This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [75]
Our small community, too, had become a tribe of its own, one consisting of Helen and Scott, Keith and Jean, our family, Greg (a new neighbor), and the seasonal apprentices in the campground, all living on the Nearings’ original hundred acres and following the customs and rituals of homesteading. As with any group of people united by certain customs, our tribe was fortified by the belief that its way of doing things was the best way to survive the myriad dangers of the world.
We didn’t have a connection to God in the traditional sense, but rather a spiritual reverence for nature. We appreciated the power of the sun to germinate our crops, the rain to keep them growing, the beauty of a sunrise, the glory of the sea sparking with diamonds. Each found his or her own sources of wonder and mystery in the unfolding of the universe, without the guarantees and assurances that church provided. This life was the priority, and in the effort to survive we didn’t worry about what would happen afterward.
The problem with our unorganized religion was that we had no constant, no Bible or church, no compass—aside from Living the Good Life and the now-expired five-year plan—to refer to in times of confusion. And Living the Good Life didn’t provide guidance for more personal matters outside the Nearings’ experience. Mama knew how to put away food, but what she needed was advice on the increasing distance in her marriage, and other more esoteric concerns.
Helen believed in the Theosophical tenet that all religions were explanations for the bigger mysteries of the universe and therefore each religion held a piece of the truth, although little discussed in the Good Life books. She espoused the Eastern idea of karma, similar to the Christian saying, “What ye sow, so shall you reap,” and reincarnation, which holds that the spirit is undying and is transferred into a new body after the body’s death.
Our neighbor Jean said she once saw Heidi running through the woods like a little sprite; when asked where she was going, her reply was a familiar, “Helen’s.” Helen likely treated Heidi as if she were an adult, the way she did most kids, respecting an older wisdom inside each child’s body, and Heidi perhaps connected to a shared spiritual spark in Helen. Despite Helen’s spiritual inclinations, the Nearing formula of four hours a day each for work, intellect, and society was missing the quadrant of the spirit.
Heidi, with her innocent joyfulness, was our primary representative.
Chapter Eight
Paradise
Heidi and Lissie with snow fort (Photograph courtesy of the author.)
Young animals were everywhere in the spring before Mama’s leaving. Our remaining milk goat, Swanley, named after the goat in the book Heidi, had a kid, not a billy, luckily, that we called Turnip because she was white like her mother. She had soft noodle legs and liked to butt her head into my hand, the way she butted into Swanley’s udder to nurse, so you could feel the bumps where her horns would be.
Mama and I were walking down the path to the Nearings’ when we saw a fawn with its mother in the woods next to the path. They stopped to watch us over their shoulders, the small one with white freckles across its back and dark wet nose and eyes. Suddenly the mother flicked her ears as if to say, “Come on,” her tail flashing white as they leaped away, cracking sticks through the woods.
“When you see a deer, that means something new is coming,” Mama whispered. “We saw a baby so maybe it means we’ll have a new baby, too.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Will you be able to take care of it?”
“Of course,” Mama said. “That’s what mamas do.