Loving and Leaving the Good Life

When your 100-year old husband of 55 years has passed on and you, at 88, can see your own end, and when you have spent most of those years seeking and living the good life, and when you take the time and trouble to record your thoughts for posterity, it is surely worthwhile for us, the readers, to take note and reflect on what might be of value in our own goal of living the good life. This is not a biography of the husband, Scott, nor an autobiography of Helen but it is offered as a tribute to Scott's being as Helen knew it. She wants Scott to be remembered as an unassuming, kindly, wise, husband as well as a principled, uncompromising, intellectual radical; she also wants to share with us his peaceful, intentioned, and premeditated ending. Born in the upper echelons of society, he worked alongside immigrant laborers in the Pennsylvania mine run by his grandfather. This was a formative experience that resulted in his speaking publicly in his early twenties on liberal reform. '''Even before I began the study of economics,' he said in an early lecture, 'I was impressed by the monstrous inequality which exists between the rich and the poor in modern society. The rich enjoy wealth, leisure, and boundless opportunity. The poor are overwhelmed by misery, overwork, and insanitation. The rich have a heaven of opportunity; the poor a hell of misery, and the heaven of the rich is founded upon the hell of the poor. If I was impressed by these conditions before I had studied them, I was appalled after having given them careful consideration. I had heard of poverty; I believed that misery and vice existed, but I was not aware that they were prevalent in every town and city of the land. Ability and capacity were suppressed; together with the progress which might well be attained, were opportunity more universal ... The poor are ignorant of the fact that by standing together at the ballot box, they might revolutionize conditions in a decade.'"Very soon he had offended the powers that be with his outspoken views and he would never teach again in the United States. From that point Scott's life can be summed up in these sentences: "The living of an ideal involves payment of a certain price ... the further the ideal is removed from the common practice, the higher the price that must be paid for it ... If your ideal is to live a mentally active, mentally honest life, to seek the truth, then you may have to sacrifice even food, clothing, and shelter to get it." and "The majority will always be for caution, hesitation, and the status quo - always against creation and innovation. The innovator - he who leaves the beaten track - must therefore always be a minoritarian - always be an object of opposition, scorn, hatred. It is part of the price he must pay for the ecstasy that accompanies creative thinking and acting." Scott was aware of the price he would have to pay for his convictions; he regretted enormously the loss of the day-to-day contact with his university stud

In today's youth-obsessed contemporary culture, it is a rare treat to be able to find a book so full of loving wisdom written by someone so involved socially, politically, and spiritually in the events of the 20th century. Therefore, I was enthralled in reading Helen Nearing's moving, absorbing and often quite disarming recollections and reflections on her life, both as an individual and as the lifetime partner of one of the most celebrated critics, iconoclasts and individualists of our time, economist, philosopher and social critic Scott Nearing.The two lived lives singularly devoid of apologies, half-efforts, or excuses, living it largely on their own terms, based on their own labors and ingenuity. Early in the 1930s they struck out from New York City to escape the Depression and social convention by starting a revolutionary experiment in rural Vermont. In many respects the experiment succeeded, yet they were never able to transform it from a personal adventure to one more largely social and community-based in the Vermont setting. With the coming of ski resorts and encroaching exurbia in the early 1950s, the Nearings moved once again to rural Penobscot Bay in Maine to start again.Of course, in due time they were suddenly "discovered" by the baby boomers and the counterculture in the late 1960s, and became the elder statesmen of the `back-to-the-land' movement of the late sixties and early seventies. In all this, Scott and Helen continued in their commitment to a socially aware, civically responsible, and environmentally sustainable way of living. By the time Scott died at age 100 in the early 1980s, thousands of curious counterculture hopefuls made the pilgrimage to visit with the Nearings at their celebrated farm in rural coastal Maine. This is a lovely, thoughtful, and wise book, full of the almost endless love and care and compassion Helen Nearing brought to all of her endeavors for her many decades of purposeful and socially responsible living. This book is no small treasure; it looms large and lovely for those who are aware of the incredible journey the Nearings made as fellow citizens, and also of the loving and special relationship these two rugged individualists shared. I have read it several times, and love having it on my bookshelf. I suspect you will too.

I discovered Helen and Scott's books in the early 1970s and they inspired and sustained me as I planned my escape from urban California. Not long before she died, Helen reviewed my book and gave it a wonderful testimonial which I will always cherish. No other two people have had a greater influence on the back-to-the-land movement. Helen and Scott were born to privilege and rejected it to live lives that showed by example their commitment to right living. They were vegetarians, they raised most of their food, and they were remarkable in their physical and intellectual capacities. Their physical bodies are dead but their spirits live on in the lives of those now living the good life because of their example. After Scott died at the age of 100 by purposefully not eating, Helen wrote this candid book that gives insight into their private lives and reveals their deep convictions.

Helen and Scott Nearing represent different things to different people. I knew them through the columns they wrote in The Mother Earth News, back in the 70's. I was unaware of the circumstances that laid the foundation for their move to their farm in Vermont, and consequently to Maine. This book puts their lives into a full perspective. While I do not agree with Scott Nearing's socialist philosophies, I now understand the motivating factors in his life. And though I have read some of Krishnamurti's work, I had no idea that there was a connection back to Helen Nearing. It is fascinating to see the threads of Helen's and Scott's lives woven together in this book. This is not a book of "how-to" information, but a book about the people we have known as true "back-to-the-land" practitioners. It gives a substance to, and a greater understanding of, the books they wrote about their "Good Life". It is also the love story of two people whose streams were destined to cross and join, resulting in a life that was more satisfying than either might have achieved alone. I highly recommend this book to those who know Helen and Scott Nearing only through the books about their lives on the farm.