Helen and Scott Nearing

Scott Nearing (1883-1983) and Helen Knothe Nearing (1904-1995) were well known American back-to-the-landers who wrote extensively about their experience living what they termed "the good life".

Scott was a trained economist and former college professor (he had lost his position due to his anarchist and pacifist beliefs, and his anti-war activism during World War I). Helen had grown up in an economically comfortable family of Theosophists, and as a young woman had been with J. Krishnamurti during his "enlightenment" experience under the pepper tree in Ojai, California. She was trained as a musician, and also had some brief experience in the factory work world before moving into the agrarian life with Scott.

The Nearings began their simple life on a farm near Jamaica, Vermont in 1932, in the pit of the Great Depression. In 1952 they moved to Maine, ultimately settling on their "Forest Farm" at Cape Rosier (near Harborside, Maine), where they lived until their deaths. Scott remained a thinker, writer, and lecturer on economics and social issues for many years. Their best known books are Living the Good Life (published 1954) and Continuing the Good Life (1979). The first of these is often credited with being a major spur to the U.S. back to the land movement that began in the late 1960s.

Helen and Scott were devoted to a lifestyle giving importance to work, on the one hand, and contemplation or play, on the other. Ideally, they aimed at a norm that would divide most of a day's waking hours into three blocks of four hours: "bread labor" (work directed toward meeting needs of food, shelter, clothing, needed tools, and such); civic work (doing something of value for their community); and professional pursuits or recreation (for Scott this was frequently economics research, for Helen it was often music - but they both liked to ski, also).

The Nearings were experimenters and were also very widely read (they frequently quoted authors of centuries past in their own books). They found wisdom in some of the attitudes of the past, but did not feel tied to the life patterns or technologies of the past. Apart from the necessity that drove them to the land, when they sought a good life during the Depression, keys to their success in the lifestyle included intelligence, commitment, and self-discipline.

In Vermont, the Nearings had adopted some innovations in their practices of preparing maple syrup and maple sugar from their tapped maple trees; these products were sources of cash income for them. During a period when manufactured fertilizers and pesticides were becoming standard practice, they pursued the organic approach to food gardening. In Maine, without sugar maples to provide a cash crop, they cultivated blueberries. The Nearings utilized new techniques of building houses and outbuildings from stone and concrete (the Flagg method). And, if anything, Helen was more the stone mason than Scott, though Scott (21 years older than Helen) also worked hard physically, into advanced age.

Their best-known books draw mainly on their personal experience on their homesteads. Secondary content is drawn from reflections on mainstream-American society (which they were critical of and basically rejected), their neighbors, and the positive values they believed in (self-responsibility, healthy exercise and diet, social cooperation, environmental consciousness, etc.).

The cycles and rhythms of nature were the Nearings' guide as they successfully provided for about 80% of their food needs. Their approach to living, based largely on the reduction of wants and a mostly non-monetary return from their organic horticulture and other sorts of labor, appealed to many people. The Nearings offered an almost "open-house" situation on their land for several decades, so that visitors could experience this way of life and learn a bit from them.

The Nearings saw opportunity for the cooperative development of the lumber industry (and other industries) in their Vermont valley. Ultimately, while they considered their original Vermont-homestead project to be successful in providing a livelihood, as well as contact with nature and enjoyment of life, they felt frustrated by an extreme local household independence – which they felt contrasted unfavorably with the reality in many rural parts of Europe. Their valley neighbors in Vermont, the Nearings wrote, “…looked upon cooperative enterprise as the first step toward super-imposed discipline and coercion. They were suspicious of organized methods and planning. They would have none of it.” Consequently, the Nearings moved on to another rural place, Cape Rosier, Maine.

As of the publication of their books, and of their open-house practices toward guests, the Nearings' approach was emulated by thousands of people who wanted a life that afforded play and contemplation in addition to work.

Books

Books written or edited by Helen and Scott Nearing:

• Living the Good Life (1954), by Helen and Scott Nearing
• Man's Search for the Good Life (1954), by Scott Nearing
• Freedom: Promise and Menace (1961), by Scott Nearing
• The Conscience of a Radical (1965), by Scott Nearing
• The Maple Sugar Book (1972), by Helen and Scott Nearing
• The Making of a Radical: a Political Autobiography (1972), by Scott Nearing
• The Good Life Picture Album (1974), by Helen Nearing
• Civilization and Beyond: Learning From History (1975), by Scott Nearing
• Loving and Leaving the Good Life (1992), by Helen Nearing
• Light on Aging and Dying (1995), by Helen Nearing
• Guiding Principles for the Good Life (1997), by Helen Nearing
• Wise Words for the Good Life: a Homesteader's Personal Collection (1999), by Helen Nearing