Moving, Too
June 21st, 2013 · No Comments · Posted in Blog, Local events, rural life
Soon we will open the truck to see what’s inside
When we aren’t moving sheep and chickens around on our new farm property we occasionally break to move our possessions from the District of Columbia to Upstate New York. My wife, who remains in D.C. to pack all of our worldly goods and prepare our apartment for new tenants, yesterday sent a friend, John, 400 miles north with a truckload of stuff. Here on the receiving end, we get to unpack it and find a place for everything.
I often think of Indian tribes out on the plains who, when the buffalo moved, rolled up the teepee and managed to tow their entire household in a single bundle. Perhaps more apt was the event at Battenkill Books last night where Vermont farmer/author Ben Hewitt read from his latest book, Saved: How I Quit Worrying About Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World. It’s about a young man Hewitt met who survives on $6,000 a year and seemingly hasn’t a care in the world. What, exactly, is the purpose of money in our lives? Hewitt asks.
We spend most of our lives trying to get money and the things it will buy us. Then we worry endlessly over whether we have enough money and all the ways we could possibly lose it. Hewitt’s grandfather was a millionaire many times over, but he lost it all, leaving his children just $10,000 apiece in insurance. Hewitt’s father became a successful poet. Hewitt himself is a high school dropout–glad not to be towing a huge college debt behind him–who makes a fair living as a freelance author. He and his wife bought 40 acres in northwest Vermont when land was cheap, and now live a simple existence raising two kids along with pigs and chickens and beef cattle.
The young man Hewitt befriended strikes a Tolstoy-esque pose, building his cabin in frigid temperatures wearing nothing more than a pair of worn sneakers and a threadbare sweatshirt, mixing concrete with stones he gathers from a nearby stream. Yet he knows how to feed himself from the surrounding woods and make his own clothes from animal hides. He doesn’t seem to want for more, while the rest of us fret over mortgages and health insurance and car payments.
Hewitt said this story changed his own outlook on things–like many of us, he was thrown for a loop by the last stock market crash–and he sees our money-oriented culture as rotten and bad for the soul. Wouldn’t we all get along better if we could return to a more pre-industrial pace?
That prompted a lively discussion amongst the packed house at Battenkill Books. In attendance was author James Kunstler, a resident of nearby Greenwich, who sees the mighty capitalistic edifice headed for a mighty big crash. Money-free uptopia or forced re-adjustment: what do you think lies ahead?
I know what lies ahead for me: moving a truckload of heavy boxes.
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