All the Things I Want to Say

I netflixed a PBS series, Frontier House. I caught part of the last episode years ago and have always wanted to watch the whole thing, but didn't know the show's name. Finally I found it and rented it. It was sooooo captivating! They took 3 modern families, gave them the tools and knowledge that a pioneer family would have had in 1883, and stuck them in the Montana wilderness for five months. I can not stop thinking about this show.

Over the years, Andy and I have developed this homesteading dream, probably aided by reading too many back issues of Mother Earth News. He likes to figure out how to do things: how to build a root cellar, windmill, water system. I like to see things grow and take shape. We both like working with our hands. And mostly, I feel crowded by too many other people. I like people, but I don't like living on a .4 acre lot with 250 other families right on top of us. The houses next door are less than 40 feet from ours, but I only know the full names of maybe 3 families in the neighborhood. It's dizzyingly impersonal. If we're going to be so insular, I'd rather do it where I don't have someone I don't know watching me get the mail.

If we had known about Frontier House, we wouldn't have applied for the project. For one thing, very few people can afford a 6-month hiatus from work, even if the job is still going to be there afterwards. As a vegetarian family, we would be unlikely to preserve salt pork or chop heads off chickens. Those considerations aside, I felt a sense of longing to be where these families were, to scythe hay and cut firewood, to build our log cabin and shear our own sheep. I think we could have participated in the project and done well for ourselves.

We often talk about the things we want to do someday, solar panels, earth-sheltered house, fruit trees, merino sheep. A life that is gentle, slow, and rich in meaning. I am not saying that I should have been alive in 1883 (I like toilet paper too much), but that I take pleasure in something made by my own hands. Our Piedmont house is by no means a palace. There are too many problems with it. But soon, every square inch of that place will have our mark on it. That's why we still have it. The sense of "I made this" is deeply satisfying.