The Field Guide to Feelings
Self-Sufficiency
There was one point in my life when I was infatuated by the idea of self-sufficiency. It was when I was the most un-self-sufficient. I was coming out of adolescence, had no degree, no marketable skills, no place other than my parents’ to live, and was totally without savings. I declared I would be self-sufficient. I was not so self-sufficient that I didn’t need to tell others about it.
I had come under the influence of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, as exemplified by Helen and Scott Nearing’s book, Living the Good Life. I poured through the Whole Earth Catalog, subscribed to the The Mother Earth News, ordered from Burpee seeds, and set out to live an agrarian lifestyle. Connection to society was a bad deal, they said. The government was war-mongering and corrupt. Corporations polluted freely. Schools indoctrinated, rather than educated. Churches and suburbs insisted on a stultifying conformity. Even Mom and Dad were not to be trusted, for they defended all the above. The solution was to find a plot of land, put up a simple home, grow most of my own food, subsist largely off the grid, and evade the rat race of American life.
Did I succeed? I did not come anywhere near total self-sufficiency, but I stayed out of the rat race and attained some notable achievements along the way.
