For years I’ve been fascinated by the story of Scott and Helen Nearing, who wrote the classic book “Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World.” The Nearings were political radicals who ditched Manhattan in 1932 to move to a rundown farm in Vermont, where they became subsistence farmers, tapping their maple trees for syrup and constructing buildings out of stones they found on their land. In the process, they helped launch the back-to-the-land movement in America.
What I’ve found especially inspiring is the Nearings’ prescription for the “good life”: 4 hours a day for “bread labor” (gardening, maple sugaring and other physical activities); 4 hours for writing, music and walking in the woods; and 4 hours for community work and socializing with neighbors. I’ve never divided my own days in this way, but it’s a model I find appealing because it spells out some of the different things we need in our lives in order to flourish.
So it was especially interesting to visit Makenna Goodman on her own farm in Vermont. Makenna is also fascinated by the Nearings, but her feelings are more complicated. While they helped inspire her own move back to the land, she also believes their idealization of rural life “reeks of class privilege.” Not only did the Nearings have the money to buy land; they also came to believe the grind and grit of city life was the root of many social and economic problems. So, they left – or as Makenna might put it, “escaped” - to the countryside. Makenna doesn’t exempt herself from the contradictions inherent in the back-to-the-land movement. She cares deeply about trying to live ethically, but she says there are always tradeoffs - and you shouldn’t just walk away from national and global problems. You can hear the interview in this week’s show “Whose Land Is It?”
-Steve
