01/24/2010

On the Banks of Plum Creek

Been reading this book to the boys lately. It's one of the Little House on the Prairie books. Imagine how cool it would be to live like they did.

1. No cell phones; no phone of any kind
2. No health insurance premiums
3. No electric bill
4. No gas bill
5. No water bill
6. No trash bill
7. No sewer bill
8. No rent
9. You would own a house that you built yourself
10. You would have a spare house (the underground one on the creek bank)
11. You would have a team of horses, a beautiful creek in your front yard.
12. All the free fish you can catch
13. A milking cow with fresh butter, cream, etc.
14. A beautiful prairie right outside of your front door.
15. Town 2 miles away
16. A good day's work
17. A nice fire from wood you cut yourself
18. Very few possessions

That life is so much better than the lives most of us lead, that it amazes me that we don't all strive to live that way. But "the good life" is so situated in the particular place and time in which you live, that longing for the 'good life' of another time looks almost like insanity at worst, or eccentricity at best. That life is very hard, but our lives are very hard too. Their lives were filled with much more death - infant mortality, sickness for which there were no cures, dangerous work. Our lives are filled with less death, but more stomach turning stresses. Their lives were simpler - less entities to organize and keep up with. Our lives require each of us to be managers of a complex of interests, schedules, payments, receipts, locations, etc. Each month is divided into pay periods, each day into work periods, each hour into tasks, each task into records of for whom the work was done and for how long. This work is detached from the earth and its schedules - from seedtime and harvest, even from winter and summer. In order to connect with those natural rhythms we have to be intentional. Just as we have to schedule physical exercise because our jobs give us none, we have to intentionally plan to see nature, note the weather, etc. Power outages plunge us into a half-world, where we have one foot in the desire to have light at midnight and entertainment on any given day, and one foot in the world where night means darkness for the most part, summer means heat, and winter means cold. Maybe I'd hate the life that they had on the side of that creek, but something tells me that I would thrive there.