Gene Logson

House from side, a photo by paynehollow on Flickr.

...on sustainable living...

I remember clearly the day when I was twelve, hunting morel mushrooms with my father, when I informed him excitedly that I had decided to take my dog and my rifle and go deep into the wilderness to live. I would build a cabin on a mountainside by a clear running stream, and live out my days happily on broiled trout, fried mushrooms, and hickory nut pie. I would achieve advanced degrees in the art of living, bestowed on me by Nature, and I would know many things not even Einstein or my stupid schoolteacher dreamed of.

I thought that he would approve, since he was forever retreating to the solitude of woods and river bank and farm field himself But he almost frowned, suggesting gently in a voice that sounded as if he were saying what he thought he was supposed to say, not what he really felt, that I needed to be thinking about making my way in the world and contributing something to it.

Unfortunately I tried to follow his advice and it took me until I was forty-two to realize that I knew what was better for me when I was twelve. And having hunted everywhere for the peculiar kind of freedom I had tried to articulate that day, I came back to my boyhood homethe place of my beginnings-and found it. What I learned in the process was to follow my own mind because worldly wisdom invariably springs from notions that are largely erroneous. The only really good advice that holds up in all situations is: Always make friends with the cook...

The voice of the turtle can be heard again, ringing through the land, as the old Wyandots and Mohegans who once roamed my farm would say-a new surge of creative energy that moves the earth in a direction of self-redemption and sustainability that not the richest PAC nor the oldest institutionalized claptrap can stop.

We are pioneers, seeking a new kind of religious and economic freedom. We flee the evils that centralized power always generates. Our God does not reside in the inner sanctums of cathedrals, but walks with us, hoeing in the fields. Sometimes I see Him checking the bluebird houses for murderous starlings and house sparrows and give Him hell for inventing the nest-robbing bandits. He smiles and reminds me that stupid scientists brought the starling and house sparrow to America, not Him.

We are circumspect about our economic institutions. We do not bank on paper money within marble walls, but invest in sun and soil and sweat and the tools that make sweat more productive.

I think of us as the Ramparts People. In all ages we have camped on the edges of the earth, the buffer between our more conventional and timid brethren and those nether regions where, as the medieval maps instructed, "there be dragons and wild beestes." It is our destiny to draw the dragon's fire while the mainstream culture hides behind its disintegrating deficit and damns us for shattering its complacency. So be it.

The hickory nut pie is excellent.