Life at The Good Life Center
(Page 3 of 4)
September/October 2001
By Chris Eaton and Neha Shukla
In the kitchen hangs a photograph of Scott with a great weathered grin and one of Helen standing beneath a mammoth sunflower. Looking at them today, I realize that my awareness of the full cycle of life and death has been stronger and more constant during the last few months than at any other time in my life. The Nearings’s passing is as much a part of their story as their living was, and the deliberate ways that they approached both are evident all around us.
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September
Chris writes: Many people ask if we have followed the Nearings’s way of splitting the day into three distinct parts: four hours of bread labor, four hours of personal/professional work, and four hours dedicated to community service. The quick answer is, well, no. We have aspired to that schedule, and will continue to, but so far we’re just trying to keep up with all that needs doing. I believe this is the very situation that Helen and Scott were trying to avoid—to not get stuck in the struggle to survive. Having talked to some people who have been successful at homesteading, there seems to be a common thread running through their stories. Fetching water, getting wood, and making sure the roof doesn’t leak are important, base-level needs, but equally so are creativity and stimulating the intellect.
October
Chris writes: Starting in the early fall and continuing through the winter, winds from the west and northwest pile seaweed on the beach in windrows. Composted, this is the nutrient base of the garden. Helen and Scott built a road down to the beach near the end of their old driveway—I call it the sea-manure highway. I bring each teetering wheelbarrow to rest at the current compost pile, draped with rockweed dangling to the ground and a pitchfork stuck into it pointing out the osprey and the raven overhead. Layers of seaweed and hay collected from a nearby field slowly stack up, and I add more spruce poles as the pile grows higher. By tomorrow evening, though, this mass will start its heating cycle and shrink to a quarter of its current volume, requiring more loads. We’re minting gardener’s gold, for stewards who will be here a couple of years after us. Our neighbor says that the most common shortcoming of organic farmers is to get behind on making compost, so tomorrow I’ll bring in more seaweed to keep up the supply.
November
Neha writes: This has been an unusual experience in many respects, but particularly in the way we have come to know Helen and Scott—as much as we could know two people without ever having met them. It’s an intimate experience living in someone’s home, surrounded by their things, their library, using their tools in the garden, their pots in the kitchen, or seeing an old pair of sneakers in the corner. Helen’s notes are everywhere—tucked into books, pinned on the walls—and I have come to know her handwriting well. That is the material experience we have of them, and the other experience is one that is told: by them in their books; by us to the many who visit this place; and most of all, by people who knew them, or met them once, or just heard them speak on the radio. I can’t really say that I know them now, but perhaps I have a little more of an understanding—a more human picture—of who they were.