I've felt a strange force of resistance every time I've sat down to gather thoughts, direction, format, content and guidance for this article. I normally love to write -- amusing presentations of information, ponderings, how to's on practical this-and-that's -- small arcs of the current grand circle which often correspond to seasons and phases, of years and of lives.

Keep a theme, I tell myself. Keep a theme and start at the beginning. And do not fear feeling overwhelmed, nor distrust my inner atmosphere's disbelief in the Serious and Important. Likewise, do not bemoan the frailty and mutability of language, the great distance between symbol and event.

It's been 12 years since we bought and moved to our 183-acre farm in Missaukee County. The years have been filled with dynamic living and dynamic lessons, in everything from parenting, meditation, cooperation, love, acceptance to tractor repair, goat care, grain storage, the proliferation of Jerusalem artichokes, ad infinitum. We've scorched gallons of maple syrup, spilled (and cleaned up) probably a ton of honey, lost thousands of dollars worth of field seeds to drought and inexperience, and, in short, had years of hands-on experience in committing just about every homesteading blunder imaginable.

We were not among the many who choose to move to the country to escape urban clamor, pollution, and the disharmony and neuroses overcrowdedness and competition breed. Nor did we need to dis-program ourselves from imposed schedules and frenetic routines. There is, I'm sure, an unbridgeable distance between escape and determined direction, a difference which has much to do with down-and-out failure and some semblance of making it.

No, we'd been living on a lovely 4-acre piece of land, relatively secluded, just a short walk from Higgins Lake. Bob was a Wildlife Biologist with the DNR -- a "respected rebel" therein -- with a growing sense of the dis-ease of the bureaucratic system and an even stronger sense of the possibilities and potential for the DNR to be an educational vehicle, as well as a model of ecologically sound management practices. He had taken up beekeeping, among many other things, as a hobby and thrived on both his growing wonder at the bees and the construction and management of our beehives. I was Mom to our two young daughters, nursery school teacher, hobbyist artist, neophyte organic gardener. I fancied myself a scholar of Gurdjieff, Steiner and Ouspensky, on the ever-changing path of spiritual discovery, and a "celebrating force" of positive energy and inspiration to and for all friends who were also motivated toward self-understanding, cooperation, living out ecological principles personally, and becoming more consciously aware through personal relationship. Bob and I were steeped in illusions, yes, and full of hope and energy. And we had thus attracted many friends of like-mindedness.

So when we made the final decision to expand and change our lifestyle, it was with lofty idealism, rearranged consciences and strongly motivated senses of faith and purpose. Our girls were 4 and 5 when we decided to move to the farm. They were used to a lot of folks around home, as I had started a natural foods co-op and operated it out of our basement; plus we'd had a lot of company -- friends who'd come to share feelings, ideas, work. Our change in location didn't represent a culture shock to them, nor a disruption in their security needs being well met. At least it didn't seem so.

Amidst the finalizing of papers for closing the farm deal and sale of our home, Bob was stricken with a mysterious form of viral meningitis, which left him paralyzed from the chest down. During the weeks of his hospitalization, we were faced with re-evaluating our decision. Risk-taking had always been a sort of way of life for both of us; but the possibility of permanent paralysis cast a new light on everything. If we went ahead as planned, could he embark on the enormous workload in a wheelchair? No longer able to carry out the job as Biologist, could we make it financially without outside income? Could we, through meditation, prayer, visualization and the gentle understanding of subtle forces, effect his healing? Was this a test of our commitment? Could we still create something -- a living environment -- to serve a higher value than itself? Could we still be quality partners/lovers, parents, friends, workers toward self-sufficiency (inside and out) with this handicap? Would the sheer frustration of "no legs" erode Bob's determination and strong will?

We moved in with no clean answers -- only the challenge that you never know unless you try. We built ramps. We fixed up the house so it was livable. We cleaned out barns, sorted stuff, repaired this and that, planned, studied, pored over FHA forms, had a house fire that destroyed our whole upstairs and everything kept there, got goats and chickens and turkeys. We set up living spaces for friends to live on the farm, disked and disked fields that hadn't been worked in many years, bought tractors and other farming equipment -- all used -- some of which I'd never heard, much less operated. That was the first year. By the end of that year, Bob had passed along his wheelchair and was up on crutches, driving here and there to establish new bee yards. And we were learning that the "simple life" is anything but simple. We were going a lot of different directions with our energy, in the name of and need for diversity, and what had been theory-based and theory-centered was being put to the test of practical application. "Hands-on" experience was teaching us what does and doesn't work; direction takes patience, focused concentration, study and determination, fore-bearance for detours, and a quality seldom mentioned in homesteaders' tales, self-knowledge. We learned most from our failures.

Since then, Bob has miraculously pieced together a very versatile sawmill, assembled from old machinery; our land is being organically enriched by properly timed plantings of green manure crops. We've built a wonderful greenhouse and built up the quality of enough soil to grow good food to meet our needs. This has been the home of many supportive friends, a kind of stopping off point to learn both skills and self-understanding -- the stuff that can come only from loving and working together (and working through the resentments, disagreements, the ebbs and flows in relationships).

What have we learned? That was, after all, the theme. It's almost too big a question. But it has to do with the only way that human beings can bring about any real changes, in the scheme of things. It has to do with paying attention. It has to do with responsibility. It has to do with doing the dance of life gracefully, even when that dance means killing a rabbit that you've watered and fed and nurtured in subzero weather, day after day, with deep hopes it would get well.

Our girls are teenagers now, and we have an 8-year-old son, born up in our bedroom (which, by the way, never got entirely finished since re-building after the fire) on a lovely spring morning. We've discovered that, no matter what you think our back-to-the-land lifestyle might add to the kid's lives in the way of communion with nature and right values, you have to surrender your expectations. Romping in the springtime woodland among the blooming violets and picking uncurled fiddlehead ferns for supper is fantastic, when they're 5 or 6 or 7 or 8. But at about 9 or 10, you have to force them to take the annual springtime trek of discovery. No matter what enthusiasm they may have about a new baby goat, getting them to care for it is like pulling teeth. I may love to ride my bike a few miles to dip in the river, but they don't want to take a chance on a blood sucker and would prefer to work out to a Jane Fonda video and take the car to a clean, chlorinated pool. There is disdain for my tasty vegetarian load and homegrown veggie soup; they'd rather have a burger. In short, our kids are normal. They're also honest and open and have a taste for the "greener grass". We've felt our own sincere remorse at times -- for being too busy, too scattered, too immersed in others' troubles or in our own idealism, to really BE there for them. But during the last several years, our efforts to focus on our nuclear family have brought tremendous rewards. They'll still have to climb the ladder of ego (perhaps someday to find out there's not a whole lot up there), striving to become what society today says they should be, to be worthy. But we're sure they'll call us often from New York City . . . and what they won't forget (which is probably their true foundation) is being appreciated, being enjoyed, even being MADE to rake up leaf piles to jump in and planting peas when they least felt like it. If, indeed, we as parents are models, let us be models of caring and appreciation. Our kids learn from who we are, not what we say. If we are self-deceiving in the name of integrity, we are teaching them self-deception -- not integrity. If we appear confident and underneath are fearful, we are teaching them to be afraid. Kids sense it all and are our greatest mirrors, reflecting back to us (sometimes painfully) our needs to grow, to change, to surrender, to love and thus be loveable.

Talking about the kids reminds me of the many dreams and aspirations that have fallen prey to that pragmatic reality of time/space limitations and finances. We feel differently now, in our 40's, and see from different eyes than we did a decade ago. Punishing ourselves with guilt is an absurd waste of energy. And as we look back, we see that we probably just didn't have enough will, perseverance and focus to make some of these dreams and ideas manifest. Or we unconsciously feared failure. Or our larger, outer ambitions gave way to the constant diffusion of fitting in the laundry while bagging up the grain (but where are the strings?) while going on a hunt to every outbuilding trying to find the just-right tool which mysteriously disappeared. I believe it's known as lack of organization.

A symbolic example of these unfulfilled aspirations is a home school -- a country alternative to reflect the belief in experiential, many-faceted education, utilizing our environment here to encourage wholistic learning. But it hasn't happened. And our own eldest is heading off to college next year (caring far more about a "cool" wardrobe than our perennial gardens left behind). What we have done, though, is to have groups of kids come out to the farm for some hands-on experience away from their classrooms. They've helped gather sap during sugarbush, learned about bee colonies and watched honey being extracted from hive frames, had turns dipping candles into molten beeswax, collected peacock feathers, fed animals, watched logs being sawed into boards, etc. And we've gone into the schools often to give special programs on everything from yoga and breadmaking to art and music. Bob even erected a nifty cedar pole teepee in our son's classroom -- a "special place" for the kids to go for a quiet time alone. We haven't created our own school; we've plugged into what already exists and added what we can. Like everything else, it never seems like enough. But that just means there's a lot of room for improvement, right? So we need to keep learning and getting better integrated, knowing that our lives will keep reflecting the inner changes.

I was going to write about how accountability (there's no one to blame but oneself; notice that you're the one who noticed) and cooperation and transforming the physical support systems of our lives. I was going to touch on consuming renewable energy, foods, goods -- all that stuff -- and about trusting our own initiative and intelligence.

But what our lives here have taught us, mostly about change, is that transformation toward a better way is a very personal thing. Real changes begin in the minds and hearts of individuals. What is not thought of first, with a degree of independence, by individual humans cannot spread from person to person, to affect the way people live and make decisions. Even what may seem the best of decisions, when made for people, will eventually turn out badly because they are not really understood and will be misapplied, often making them go into some kind of moral reverse. William James seemed to understand this and be able to explain it clearly. "I am done," he wrote years ago, "with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible, molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which , if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride."

We've learned that we will realize the vision of our hearts, not our idle wishes. We will gravitate toward that which we most privately love. We will receive that which we earn -- no more, no less. And we will be tomorrow where our thoughts take us. This we cannot escape; and we can endure and learn, accept and be glad.

Bob walks without even a cane now.

Return to the Index of Synapse 40, Summer 1997