When Dana and I were in college, we fell in love with the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Coming from a land of plenty, where Americans were surrounded not only by abundance … but by opulence, gluttony and the over-accumulation of “stuff”, we became fascinated by the concept of Voluntary Simplicity; and after reading Walden, we, like its author, wanted to “reduce our lives to their lowest common denominators”. The goal of our youthful idealism was to simplify our lives to the barest necessities, then gradually re-introduce certain parts of them back in, as we understood their usefulness to us and made conscious decisions to do so. It was one of the most valuable exercises we have ever undertaken. Dana and I became so obsessed with trying to distinguish which things in our lives were ‘luxuries’ and which were ‘necessities’, that for many years during this process we lived with neither running water nor electricity in our quest to find out. Two of our ‘guides’ (or heroes) during this time were Helen and Scott Nearing, Pioneers of the ‘Back to the Land’ movement, and authors of “Living the Good Life”. We had the good fortune to meet them many times in the 1970’s and early ‘80s, and modeled our own lives partly after their lifestyle at their Forest Farm, in Maine.
Today, forty years later, Dana and I are the owners of a 32-room, 3-Star upscale hotel and destination resort in the White Mountains. While we are a “Green” business and certified in NH as a Sustainable Lodging facility, continually making strides to reduce our environmental footprint here, we cannot (for obvious reasons) be as ‘rustic’ here as we are in our own personal lives. ‘Up on the mountain’ in our cabin, my goal is to someday be totally self-sufficient and ‘off the grid’; and it was with this in mind that I have been looking forward all year to attending yesterday’s annual Farm, Home and Garden Show, held at the Fryeburg fairgrounds in Maine.
I’ve been reminiscing a lot lately, thinking about our ‘old college days’, and how, during this second half of our lives, we will be able to sustain ourselves during retirement. This is a tougher job than it was back in college. We want to be good environmental stewards, that goes without saying! But we also need to finish putting 4 more kids through college and of course, there are going to be those upcoming weddings to finance as well. And so, 4 decades later, I have come back full-circle to thinking about “luxuries” and “necessities” again, how to personally spend as little money as possible, simplifying to the extreme. In short, we need to put our lives on a diet. I thought I had it all figured out, again, too, until yesterday at the Farm-Home-Garden show. There I was scoping out the booths displaying solar panels, windmills, sustainable greenhouses, super-insulated windows, worm composters, composting toilets, woodburning kitchen cookstoves … all things I consider absolute “Necessities” in my Environmental Retirement Plan. I was being so disciplined! I passed right by the lady selling her sea salt lavender scrub selling for $30, knowing full well I could make it for about 35 cents at home. But then I saw ‘IT’ … and my definition of 'Luxury' and 'Necessity' blurred beyond recognition. As I rounded the corner past the ‘wood-fired stone oven guy’ who wowed me off my feet with his home built bread-&-pizza-oven last year, I was stopped dead in my tracks by something I had never seen before, but which in the space of a mili-second had just made it to my “Must Have” list. (Have you ever seen the film “The Gods Must Be Crazy”? In it, a careless bush pilot chugs down a Coca-Cola and throws the little green bottle out of the open cockpit. A tribe of primitive aborigines see the plane and its vapor trail, mistaking it for a flatulent God, who has just thrown them down a ‘gift’ from the heavens. Suddenly, this ‘thing’, the coke bottle, which no one had ever seen nor needed before, now became something EVERYONE had to have! And because there was only one, fights started breaking out amongst these previously happy and docile people). Yesterday was my own personal “Gods Must be Crazy” moment; and there, in front of the Home and Artisans Exhibit building, was a real-life, sod-roofed Hobbit Hole, complete with round door and all the charm of the Middle Earth Shire! There was just no way I could possibly live my life without one!!
I guess in reality what I was seeing was actually a very funky, VERY creative kids’ play space. But that didn’t prevent me from going inside, imagining it relocated to a place deep in the woods near my log cabin, a permanent, unobtrusive part of the landscape. And in my minds eye, there I was: writing prolifically from my laptop within its rounded sod walls. In a word, this Hobbit hole was the CUTEST thing I had ever seen in my entire life! The end to the story? Well, NO, I didn’t buy one (darn it!). But like the allure of Eve’s apple in the Garden of Eden, I saw firsthand the overwhelming power of temptation in its most unguarded light! How quickly, in a moment, we can crumble from staunch, unbending discipline to quavering weak-kneed, all-caution-to-the-wind desire. It was an eye-opening experience, to be sure!
Today, forty years later, Dana and I are the owners of a 32-room, 3-Star upscale hotel and destination resort in the White Mountains. While we are a “Green” business and certified in NH as a Sustainable Lodging facility, continually making strides to reduce our environmental footprint here, we cannot (for obvious reasons) be as ‘rustic’ here as we are in our own personal lives. ‘Up on the mountain’ in our cabin, my goal is to someday be totally self-sufficient and ‘off the grid’; and it was with this in mind that I have been looking forward all year to attending yesterday’s annual Farm, Home and Garden Show, held at the Fryeburg fairgrounds in Maine.
I’ve been reminiscing a lot lately, thinking about our ‘old college days’, and how, during this second half of our lives, we will be able to sustain ourselves during retirement. This is a tougher job than it was back in college. We want to be good environmental stewards, that goes without saying! But we also need to finish putting 4 more kids through college and of course, there are going to be those upcoming weddings to finance as well. And so, 4 decades later, I have come back full-circle to thinking about “luxuries” and “necessities” again, how to personally spend as little money as possible, simplifying to the extreme. In short, we need to put our lives on a diet. I thought I had it all figured out, again, too, until yesterday at the Farm-Home-Garden show. There I was scoping out the booths displaying solar panels, windmills, sustainable greenhouses, super-insulated windows, worm composters, composting toilets, woodburning kitchen cookstoves … all things I consider absolute “Necessities” in my Environmental Retirement Plan. I was being so disciplined! I passed right by the lady selling her sea salt lavender scrub selling for $30, knowing full well I could make it for about 35 cents at home. But then I saw ‘IT’ … and my definition of 'Luxury' and 'Necessity' blurred beyond recognition. As I rounded the corner past the ‘wood-fired stone oven guy’ who wowed me off my feet with his home built bread-&-pizza-oven last year, I was stopped dead in my tracks by something I had never seen before, but which in the space of a mili-second had just made it to my “Must Have” list. (Have you ever seen the film “The Gods Must Be Crazy”? In it, a careless bush pilot chugs down a Coca-Cola and throws the little green bottle out of the open cockpit. A tribe of primitive aborigines see the plane and its vapor trail, mistaking it for a flatulent God, who has just thrown them down a ‘gift’ from the heavens. Suddenly, this ‘thing’, the coke bottle, which no one had ever seen nor needed before, now became something EVERYONE had to have! And because there was only one, fights started breaking out amongst these previously happy and docile people). Yesterday was my own personal “Gods Must be Crazy” moment; and there, in front of the Home and Artisans Exhibit building, was a real-life, sod-roofed Hobbit Hole, complete with round door and all the charm of the Middle Earth Shire! There was just no way I could possibly live my life without one!!
I guess in reality what I was seeing was actually a very funky, VERY creative kids’ play space. But that didn’t prevent me from going inside, imagining it relocated to a place deep in the woods near my log cabin, a permanent, unobtrusive part of the landscape. And in my minds eye, there I was: writing prolifically from my laptop within its rounded sod walls. In a word, this Hobbit hole was the CUTEST thing I had ever seen in my entire life! The end to the story? Well, NO, I didn’t buy one (darn it!). But like the allure of Eve’s apple in the Garden of Eden, I saw firsthand the overwhelming power of temptation in its most unguarded light! How quickly, in a moment, we can crumble from staunch, unbending discipline to quavering weak-kneed, all-caution-to-the-wind desire. It was an eye-opening experience, to be sure!
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