The Quiet Power of the Sun: Weldon Morton’s Off-Grid Story

When Silence Became Power

There was a time when every trip to the cabin meant gasoline. Heavy red cans in the back of the truck. The smell on his hands. The hum and sputter of a generator cutting through the stillness of the pines.

Weldon Morton, now 82, remembers those years with disbelief. “No more carrying gasoline cans, no more noise, no more maintenance,” he says. The old machines still sit in his garage in Santa Fe, relics from another era. Today, the cabin is powered by something quieter, something cleaner: sunlight captured by Jackery Explorer Portable Power Stations and folded into silence.

A Cabin in the Sky

Morton’s cabin rests high in the mountains of northern New Mexico, at 7,800 feet above sea level. The road winds seven miles off the highway, gravel crunching beneath the tires before the trees finally part to reveal Heron Lake. Here the air is thin, sharp, and startlingly clear. At night, the Milky Way pours across the sky.

“I see the Big Dipper. I see the stars. I see the Milky Way,” he says, his voice steady with quiet wonder.

It wasn’t always this way. In the early years, the cabin was lit by candles and lanterns. Food was stored in iceboxes, good for only a few days. It was a place to visit, not to live. But then came the panels, the cables, the small orange stations with glowing screens. Slowly, the cabin shifted. “It becomes home instead of just going for two or three days,” Morton says.

From the Alps to the Desert

Before the cabin, there was another life. Morton spent decades in international business—planes, hotels, boardrooms. His specialty was finance and consulting: evaluating companies, buying and selling, improving before selling again. It was a life of movement, but also of confinement.

“I’d catch an airplane, go do a job, catch an airplane back,” he says. “Very different from the freedom of being out in the forest, the mountains, the desert.”

There were moments, scattered like postcards, that pushed him toward change. Hiking in the Alps. Skiing in Switzerland. Off-road motorcycling in the desert. Over years, the pull of open sky grew stronger than the call of airports.

Preparedness as a Way of Life

As a former search and rescue team leader, Morton knows the wilderness is both generous and dangerous. “While nature is beautiful, it can kill you,” he says. Hypothermia, heat stroke, sudden storms. The lesson was always the same: be prepared.

Jackery became part of that preparation. Not a backup for rare emergencies, but the infrastructure of daily life. In winter, when snow piles at the cabin door and temperatures sink to zero, his refrigerators hum steadily, keeping food safe. The porch light glows. The DVD player spins a movie. Life continues, quiet and uninterrupted.

Gradual Trust

Morton didn’t buy everything at once. He started small: a Jackery Explorer 1000 Portable Power Station, then a Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Power Station. Soon he discovered what would become his standard—the Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro Portable Power Station. The reason was simple: flow-through power. The ability to charge the unit while using it.

“With the Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro Portable Power Station, I can gather electricity from the sun and use it at the same time,” he says. That single feature transformed his cabin from a temporary retreat to a livable home.

Now his collection is expansive: six Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro Portable Power Stations, four Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Power Stations, four Jackery Explorer 1000 Portable Power Stations, and more, each paired with a web of Jackery SolarSaga Solar Panels. He knows the numbers, recites them like an inventory, but what matters is how they work together. Integration. Efficiency. Reliability.

The Emotion of a Screen

Sometimes Morton finds himself watching the numbers on the station’s screen. “It becomes a contest between Jackery and the sun,” he laughs. On most days, the Jackery SolarSaga 200W Solar Panels deliver 75 to 80 percent of their rated output. But recently, the dial crept past 200 watts on a single panel. “Over 100 percent efficiency,” he says. “It’s like—wow.”

The numbers are more than data. They are proof, visible and immediate, that the cabin’s comfort flows from the sky above. “All you have to do is harness it,” he says.

A Home, Not Just a Cabin

The true shift came with two appliances: a refrigerator and a microwave. “I plug them in, and I’m at home,” Morton says. No more melting ice, no more meals improvised around what would spoil first. Now he can stay for weeks, even months, without disruption.

Other comforts followed: coffee in the morning, movies at night, light spilling from the porch lamp onto the gravel road. What was once a rustic shelter has become a living space—self-sufficient, quiet, and entirely his.

Ask Morton what “the best” means, and his answer is immediate: reliability. “When I need it, it works,” he says. Safety comes next. In a cabin of wood surrounded by forest, the last thing he wants is a fire hazard.

That trust was reinforced when one Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Power Station failed. Within days, Jackery shipped a replacement. “That warranty, that attention—it made me feel good about Jackery,” he recalls.

Best Friend in the Wilderness

For Morton, freedom is not the thrill of escape but the security of presence. It is knowing that when the snow falls or the summer sun burns, he can stay. The cabin doesn’t tether him to the grid, nor does it confine him to hardship. Instead, it offers a rhythm of independence.

“I don’t just camp,” he says. “I thrive.”

After nearly two decades in his off-grid retreat, Morton reflects on what has changed. “I have a home,” he says simply. A place where elk pass through the trees, where coyotes call at night, where silence is broken only by the crunch of snow under boots.

If Jackery were a character in this story? Morton pauses, then smiles. “Best friend,” he says. “Reliable, trustworthy. It’s there. It makes life better.”