Finding the book at a local used bookstore, I opened the cover and began to read:
Many a modern worker, dependent on wage or salary, lodged in city flat or closely built-up suburb and held to the daily grind by family demands or other complicating circumstances, has watched for a chance to escape the cramping limitations of his surroundings, to take his life into his own hands and live it in the country, in a decent, simple, kindly way. Caution, consideration for relatives or fear of the unknown have proved formidable obstacles, however. After years of indecision he still hesitates. This book is written for just such people. We maintain that a couple, of any age from twenty to fifty, with a minimum of health, intelligence and capital, can adapt themselves to country living, learn its crafts, overcome its difficulties, and build up a life pattern rich in simple values and productive of personal and social good.

This seemed to be a handbook outlining ‘The Way Life Should Be’ In 1932, amidst the Great Depression, Helen and Scott Nearing fled from a small apartment in New York City to a dilapidated farmhouse on 65 acres in Southern Vermont. With neither knowledge nor experience in farming, but a fierce determination, a Yankee’s self-reliance, and abundant patience they developed principles and practices for soil restoration and organic farming, sufficient to support themselves well, although simply. Their daily creed was four hours of physical labor, four hours of intellectual pursuits, four hours of socializing; with the remaining twelve hours perhaps they slept, for their output was prodigious building several stone houses and barns, and publishing numerous articles and books. In 1952, they moved downeast to Harborside, Maine, where they built their last stone home, preserved today as The Good Life Center (goodlife.org). The Nearings were mentors to Elliot Coleman and many others and their experiment in simple living indeed set deep roots in these parts.

Daniel is another farmer we’ve met at the local market. With a thick beard and baseball cap pulled low over his brow, his most prominent features are a welcoming smile and easy slow laugh. He is a southerner, born in Florida who resettled in Maine, up where there is so much light it’s the same latitude as the South of France. He loves growing here and along with his partner Ginger and their child Katia, Daniel farms 55 acres named Freedom Farm (freedomfarmveggies.com) up in Waldo County. Their operation is not organic, but pledged heartily to local and sustainable practices. They are savvy marketers, stapling recipes to cedar planks that hang beside their crates of produce. They supply numerous restaurants along the mid-coast, operate a farm stand on Mount Desert Island, sell weekly at Farmers Markets in Belfast, Orono, Portland and run an 18-week CSA operation, sold out before we moved to town. They sell veggies for cash or barter, and Daniel has asked me to build wooden crates in exchange for food. The woods been milled, but later than scheduled, and now he is stuck with the problem of too much produce and too few crates. This is an exchange that I relish and so in two weeks we’ll be heading up north to their farm. We’ll leave the Interstate at Augusta, and after passing through China, we’re told there will be a Bio-diesel gas station. A few turns later we should reach Greeley Rd. and then their spread of produce and cutting flowers, and ewes and lambs grazing on pasture with Holstein steers.

We passed through Waldo County when we drove downeast, to the coast at Corea, Maine. Waldo’s hilly terrain affords beautiful vistas but it is not along the coast, and there are no significant rivers that run through it. Land there is less expensive than other Mid-Coast regions. The Penobscot Bay forms the county’s eastern border, and at Bucksport, at the border between Waldo and Hancock counties, you cross the Penobscot River, a breathtaking span across a whitewater river far below, emptying the watershed into the Penobscot Bay and then further south, into the Gulf of Maine.

On the day we moved from Chicago, a bevy of crows circled overhead. This was odd, as I had never noticed it before in that place, and so I took it to be a farewell for our journey. After we crossed the Penobscot River, a bald eagle flew low, directly across our path, slowly, and not more than twenty feet overhead. It was beyond question a greeting from the natural world. This majestic creature, whose name literally means, “sea eagle with a white head”, flew down as though to greet us, to guide us, to remind us of the good life, as it should be here, among the rocks, trees, and ocean.

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