Back to the Garden

I watch contentedly from my bay window as the brown-eyed Jersey cow munches lazily on red-top clover planted last year. Her form is framed by green, rolling hills as clouds move swiftly across the blue skies, casting dark shadows against the hillside. The contrast of the light and darker greens in this beautiful setting holds my eye, as I reflect on the many blessings and promises of this good life.

I can almost imagine the sound of the fire crackling and glowing behind me in the fireplace that will be done by the cool fall weather. We had worked many hours to acquire the dry, seasoned wood from our thirty-five acre wood lot. It will burn brightly in the field-stone fireplace our friends are helping us build — stones hand-picked from one of our lower fields we had labored to prepare for seed.

Our home is made of logs my husband cut and hauled from the woods with two of our fine draft horses. The house is large and airy, with much light from windows receiving the southern exposure. Though unfinished, it is truly the dream house we had always hoped for. We borrowed only a small amount of money to build our home and spent countless hours working on it, laboring long days to make it strong and lasting, a testimony to our determination, the fruit of a dream realized. We have peace and security and are growing each day to be more self-sufficient from a world we don’t care to identify with.

It came slowly at first, this feeling of everything not being totally right. True, we seemed to be on our way “back to the garden,” didn’t we? A fine home, good marriage, beautiful land and healthy children. We had escaped the establishment, we thought, yet we knew deep down inside we did not have real peace in our hearts. Our tranquility was only external and it was becoming clear to us, ever so gradually, that we had no lasting serenity in our souls. The fulfillment of our dream hadn’t brought us to a place of contentment. Our happiness was only superficial; it had no depth. There was still an empty place deep in our beings that longed for something we weren’t sure we could find. We knew there were questions we had since our youth that remained unanswered. Escaping into the hills of Maine to become as self-sufficient as possible hadn’t brought relief to the problems we saw in ourselves or in the world. Even though beautiful and serene, the forests and fields could give no answers. We had tried so hard to not be like our parents and the establishment, but we were beginning to realize we had the same foundational problems, only disguised or altered by an alternative lifestyle.

Ever since I could remember I had always sought to know what my purpose in life was. As a young child I would sit by the ocean and wonder about God and his creation. As a youth growing up in the ’60s, in frustration I had demanded to know, “What is reality?” I questioned why we were on the earth. Was it to help usher in an age of peace? How? Where was God and why was He so distant? My friends and I were rude in our quest for an answer, and rebelled against anything that merely wafted of authority.

Never having taken Christianity seriously, I searched for answers in every avenue of Eastern philosophies. But no matter how long I sat in my dark, incense-filled room and meditated, the feeling of peace quickly wore off and I emerged the same disgruntled teenager. I wanted to be a kind person. My selfishness and quick temper bothered my conscience and I hated the way I treated my parents and friends. I hated the way they treated me. Worthlessness hung over me like a dark cloud. How could anything be different?

I threw myself into the peace movement and labored selflessly day and night. Is this what I was created to do with my life? Could we bring about a new society? Maybe everyone would just wake up one morning with the same song in their heart and say, “Hey, this is crazy! Let’s stop making war and start loving each other!” I thought maybe this was reality. We just needed enough positive vibes to get it rolling.

Years passed. Though disillusioned, I never stopped looking for the answer and my spiritual roots. I tried higher education. Maybe there my mind and soul could be enlightened and I could discover who I was and what it was we were all supposed to be doing here. I was enlightened all right. My rebellion reached new heights and college succeeded in almost smothering my already-stifled conscience. I had a few morals, a few absolutes in my life that I had tenaciously hung on to, but my liberal education finished them off. The few basic truths my parents had taught me were cast to the wind. Higher education gave me no answers, but only more questions. It taught me to question everything, even long-established good things, and to reason away my screaming conscience. Taking on my professors’ philosophies and those of the authors I read, I felt like a small boat tossed about a very confused sea. I was told everything could be reality, things I thought were bad were really good and anything I believed was real. Somehow the little common sense I possessed told me that was ridiculous, and the meaning of life eluded me more than ever.

I tried working within the system as a teacher, but eventually dropped out. I saw so many needs in the children, but was powerless to really help them. I could try to love them, but between the parents undoing what confidence I tried to instill, the bureaucracy working against meeting their real needs, and my own insecurities and uncertainties, I didn’t have much hope of having an impact on their little lives. What answers could I give them?

Alternating between searching for reality and trying to avoid it through drugs and alcohol, my husband and I decided to begin a new life homesteading. For eight or nine years we gave all our energy to our farm, lumbering business, animals and children. We tried to forget the problems in society and the problems we knew were still in us. But having children really gave us a different perspective on life and further exposed ways in us we knew had to change. What answers about life would we give them?

We worked harder, trying to disguise the frustration of knowing there was nothing we could do about anything. A nagging conscience was causing our dream to lose its zeal. I fought the thought that the purpose of life was only to work the land, grow old and some day be buried under the old apple tree... compost to the earth. There had to be more to life than this meaningless death! Many times late at night, when the children were all sleeping, I would stand at the edge of the hill gazing at the dark night and cry. Sometimes I would lie in the grass and sob. All the frustration of my youth would surface as I cried out, “What was I created for? Why can’t I be happy?” I raised my hands toward the star-filled heavens and screamed, “God, if you’re there, speak to me.”