee.