From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2003 - 19:26:31 MDT
It took their own papers to prove it, but a writer and historian who is
transcribing their papers has found that what "Living the Good Life"
authors Helen and Scott Nearing claimed in their books and what
actually occured in their real 'good life' are definitely not
consistent.
The modern luddite world relies on a 'back to nature' philosophy born
of the folk, beatnik, and hippie movements. This philosophy of romantic
acadianism and mysticism found inspiration in the work of the Nearings,
first published in 1954, who claimed that you could abandon modern city
life and 'get back to nature'. They claimed you could because they
claimed that they had actually done it.
Their book, "Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a
Troubled World", claimed to detail their life of 20 years in Winhall,
Vermont on an unclaimed farm. They first moved there in 1932 from new
York City. She in her 20's, he in his 40's, they built a complex of
stone buildings there and claimed to be living a life of frugal
subsistence and organic gardening. They made money from maple sugaring,
and broke their days into four hour chunks of 'bread work', personal
time and social/community activism.
Historian Greg Joly says it wasn't quite that way. "The way they
presented it in 'Living the Good Life' is different from how they lived
it," he says, "They had a lot more help than they give credit to."
While they weren't the only 'back to the landers' of the era, their
book, the first of many they wrote, stood out because it provided
detailed instructions for the average city slicker to leave city life
behind and strike out into the wilderness, forging a new life of
frugality. "They described a very pragmatic, step-by-step process, as
opposed to purely a narrative story," Joly says.
As he studied the Nearings, though, the boyhood image he had formed of
them, developed over a life of trying to replicate his own "Good Life",
jarred with what he found. Their portrayal of an ascetic life was
supplemented by family money on both sides, which they failed to detail
or even mention in their books.
Helen Nearing's papers, for example, show that the couple spent three
to four months a year for a decade at their small cold water flat in
New York City, something that wasn't mentioned in their early writings.
Helen also bought a brand new truck every year with family money. "I
heard that from some of the natives up here, I thought it was just sour
grapes, but Helen's diary lists the new trucks."
The Nearings also gave the impression that they made a living growing
blueberries after they moved from Vermont to Maine in 1952 to start
another homestead. It turns out that Scott Nearing's gardening notebook
shows that they only made money off blueberries for one year.
Joly and his wife live in Jamaica, Vermont, in an off-grid homestead of
20 acres. They heat their home with wood and grow much of their food.
They still find that his wife must work a full time job as a teacher in
order to make ends meet. "It just isn't possible to homestead with the
template the Nearings presented, because they never addressed the issue
of income," Joly explains.
For those wondering at this authors own knowledge, I grew up here in
the Upper Valley of the Connecticutt River, between Vermont and New
Hampshire. I've worked on farms, milked cows, pruned orchards,
collected maple sap, and tended vegetable gardens. My father started a
"Victory Garden" in the early 1970's partly for economics and partly
because of the Cold War. We kids were responsible for weeding,
maintaining, and harvesting a garden covering about 1/4 to 1/3 acre.
Mom and dad canned that which was not consumed by the end of harvest.
So much so that we still had jars of beets and pickles in the basement
for many years later (not that we'd want to eat them by that point). To
this day, I still have zero interest in even having decorative plants
in my residence...
As we saw in last year's PBS series "Frontier House", living the
luddite life has it's drawbacks and limitations. It also has a tendency
to be 'nasty, brutish, and short', in ways that are quite often glossed
over and overlooked by those who hate technology so...
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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