JAMAICA — There is a small stone house up the hill behind my house. It was built in the early 1940s by Scott and Helen Nearing, who left the hustle and bustle of New York City to come live in Vermont in a thoughtful and self-sufficient manner.
As Helen writes in her preface to The Good Life Album, “We decided we would rather be poor in the country than poor in the city so, in 1932, we moved to a rundown old farm in southern Vermont, for which we paid $300 down and took on an $800 mortgage.... We were convinced that life could be good and we determined to make ours so.”
They were to call this life the Good Life, and they became adept at both living it and writing about it. Many were to read their clear curious books and follow in their vivid green footsteps.
The house behind me was one of the first stone houses the Nearings built and, as they mention in Continuing the Good Life, they built it “to gain experience before we tackled our own home.”
It is a practice house then, one built before the 11-year building process that resulted in their main house, a lovely stately affair in which they lived many joyous, industrious years before uprooting themselves once again, to the coast of Maine. The main house is situated a mile and change up the road from me. It is spacious - grand, even - though in a gentle natural manner that is a Nearing trademark.
My own more modern house was built about 30 years ago on the Nearings' gravel pit. My deed speaks of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, as Buck bought the land from the Nearings.
Buck had come up to visit the Nearings largely due to her reading and appreciation of the couple's The Maple Sugar Book. Buck's husband, Richard Walsh, published that sweet work in 1950.
The Maple Sugar Book is not unlike the many stone structures Scott and Helen were to build.
They were highly skilled at taking something humble and commonplace - stones, living in Vermont, gardening, maple syrup - and creating something altogether dense, intriguing, scholarly, and vital.
Buck enjoyed the book as much as I did many years later, when I read it in Jamaica one winter evening in front of my woodstove.
I do more reading in this house than I have in any other. The space, the quiet, the snow falling outside all lend themselves to significant page turning.
I sit in a big comfy chair near the hot stove, dogs nearby, my young son paging through his own books. I mostly read novels, but occasionally I read a perfect gem of nonfiction like The Maple Sugar Book.
That book led Pearl Buck to Vermont and, in turn, it led me to Buck and the Nearings - serious intriguing literary folk about whom I knew just the barest of facts.
* * *
My friends Darlene and Ernie Palola now live in that stately main house. A few years back, I attended a birthday party for Ernie. Darlene cooked up the most delicious chicken dish I have ever tasted with a supremely fresh, local, tasty chicken.
Scott and Helen would not have approved of such slaughter, but they certainly would have approved of Darlene's pickled zucchini and the like, all made from her garden, which had once been their beloved garden.
They also would have approved of neighbors meeting for a celebratory dinner in the large room with the rock wall, a single massive rock around which the Nearings had built the entire house. They would have been pleased by the stories told of years past and general communal feeling of delight.
Pearl Buck, a china-and-crystal sort, did not feel at one with the rugged Nearings and their spare wooden bowls used at every meal. She found much of their rigorous daily routine to be nearly uncivil, certainly far from appealing.
“What nobody had told us and what our hosts had not thought to tell us, was that they were strict vegetarians and for two days we had nothing to eat but vegetables and fruit,” she recounted.
“We staggered through those days, food-wise. I remember for breakfast we had sunflower seeds and a sort of raspberry drink and boiled millet without seasoning.
“Now I am used to millet from North China but always with something else with it. It was a little difficult to take straight cold millet.”
It should be noted that Helen lived to be 91 and Scott, 100. Their strict diet, and great daily physical exertion, certainly paid off for them.
Though Buck did not fall under the Nearings' spell, she did find herself enamored of the land on which they lived.
“And what I fell in love with was not the labor of sugaring, because I did not care that much for sugar or sugaring, but the snow was so beautiful in those woods and upon the mountains,” she said.
And so, with money from her many books flowing in and with land selling for about $2 an acre, Buck bought 100 acres.
She bought the land in part as she wanted her fairly young sons to come up in the summer and learn the art of stone house-making.
“Then I wouldn't have to fear that they would be hanging around the village streets in Pennsylvania,” she said.
The boys came up a few summers and stayed in a little old school house. The primitive arrangement proved successful. Her sons “work[ed] out all their desires to fight and quarrel,” and “when they came home they were friends and understood each other much better than before.”
The building was not merely an exercise to let off some steam. The boys had also built the family's new Vermont house, with stone walls and a stone floor - a house they were to expand in subsequent summers.
Buck was adamant about keeping things simple inside the new house, wanting her children to understand that “one can be clean and civilized without any of the modern conveniences.”
She had learned this in her many years in China and wished to pass on these lessons to her large brood. Buck was a commanding elegant woman who liked luxuries, to be sure, but more often the luxuries of years past; she disliked newfangled machinery as much as she enjoyed her many antiques.
Buck kept buying up acreage in Vermont, neighboring parcels, until she ended up with “quite an accumulation of land.” She began to spend more time in Vermont, as she found her allergies were far better in the mountain air.
* * *
The little stone house behind me belongs to the Loewy family. Children and grandchildren come up from around the country for a few weeks every summer, inhabiting their house in a decidedly old-fashioned way. The Nearings and possibly Buck would be proud.
They all pile up together to sleep in the cozy confines, eating around a campfire, showering outside in a little contraption made of sticks. There is no television up there, and when they come up, I hear children playing all the time.
Before I hear children playing, I usually hear gentle music wafting down the hill. Often, I think, What is that incredible bird?
Then I realize it is not a bird, but Andrea or Susanna Loewy playing the flute, soft melodies drifting down to my house.
Mother and daughter are professional musicians; many of the Loewys play an instrument or two very well. Susanna has recently founded an exceptional little summer music festival that takes place at Jamaica's lovely historic town hall. Summer doesn't get much better.
The Loewy campfires usually include other friends, including Gene and Rebecca Lepkoff, who are well into their 90s and knew the Nearings those many years ago.
Rebecca, a fine art photographer, took wonderful photographs of the Nearings and their summer get-togethers in which neighbors and friends came together on Sundays to make music and eat potluck dishes. She is still full of life, as if all the energy she captured in her photographs over the years has stayed with her, housed deep in her marrow. She gleams.
I think of Rebecca as a bridge to the Nearings, not just because she knew and documented them, but also as she seems to share their joy, intelligence, and commitment to the arts.
Rebecca and Gene have two sons; one is a musician, the other a dancer. When they come to the Loewy campfires, the guitar playing and singing turn yet more spirited.
I met Rebecca for the first time at the Nearings' old place, the Palolas' house. Darlene Palola has continued in the Nearing spirit by fighting Stratton Mountain Resort over clean water. (A single error in 2004 allowed 800,000 gallons of Stratton sewage to flow into our tender rivers and streams). It is an endless and often thankless task involving constant water-testing and countless meetings.
Darlene long ago decided she wanted a more joyous part of the Nearings' tradition, and that is how Nearing Sundays came to be.
We gather at the old Nearing place one Sunday in August.
Rebecca's son Jesse often plays the guitar and sings as we eat tasty potluck fare. Rebecca always has her camera. She has taken some photos of my son over his first three years at these happy gatherings.
She took one picture long ago of Pearl Buck and Richard Walsh at a similar “sing-song gathering,” as Helen, musically inclined herself, called it.
Buck is in a suit and Walsh in a tie; neither one looks particularly joyous. Perhaps Walsh's health was beginning to falter. Perhaps they simply felt they were among too many dirty hippie types.
On a warm summer day with sweet mountain breezes and a wide variety of neighbors mingling on the large lawn, it seems impossible to not be smiling. They are fine days indeed.
* * *
In 1934, the Nearings set out in search of a gravel pit. Scott had a million precise building plans in his head, and each one needed gravel in one way or another.
The one good gravel spot was owned by “a New Yorker” who soon forbade entrance to his property. The Nearings were at a loss for months.
Then a neighbor told them of 13 acres for sale adjoining the good gravel pit. They bought the land for $100 from Sadie Clayton.
“Of course, we had no use for 12 acres of gravel. One acre was enough. So we opened up a pit at a place that seemed handiest to the road, staked off something less than two acres at this end of the tract and divided the remainder of the land into two pieces,” the Nearings wrote in The Good Life.
The Nearings built an experimental log cabin, learning what they called a principal lesson: “not to build again of logs.”
On the other piece of land, they built “a four-room one-story stone building with a stone springhouse at the back, which was sold for $2,000. Into the latter building, which was located about 100 yards from the gravel pit, went the rocks which were coming in large quantities from the stone piles remaining after we had taken out sand and gravel.”
The log cabin is long gone. The stone house stands firm. And I live on the less than two acres.
* * *
It was only when I began to read The Good Life that it dawned on me that the little hollow my house is situated in is not a natural occurrence but rather the work of the Nearings.
They tell of taking out 5,050 pickup-truck loads. (Scott noted most everything: every load, every crop, every day.) They took out sand, sod, rocks, topsoil, stones, and gravel, and left behind a depression in the land. It is its own tiny protected valley, lush in the green months, in which my son and I, our dogs, gardens, flowers and trees, and many birds, are nestled.
I have watched foxes, bears, and moose - and one fine solitary turkey named Tilda, who become a regular - walk gingerly down the short steep slope.
My house is fairly humdrum on the outside, but inside it is open, light, cozy, and situated just right. It has many windows out of which I see the gently rising land, and it is the only place I have ever lived in which I feel properly planted, a feeling I find to be not only comforting but necessary.
The Nearings were wizards of efficiency, and I think they would be pleased that - like the rich compost of which they were so proud - that which seemed leftover, used up, has had a second life.
Their gravel pit has, over time, with plenty of sunshine and some turning, been refashioned into a bright home full of music, books, and life.
They would not, of course, love my house; among other faults, it is made of wood. And there are two skylights which Scott and Helen would surely have found hilarious and foolish as possible in this land where winter settles in for half the year, with snow and ice building up to high and mighty proportions.
I thought of them the day I heard the godawful sound of glass breaking and snow and ice crashing down onto one of my favorite possessions, an old walnut kitchen table that I sat around as a child and that I have shlepped with me from home to home.
They would approve of the new metal roof (they topped all their later buildings with metal lids), of my gardens, and certainly of the sturdy woodpiles that circle the house.
I do not build much beyond these endless stacks of wood I find so reassuring and pleasing. The closest I will ever get to building a house is my work on the old birdhouses I find at local auctions and fix up a bit and paint apple red and white.
My pal Bruce put a wonderful slate roof on my largest one, slate left over from an old roof in town. Bruce Chapin has a little bit, or a lot, of anything one needs. He has built and repaired houses in Jamaica for over 50 years and does not like to throw away much.
* * *
The Nearings' discipline was astonishing. They funneled their energy into so many successful projects from large bountiful gardens (made with soil from the gravel pit), to books, houses, get-togethers, greenhouses, maple sugaring, pond-building, massive stone walls, and so much more.
Nothing seems to have been done halfheartedly. These were people who got things done and got them done well. Nearly every hour of every day was planned out.
This incredibly organized way of life is one of the elements of their lifestyle that I do not find appealing, but I do realize that their unremitting focus and carefully crafted plans are the reason they got so very much done.
It is a recipe I do try at times to mimic, but my son, Levi Grady, tends to have other ideas, as do the dogs and even the chickadees who like to eat out of my hands.
Scott and Helen accomplished more in one day than I do in six months, and I am afraid I am not stretching that too much. Such busy beavers!
* * *
The Nearings write in great detail in The Good Life about building stone houses and assure us all that we can do it.
Though they have convinced many people of many good things, I remain certain I cannot build a stone house, in part because I can barely read about forms and concrete without getting bored and fidgety.
But the sections on gardening have gotten me all fired up. I will I will I will finally plant an asparagus bed and some raspberry bushes. I will take better care of my blueberry bushes. I will stake up my pea vines with well-planted tall brush, just like Helen did. I will make tea out of my bountiful rose hip bushes. I will talk to the healthy, young sugar maple for years until it is big and strapping and able to take a tap.
I have built a few stone borders around flower beds and gardens. I was always surprised I could not find more substantial rocks on my land for these little walls.
Now I realize it is because the Nearings got to the rocks first, hauling them this way and that: “From roadsides, from our garden, gravel pit, old stone walls, on walks in the woods, all over the countryside we kept our eyes open for well-shaped rocks, of any cartable size,” they wrote.
I am particularly proud of the little white stone border around my vegetable garden. There are certain spots deep in the woods where I find small bright white rocks, and when I do, I slip them into my pockets.
When my glorious dog Ida Blue died a few years back - the regal mutt with whom I had hiked for thousands of miles in Montana, Oregon, and Vermont - I buried her in our woods and took most of the white rocks from around the garden and placed them on top of her.
The Nearings seemed to have no time whatsoever for animals. They are barely mentioned in all their books, often just so Scott can mutter, a bit smugly, We do not eat decaying carcasses and we do not wish any animals to be subservient to us.
But it is not just a lack of pets. They lived in these parts for 19 years and wrote about it at length, yet the only mention of animals in The Good Life books are when unspecified birds start eating their seeds and deer start munching on the grape vines.
Did they never glimpse beautiful lumbering bears and ridiculously huge moose crashing through the woods? Never have an owl glide silently above them? Never sit outside at the end of summer and hear coyotes howl and yap so happily? Never see a red fox chomping down on a turkey, a woodcock leaping up so crazily?
Did they not think these lovely intriguing animals noteworthy? I find it odd.
But a certain self-centeredness does come through Scott's tone. He is very interested in one animal: a strong squat specimen named Scott Nearing.
It seems one of the joys of living rurally is that animals can be a part of your life. And, if the desire is there, I'm told that most anyone can build them stone barns, stone walls, and stone basins.
* * *
I walk in the woods often, beginning at the stone house and going farther up and back into the mountains. The dogs, Zoella and Meriwether, live for these walks. Levi Grady started this hike in my belly, then in a pouch on my front, and then on my back.
These days, unless the snow is too high and he rides on my back, he hikes on his own strong little legs, pointing everything out to me and the dogs.
Seasons change so drastically in these parts, thick leafy green giving way to bare starkness, to deep white snow all around, and then that lush, all-encompassing green all over again.
During these dramatic transitions familiar landmarks change drastically, and I sometimes get lost in the woods I know so well. In truth, I enjoy this loosening feeling of being lost, as it is hard to come by, a pleasant disorientation that makes me see things anew.
I enjoy it in part as I am not truly afraid of being altogether lost. If it gets late, I simply ask sweet smart Zo to take us to the stone house and I follow her as she gets us back to the sturdy stone walls, the blue trim, and the red roof.
I slide my hand over the smooth stones as we go back down the winding dirt path to our home below.