A couple decided they didn’t want to live in the city and set out to live off the land of the country, growing their own vegetables and spending as little as they could. It’s the story of Helen and Scott Nearing, rejecting the day-to-day typical life in favor of self-reliance and health, way back in the 1930s, made famous in their book, “The Good Life.”
But it’s also today’s story. I’m recently back from a trip to upstate New York where I helped my friend Alison plant rows of herbs and vegetables outside her 1860s farmhouse in the Catskills. She’s come from New York City to have a different life, days punctuated by swimming in the creek and collecting water from a natural spring on her land. The neighbors come over and fill up their jugs with the water, too. The man down the street might trade for some maple syrup or honey.
As I meet people in the Catskills, many have come to escape the pandemic, found a simpler life, and stayed. They are talking about how to stay forever – their jobs are now completely remote, or they might open a bed and breakfast, or maybe find work at a nearby town. While it’s certainly only a few who can make this choice, questioning how we want to live now and being able to have more choices as people don’t want to go back to the regular work world might be some of the lasting big changes from our pandemic time. In Madison, I'm finding I want to be outside all the time, planting, digging, seeing something grow.
In this week’s episode, Anne and Steve visit one of the modern back-to-landers, in Vermont, Makenna Goodman, a novelist who has embraced this life, even as she’s openly questioned the Nearing’s philosophy. But also in this show, we roll back history farther, asking whose land is it – and how do we respect and understand the indigenous land ownership of those who lived there first? Like many TTBOOK shows, we don’t have all the answers, but we are here to ask some questions. Maybe you have a story about your relationship to land you’d like to share with us? Email us at listen@ttbook.org.
–Shannon