I went around to a friend’s place to borrow a sander. He was having some trouble with his computers. He had his brother on the phone, calling from Europe, trying to fix it.
Finally I had a useful skill to offer in the local informal economy. A couple of hours later he was back up and runing and I was heading home with a gift of moose meat.
We’ll be spending a few years here. Hopefully we’ll get ever more entangled in a web of gift and skill exchange and grow ever fatter on delicious local game.