Nearing Enough
(Page 5 of 6)
They built using "... sticky concrete, between two [moveable] wooden forms, with stone facing to the front. The stone [is not] a veneer, but is bonded into the concrete wall, with the rock often extending through three-quarters or more of the wall" (see photo, Page 24).
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In 1972, when Helen was 68 and Scott was 89, they prepared for one last move. They cleared several acres of forest, built some roads and began building three stone buildings overlooking Spirit Cove in the Penobscot Bay.
Famed folk singer Pete Seeger is quoted as saying, "We may yet be able to save the world before we destroy ourselves, and Scott and Helen showed us ways to do it," though neither Scott nor Helen Nearing believed they had the answers to all outstanding social problems. "For us," Helen wrote, "[the move to the country from the city] proved to be a means of steadying and stabilizing one household in a teetery world and of providing the members of that household with an economic base from which they could make their leisure time and contribute toward the advancement of the general welfare."
In The Making of A Radical, which was Scott Nearing's autobiography, written in 1963 (when he was 80 years old), he stated, "I have done my best to learn, to teach, and to build my ideas into the life of the United States and any other part of the human society that was willing to listen, study and act ... I assume that ardent endeavor to discover the ideal, and to embody it in individual and collective life, develops the bone and sinew of body, mind and spirit."
Between the two of them, the Nearings authored more than 50 books as well as innumerable articles, essays and pamphlets. They lectured all over the world. In 1965 they wrote, "The good life is never stable, never secure, never easy and never ended. It is a series of steps or stages, one leading into the other and all, in their outcome, adding, not subtracting; augmenting, not diminishing; building, not destroying; creating, not annihilating."
From my cozy first read of the Nearings' principled homesteading journey to this very day, their commitment to body, mind, spirit, principle, one another, community and society heartens me whether I select my vegetables from my own garden or from the farmer's stand down the road.
When I am in Maine, I visit their last homestead, now The Good Life Center, which keeps their writings, library and gardens open to the public. A bookshop now fills Scott's study and through a vigorous lecture/discussion series and its stewardship and volunteer programs, the Center still gathers together seekers of the Good Life in the Nearings' hand-built living room.
Credited by many as being the greatgrandparents of the back-to-the-land and simpler-living movements, the Nearings continue, through their written legacy, to be the polestar, gyro scope, map, heart, conscience and plumb line for living a good life.
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