I had heard about this classic book first published in 1942
and never out of print since then, as a must read for people that were
interested in sustainable living and organic farming. When I started reading
it, I immediately realized that this wonderful gem of a book doesn’t really
have anything to do with sustainable living and organic farming, however, it is
a great and fun read about how to survive as a family that lives partly
isolated among the mountains and lakes of northwestern Maine. They lived on a 5
mile long road that connected two lakes that functioned as waterways. Every fall and every spring they were totally
isolated while the ice on the lakes froze or unfroze, until either a car on the
ice or a boat on the water could again connect them to the ‘outside’.
Their life is content, but not sustainable in
our sense that you can live on the land without anything from the outside –
they get their income from transporting tourists and logging supplies along
their 5-mile road, they need to ‘import’ most food and all other supplies like
gasoline, engine parts, and kerosene, and only get deer meat, fresh fish, and
some corn locally (their back yard).
Louise moved to ‘the woods’ when she got married, and
subsequently had a baby during a winter storm (without problems), and at one
point didn’t leave the ‘neighborhood’ of the few neighbors within a couple of
miles away for a few years. But people
came to them, timber workers in logging camps in the winter, tourists looking
for wilderness in the summer. She
describes her life, her practical problems with food, storms, clothes, and cooking,
and her love for the nature and culture of the local people with great love and
humor.
You smile when you read it, and
the writing is suffused with common sense that is ever more important in even
today’s world, 70 years later, and eons away from a cottage without
electricity. It is a wonderful read,
and Louise puts life in great perspective, looking out from a mountain top in
Maine onto the world and its stresses and overabundance of things we don’t
really need to thrive. So read the book, it is great!
And of course, in light of the recent horrific hurricane
Sandy, an experience that will taint our lives in the future more than we
expect, I think, a book like this is even more relevant. What is important in life, really? What do
you need to survive, to love, and to be happy?
It certainly isn’t instant gratification through fast food, expensive
clothes, or pretty, but useless things.
Recently I have been very happy over having a non-damaged house and a
safe family after the storm, over the incredibly orange sunrises we have had,
and the fact that great books work without electric power of any kind. That is, real printed books on paper, my favorite kind of book.
Some select quotes from
this book to illustrate these points, and remember, this was written in 1942,
not 2012:
“Christmas in the woods is much better than Christmas on the
Outside. We do exactly what we want to do about it, not what we have to do
because the neighbors will think it’s funny if we don’t; or because of the
kids, who will judge our efforts not by their own standards but by the
standards set up by the parents of other kids. We don’t have any synthetic
pre-Christmas build-up – no shop window displays, no carol singers in
department stores, no competition in the matter of lighting effects over front
doors.”
“Here I can be a rotten housekeeper, and it doesn’t make
much difference. After all, this is the
woods. People don’t expect quite so much in the line of shining silver,
polished glass, and spotless woodwork. […] Now I am learning to spend my time
wisely; and I don’t think it’s very wise to spend two hours waxing the
living-room floor on a lovely day when I could be out fishing. “
“We went up the road and across Pond-in-the-River Dam just
as the sunlight struck the tops of the trees on the ridge. The valley was still
in shadow, with steam rising white from the churning water and turning to a
lovely pearly pink as it reached the sun-shot air above. I knew how fish feel
as they swim about in the depths and look up to see the light of day above
them.”
