Helen and Scott Nearing

The Good Life

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Helen and Scott Nearing moved from New York City to a farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Although the motives for their move were numerous, and the goals for their farm in Vermont diverse, the lifestyle they established, in which they made their living with their own hands with plentiful “time and leisure for avocational pursuits”, became a source of inspiration and wonder for those seeking a simpler, more self-sufficient form of life. Even to this day, they are considered the “great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement”, which is often categorized in contemporary terminology as part of the broader frugal living “FIRE” campaign.

This was far from a retirement, though, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. The Nearings were conducting less of a reactive escape, and more of a proactive search. They were not seeking relief from social responsibilities, but opportunities to do more. “We wanted to find a way in which we could put more into life and get more out of it. We were not shirking obligations but looking for an opportunity to take on more worthwhile responsibilities.”^[1]

In many ways, their lifestyle was the embodiment of what had become a truly American definition of freedom in the previous century – “the absence of external restraints upon autonomous, self-directed individuals” and “an unending process of self-realization by which individuals could remake themselves and their own lives.” They were truly free to pursue their interests and cultivate their unique talents without outside interference.^[2]

As we seek examples of noble leisure in practice, it is worth starting with Helen and Scott Nearing. Though their family situation was unique (they chose not to have children together) and their politics radical, it was their lifestyle that continues to influence and inspire us the most, particularly those reaching the traditional retirement age. As Scott once summarized, “a person is not old until regrets take the place of hopes and plans. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for aging.”^[3]

***

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups, or to causes, social, political, intellectual, or creative work.”

– Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

Happiness, in many ways, requires an ability to derive joy from the mundane. Though some may call this domestication, this label is an unfortunate result of a society which has become increasingly dependent on external sources for the maintenance and repair of basic day to day necessities. If a modern millennial were to call the Nearings domesticated, they would reply in the affirmative – yes, if domesticated means being self-sufficient, creative, useful, and fully aware of and responsible for one’s home, property, family, lifestyle, and time, then yes, by all means, they were domesticated. Though the do-it-yourself life may not look as professional as an outsourced job to a specialist, such jobs “use the ingenuity and stretch the imagination of the householder and provide excellent training.” Why allow the professional building tradesman to do the thinking, planning, and constructing? Why pay someone to lavish in the thrill of the end of a job and the joy of work well done? “Shall we,” asked Thoreau, “forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?”^[4]

Their purpose in going to Vermont was not to produce and acquire excess food, housing, fuel, and other essentials, but to provide only the amount needed to meet the requirements of a living standard that would maintain their “physical efficiency” and at the same time provide them with sufficient leisure to pursue their chosen avocations. “Livelihood was no end in itself – rather, it was a vestibule into an abundant and rewarding life.”^[5] Rather than working to procure comforts, conveniences, and eventually luxuries and superfluities, they labored to provide themselves with basic food, fuel, and shelter. Most importantly, though, they labored to provide themselves with an extensive amount of time.

Helen and Scott broke each day into blocks and carried out each block in accordance with the season, the weather, and the tasks at hand. For example, on most days, the four hours after breakfast were generally devoted to “bread labor” – in the garden, in the woods, on construction, in the shop, or in the sugar house. Once complete, their minds and bodies shifted to avocational pursuits and leisure – reading, writing, sitting in the sun, walking in the woods, or playing music. “We earned four hours of leisure by our four hours of labor.” Quality work earned quality leisure on the Forest Farm.

The work itself was freely chosen and never executed in haste. Helen and Scott deliberately structured their lives to avoid the mental state of rushing and always attempted to anticipate external influences which might force increased work in any of the areas described above (weather, or holiday maple syrup orders, for example.). “We have never worked harder and have never enjoyed work more, because, with rare exceptions, the work was significant, self-directed, constructive and therefore interesting.”^[6] Though they kept an organized schedule and rarely departed from it, they found great joy in working towards definitive goals. “No job is overwhelming if you have a general idea of what you are about, break the project into manageable units, put through these units one at a time, and have the thrill of fitting them into the over-all pattern.”^[7]

Living a self-sufficient life in a remote Vermont valley required a love of learning and appreciation for manual competencies not only for food, fuel, and shelter, but also as a source of intense happiness and satisfaction, something often derived from the spirit of amateurism. For the Nearings, learning the intricacies of soil preparation and the production of food was the most important of these skills and activities. Yet building, equipping and repairing dwelling units, clearing woodlands and cutting firewood, and the making and repairing of tools also presented them with “a second sphere of productive functioning”. In all of their day-to-day functions, they were “compelled to think, plan, assemble materials and tools, and practices the techniques required to obtain the results [they] had in view.”^[8] Whereas their former city life prioritized purchasing power, their new life in Vermont required “ingenuity, skill, patience, and persistence” as the “coin current”.

The Nearings genuinely believed in the importance of aligning one’s life with one’s beliefs. In their case, they believed that each moment, hour, day, week, and year should be treated as an “occasion”, or an opportunity to live as well as possible – to learn new skills, to work hard, and to pursue active or creative avocational and leisure interests. Living any other way would produce unwanted results, splitting practice away from theory and dividing one’s personality against itself. To Helen and Scott, “the most harmonious life is one in which theory and practice are unified.”^[9]

At the center of their lifestyle argument was the prioritization of an active life predisposed to the acquisition of practical skills rather than material wealth. When asked if their life was better or worse than that of one in a metropolis, they would of course answer in favor of the Vermont life. It permitted “frequent contacts with nature”, “an opportunity to master and direct nature forces,” and “because manual skills were still practiced and the routine of living was less exacting.”^[10] Their daily commute might involve a 200-yard walk from the kitchen to the sap house rather than a noisy, dirty subway ride. And “if snow was deep, the trip might require snowshoes or skis, but that was an advantage because it called for another skill.”

As part of this approach, Helen and Scott intentionally utilized hand-tools wherever possible, focusing more on technique, craftsmanship and quality rather than output and quantity. In their era, the power age economy was replacing the craftsman with specialized machines and assembly lines, resulting in a loss of manual skill and competence and an increase in “machine tenders” focused more on volume of product rather than excellence. As a result, more and more workers were accepting factory wages and salaries “as a substitute for pride in workmanship and the satisfaction of mastery over tools and materials.”

Helen and Scott believed that one’s life routine ultimately came down a circumference of choice. There is the vocational choice, which provides livelihood, and the avocational choices, which thrive on one’s leisure and surplus energy. They deliberately structured their life in a way in which both their vocational and avocational pursuits were aligned with a the lifestyle they genuinely desired. Sometimes, though, one’s professional pursuits may involve daily actions which are not aligned with this vision – creative, active parents may sometimes earn income in a sedentary office environment so that their children may benefit from a certain type of education, for example. It is in these cases, more often than not, in which the avocational choices, those which thrive on surplus energy and/or time, make such a difference.

According to the Nearings, the value of these freely chosen activities lies not in the probability of their success, but in the “vision, the plan the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project.” They stated very clearly that “life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation.^[11]

***

One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change – not rest, except in sleep.”^[12]

–Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

An old adage says that change of occupation is as good as rest. The Nearings argued this wisdom a step further – better than rest, their changes in occupation provided relaxation without any significant boredom. When asked by “sophisticated city visitors” what they did with their spare time, the Nearings replied “We have no spare time; we keep busy…the days are so short that we run out of time constantly.”^[13] And when pressed on what they did for pleasure, they replied:

Examine any one of our days, or any one of the major activities in which we are engaged: food production and storage; the cutting of our word for fuel; gardening, building houses; forestry; research; teaching; music making; speaking; writing articles and books; traveling. Each one of these has its own particular advantages and opportunities. When it reaches a climax or leads to a conclusion, we say: ‘That job is done to the best of our ability; now let’s see what the next item on the program is and get on with the day’s or week’s or season’s work.’

The Nearing life was never weighed down by sterile repetition or barren routine. Every day and every project provided a fresh challenge and exploratory experience. And even when major mistakes were made, which occurred often, they’d view it as an opportunity to learn why, earning “the satisfaction of doing the job to the best of [their] ability and avoiding a like mistake in the future.”

The Nearing’s of course acknowledged that one must be aware limitations in experience and energy and choose projects and avocational pursuits accordingly. If one takes on a job that is far beyond one’s scope, it may “get you down and keep you down. But if you bite off no more than you can chew, and masticate it thoroughly, your chances of success are good.”

Of all their sources of noble leisure, the Nearings found “wooding-it” to be one of the favorites. It provided cost-savings through fuel, served as a recurring health-preservation avocation, and allowed for practical contributions to family time spent around a crackling fire, or food preparation when preparing and cooking a meal. Furthermore, the Nearings found it particularly applicable to their lifestyle as it only required a few basic hand tools which nearly anyone could learn to use effectively and “occupies spare time that might otherwise be spent in front of the TV.” (304). As described by Horace Greely in the 1868 Recollections of a Busy Life:

The woods are my special department. Whenever I can save a Saturday for the farm, I try to give a good part of it to my patch of forest. The axe is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual workers and other sedentary workers, whose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests, and opening their lungs. If every youth and man, from fifteen to fifty years old, could wield an axe two hours per day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth, and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper, yet the axe is my doctor and delight. Its use gives the mind just enough occupation to prevent its falling into revery or absorbing trains of thought, while every muscle in the body receives sufficient, yet not exhausting, exercise. I wish all our boys would learn to love the axe.”^[14]

Far from the passive, mindless activities we often choose today, wooding-it provided the Nearings with a “series of choices, decisions, tests, and experiments that often preoccupy or perplex the woodworker.”^[15] These might have included whether to cut or not to cut a certain tree, how to properly fell and fit the tree once work commences, and the obvious challenge of transportation, storage, and drying, among other considerations. Furthermore, in contrast to the experience of many modern, abstract knowledge workers, half an hour or half a day of wooding-it could produce a pile of fitted wood as a concrete testimonial to one’s effort, ingenuity, strength, and judgment. “Any tree correctly felled, any log properly split and stacked, gives a chance to evaluate, test out and get results time after time, hour after hour. Each tree, log or stick is a problem it its own right with its possible outcome of usefulness.”

In many ways, the Nearing approach to wooding practices is a metaphor for their larger approach to life. Like any recurring activity or duty in our lives, wooding could have just been a “chore and a bore”, or instead an opportunity to incorporate artistry and craftsmanship into a trade. One can approach any daily or weekly act with this differentiation in mind – cooking, cleaning and organizing, or gardening and landscaping, for example – and perform in an efficient, workable, artistic way or a careless, indifferent, sloppy way. For the Nearings, though, care, artistry, attention to detail, and the mastery of the otherwise mundane tasks in one’s life could be incredibly satisfying to the practitioner and a source of joy to those beholding. “For us, efficiency and artistry always pay off because of the satisfaction of doing a job well.”^[16]

The Nearings found equal satisfaction in the steady construction of a stone wall at their second homestead residence in Maine. In sharp contrast to the outsourcing culture of our modern society, in which manual tasks are rarely assumed and approached as opportunities to learn, the Nearings viewed tasks such as the construction of a massive, stone wall around the exterior of their new garden as a “pleasant avocation.” Some additional adjectives they used to describe this choice of leisure: “relaxing”, “in the open air”, “usually in sunshine”, “constructive”, “lasting”, and “not the subject of an urgency or deadline”.

And as with all of their daily choices and actions, it fell in line with their overall mantra of “serve yourself”. In addition to furthering their practice of self-reliance, building a stone wall over the better half of a decade provided a recurring, leisurely challenge, a set of skills to learn about and master, and a prominent, tangible testament to their persistence close to their most immediate place of residence. Additionally, since it was not an urgent project, they were able to progress for a few hours or a few days, while leaving it alone for several weeks or even months as needed.^[17]

The use of manual labor as a source of satisfying leisure, particularly a type involving heavy stones and concrete, might perplex the modern reader. How could this possibly be an enjoyable endeavor? The answer, to the Nearings, lay in three directions. First, this was a long, fourteen-year endeavor requiring occasional, voluntary effort and teamwork. Second, it was purely voluntary in nature, involving no compulsion whatsoever, and an overall small number of active participants. Third, it involved little to no arguments, bickering, or quarrels, despite extensive opportunities for discussion and exchange of opinion.

The stone wall, like many other Nearing projects in both Vermont and Maine, represented far more than the sum of its parts. Designing, creating and building tangible and functional and useful things – whether they were walls and buildings, tables and chairs, or gardens and greenhouses – provided them with opportunities to express their own ideas and develop their own skills as they strove to create the best product of which they were capable. Following such practices, they were able to create and learn – and learn and create – at the same time. Neither Scott nor Helen would have wanted to pursue any of these activities full-time, year-round, though – it was the variety of activities, pursuits, and knowledge which made them collectively satisfying as a whole. As Scott once summarized,

I would not want to spend ten hours a day with a pick and shovel, but I enjoy a spot of vigorous physical exercise, especially if I can see a plan unfold and can see the results, in tangible form, of my own efforts. In this, as in all things, there are limits, beyond which we can overdo. But my formula calls for the least necessary intervention between my purposes and plans and their execution. Life consists in doing, constructing, embodying ideas in form – not in pushing buttons.^[18]

***

Anybody can have free time. Not everybody can have leisure.

-Sebastian de Grazia, On Time, Work and Leisure

After 20 years of work on the farm, the Nearings were able to report that their life, though simple, was organized in a way which enabled them to work for six months of the year on “bread labor”, which then empowered them to pursue six months of equally challenging yet satisfying leisure, such as research, travelling, writing, speaking, and teaching.

It is important to note here that these blocks of time – hours, weeks, and even months – were not considered “free time”, but true leisure, in the classical Greek sense. This time was not the opposite of work, but a state of being, a “condition of man” in the words of Aristotle, in which Helen and Scott were free from the necessity to labor yet still chose to pursue activities for their own sake, as ends in and of themselves.^[19]

As noted by Sebastian de Grazia, peace and prosperity are dangerous if a country doesn’t know what to do with leisure. Furthermore, the capacity to use leisure rightly is the basis of the free man’s whole life. Helen and Scott Nearing understood the true meanings of time, work and leisure and were determined to share their unique applications of each with others. In the next post, we’ll learn about a man devoted to a similar, rigorous lifestyle.

1. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 13. ↑

2. Eric Foner. The Story of American Freedom. Pg. 55. ↑

3. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 173. ↑

4. Henry David Thoreau. Walden. Pg. 51 ↑

5. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 154 ↑

6. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 51 ↑

7. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 53 ↑

8. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 158 ↑

9. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 191 ↑

10. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 190 ↑

11. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 201 ↑

12. Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day ↑

13. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 210 ↑

14. Horace Greely, Recollections of a Busy Life, 1868. ↑

15. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 305 ↑

16. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 314 ↑

17. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 323 ↑

18. Helen Nearing. Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Pg. 163 ↑

19. Sebastian de Grazia. On Time, Work and Leisure. Pg. 5. ↑