Good Living

This week, I have pulled down three pairs of books.

Living the Good Life: how to live sanely and simply in a troubled world. Helen and Scott Nearing.
Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Helen Nearing.

Composing a Life. Mary Catherine Bateson.
Composing a Further Life. Mary Catherine Bateson.

The Making of a Counter Culture. Theodore Roszak.
The Making of an Elder Culture. Theodore Roszak.

Scott and Helen Nearing spent nineteen years of experimental homesteading in Vermont. This was followed by eighteen years at Harborside in Maine.

Last summer, Heather and I happened on the Good Life Center in Maine (EBE blog post, The Maine Line, July 7, 2019).

“Scott Nearing died three weeks after his hundredth birthday. He went with dignity, purposefully fasting, after a long and good life”.

After looking at the writing of both Bateson and Roszak, I decided to stay with Helen Nearing’s memoir. From the cover,

“At 87, Helen seems content to be nearing the end of her good life. As she put it, ”To have partaken of and given love is the greatest of life rewards. There seems never an end to the loving that goes on forever and ever. Loving and leaving are part of the living.”

Helen Nearing died in a single-car crash in 1995, aged 91.

Tribute to Uke. Uqaliq (Rabbit)
“Uke” was born on Baffin Island in 2003. She moved with her sister Siksik (Arctic ground squirrel) to Prince George, BC. They were Patrick’s skijoring team. Later, they moved with the family to Cape Breton. Finally, they came to Paradise, Nova Scotia where they have enjoyed the walking trails through the orchard and the forest nursery. She will be missed by her human family and sister.
Postscript

Listening to CBC Spark, there was an interview with Michael Bond on his new book, From Here to There: The Art and Science Of Finding and Losing our Way. It is about space and memory. I have ordered it online, from the Inside Story.

Acknowledgements

Heather for her companionship in the search for good living. Edward for his artistic and technical support.

References

Helen and Scott Nearing. 1954. Living the Good Life. Schocken Books.
Helen Nearing. 1992. Loving and Leaving the Good Life.Chelsea Green.
Mary Catherine Bateson. 1989. Composing a Life. Grove Press.
Mary Catherine Bateson. 2020. Composing a Further Life. Knopf.
Theodore Roszak. 1969. The Making of a Counter Culture. Anchor.
Theodore Roszak. 2009. The Making of an Elder Culture. New Society.