Carol and I went up to visit Jack and Abbie — Jack is my dad’s cousin. Abbie gave us a little tour of that stretch of coastal Maine. Carol said she had seen a sign pointing to the “Good Life Center,” and asked if we could go there. Abbie said that was only a few miles from their house, and we drove over there.
We drove down the well-maintained but narrow gravel road until we saw a big mailbox that said “Nearing” on it. Back in 1954, Helen and Scott Nearing published a book called Living the Good Life: How To Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, a book which some credit with being a major impetus for the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The Nearings had first homesteaded in Vermont, but later in life they had moved to Maine. The “Good Life Center” now occupies what was once their house.
We pulled into the driveway. Carol asked a hirsute young man if we could look around, and he said of course. He even gave us a plastic-laminated sheet of paper with a short walking tour, and then peddled off on his bicycle.
We admired the house the Nearings had built from stone, in a sort of Swiss-chalet style. We looked at the garden, enclosed by a wall built of stone and mortar. The vegetables looked healthy but not spectacular. The small greenhouse, also made of stone, was pleasant to walk through. We looked at the stone outhouse (according to the laminated plastic card, it was the very first structure built on the land).
At the back of the clearing in the woods, we found a round yurt-like structure built entirely of wood, with round porthole-windows, and a strange round cupola. It sort of looked like a flying saucer from a 1950’s science fiction film. The laminated plastic card noted that this structure, called “The Gathering Place,” had been built by someone else after Scott Nearing had died. Inside, it was pleasantly cool, and all the unfinished wood was soothing. We sat and talked about this and that for quite a while.
At last we left. We had spent a pleasant half hour there, but the place didn’t carry the magic of the Nearings’s books. The house was just another house, the garden just another garden. Only “The Gathering Place” had held our attention for very long, and that hadn’t even been a project of the Nearings.
I was given Helen Nearings book “Our Home Built of Stone” as a gift. It chronicled the building of Forest Farm from its inception to its completion.
When I traveled to Maine in 1983, I asked my host if we could drive over to the Nearing house since in one photo in the book there was a sign on the driveway which said “Guests welcome”
We drove down from Mt. Desert Island to what seemed like the end of the world. Helen came out and greeted us as old friends. She gave us a tour of the house which included the one room which was entirely filled with their collection of books…and Scott’s fiddle and bow hung on the wall. Scott had just died that year so I did not get to meet him.
Their food was stored in hand made cedar barrels. Their cooking was done on a magnificent Wedgewood wood stove. We went upstairs to the bedroom, which occupied the entire second floor. There was a beautiful hand-painted multipanel dressing screen.
On the between floor landing was a poem carved into the wall…”Sunshine, birdsong, snowfall, trees”. Beautiful, yes?
We toured the garden, but before we left, Helen and I sat at the table in front of the window in the livingroom area (the table can be seen along with the window in a photo in Our Home Built of Stone). We talked for a few minutes about Scott and his life and work. It was a couple of minutes I shall never forget.
Helen waved us goodbye as we drove down the gravel drive, as family returning home.
I wrote a poem in late 1983 about the house and our visit, published in 1993 in Infinity Limited magazine…I always meant to send it to Helen, but kept putting it off until one day I read she had died in a one car accident. The following are the words inspired by the Nearings and the home they built by hand, Forest Farm:
This house
I call my own,
built with love in every stone
These joints of mortar
the ties that have joined our lives
I am not proud
but pleased
in humble admiration
of the earth and ledge
placed one
upon another
each wall a testament
each weathered beam
a record of our dream
as strong hands and arms of father’s loves
for his children
as gentle hands and arms
of mothers’ loves
for her children
You have returned my sweat
and sometimes pains
in my winters and summers
Sunshine. Birdsong. Snowfall. Trees.
all in their time I have treasured these
from within these walls;
built with love in every stone
what is a house if it is not home,
for of our lives and times it tells
these hands, yours hands, my hands,
our hands together.
I am pleased
(copyright I.B. Nelson)