I'm infatuated with all things pioneer - have been since I was young. I've had my phases in life as anyone has, but in the back of my mind has always been a deep desire to live my life "Little House on the Prairie" style. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's books when I was a girl, and in all honesty, I've read them a number of times. I still love them, and I carry those stories with me every day of my life.
So it may come as no surprise that when I'm watching TV some of my favorites are Alaska: The Last Frontier, Ultimate Survival Alaska, and Mountain Men. I also enjoy the bravery of the folks on Swamp People and the humor of the members of Duck Dynasty.
If you've never heard of these shows, I think you are really missing out. But I digress...
The point of this post is to share something I have been pondering for a few days, from the book "The Last American Man" by Elizabeth Gilbert, the charismatic author of "Eat, Pray, Love". American Man came out in 2002, and is the story of the life of Eustace Conway, a mountain man and one of those featured on History's Mountain Men.
I won't go into the details of Eustace's life - I'll leave that to Elizabeth Gilbert and strongly urge anyone who is of the pioneer/homesteading spirit to look it up and give it a read. What I do want to share is a passage from the book that has been on my mind for days, and once I shared it with my own husband, has given him days of pondering as well.
This excerpt is from a talk Eustace was given teenagers at a nature center.
"I live", Eustace said, "in nature, where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is it's passage around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular, coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and I build my fire in a circle, and when my loved ones visit me, we sit in a circle and talk. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this. The ancient people understood that our world is a circle, but we modern people have lost sight of that. I don't live insides buildings, because buildings are dead places where nothing grows, where water doesn't flow, and where life stops. I don't want to live in a dead place. People say that I don't live in the real world, but it's modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they've stepped outside the natural circle of life.
"I saw the circle of life most clearly when I was riding my horse across America and I came across the body of a coyote that had recently died. The animal was mummified from the desert heat, but all around it, in a lush circle, was a small band of fresh green grass. The earth was borrowing the nutrients from the animal and regenerating itself. This wasn't about death, I realized; this was about eternal life. I took the teeth from the coyote and made myself this necklace right here, which always circle my neck, so I'd never forget that lesson.
"Do people live in circle today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in the box of their bedroom because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into a box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken up into lots of little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to their house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothing in a box, they live their lives in a box! Does that sound like anybody you know?"
By now the kids were laughing and applauding.
"Break out of the box!" Eustace said. "You don't have to live like this because people tell you it's the only way. You're not handcuffed to your culture! This is not the way humanity lived for thousands and thousands of years, and it is not the only way you can live today!"
I think he sums it up pretty nicely.
I'm rounding off the corners of my life. It may not be a circle yet, but I'm getting closer every day.
How about you?
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