While Mother Earth News began publication before I was born, my life as I know it today is attributable to the inspiration I found in the magazine over the years. One of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories is sitting on my father’s lap as a young girl in the 1980s reading the magazine together. He would read aloud while I studied the pictures of passive solar building, vegetable gardening, sheep shearing, building a sugar shack and a beautiful array of other topics. Those images — along with the camping trips in the mountains, the whitewater and canoeing excursions, and our family trip to Alaska — have been etched in the catacombs of my childhood memories, sculpting the person I have grown to become.
A Father’s Legacy Through Natural Living Education
In 2000, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. As believers in natural medicine, my mother and I convinced him to try alternative medicine. I got a job at a local health food store in order to receive the 20-percent discount on organic foods and supplements. I worked in the juice bar and would bring him wheatgrass shots and fresh-mixed vegetable juice after each shift. I remember reading articles in Mother Earth News on juicing and wheatgrass, learning their benefits for all systems of the body. My father’s energy levels significantly increased with each natural approach we took.
He started seeing an acupuncturist, Dr. Sachs. My father showed tremendous results to alternative treatments but, to his demise, he did not give up smoking. The cancer then spread to his liver and his doctors strongly recommended chemotherapy and radiation.
The stress created by these exhausting treatments, along with living in the inner city, not being able to provide for his family, and unbearable pain, eventually led to his deterioration. My father died in 2005.
He left a beautiful legacy behind. He inspired many people in his lifetime.
Putting Inspiration for Natural Living into Practice
One of the most important lessons I learned from my father is that, “You don’t need to have a lot of money in order to live a rich and fulfilled life. Beauty in the natural world is free and all around you, you just have to take the time to explore it.”
I am grateful for the insight and wisdom he bestowed upon me. The greatest tangible inheritance I received from my father was his collection of Mother Earth News magazines. Because of that collection of dusty magazines from three decades and my mother’s support and encouragement to follow my dreams, I went on to become an herbalist and an Alternative Energy Practitioner and eventually a farmer. Everything I learned from reading Mother Earth News inspired me to make changes in my own life for a better planet.
I have come to a place in my life where I love what I do. I work outside in a beautiful, natural setting where native tall grasses blow in the wind, where migrating birds fly overhead by the thousands, where stillness and quiet reign over noise, where my children are close by and exposed to nature daily, and where my husband smiles, winks and waves to me while passing by on the bright-orange, battery-powered Allis Chalmers tractor, on his way to cultivate a row of vibrant lettuce.
Because of the impact my father made on me through his love for reading Mother Earth News, my dream has always been to write for the publication. I feel that inspiring others is a quintessential component to making the changes we wish to see in the world! This is merely the story of one out of millions of readers of the magazine since 1970. I would love to hear your story.
Crystal Stevens lives along the bluffs of the mighty Mississippi River in Godfrey, Illinois, with her husband and two children. She’s an author, artist and art teacher, folk herbalist, regenerative farmer, and permaculturist.
