This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [98]
When Papa and Rob crossed paths in 1976, both scrawny and roughly dressed in soil-worn clothes, they didn’t know each would contribute to the success of the other, but they did recognize in each other a similar passion and drive. They were the younger and hipper breed of organic visionaries who would soon replace the older and somewhat kookier J. I. Rodale evangelism.
Also in attendance at the fair were Winnie and John, former filmmakers at Rodale Press’s media group in Pennsylvania, who had started their own venture, Bullfrog Films. The young couple had obtained permission from the Nearings to shoot a documentary on the good life. John, thin and bearded with an English accent, and Winnie, with a new baby in her arms, approached Helen and Scott after the talk. Helen took one look at them and said, “Pretty irresponsible to bring another little one into this world, isn’t it?” Taken aback, but not deterred by what was known as the brusqueness of the Nearings, Winnie and John made plans with Helen to come to Maine that August with a cameraman and capture this newly in-vogue homesteader lifestyle.
Back on the cape, the Nearings’ stone home was close to completion, thanks to the help of many free hands and Brett’s fine woodworking skills. True to Helen’s vision, the new house looked as if it had always belonged on the spot overlooking the cove.
“A building should appear to grow easily from its site,” Helen would quote from Frank Lloyd Wright’s On Architecture in her picture book Our Home Made of Stone, “and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if nature is manifest there, and if not, try to make it as quiet, substantial and organic as she would have been were the opportunity hers.”
Lanterns lit a circle of people at the center of Hoffman’s Cove as the ocean shushed on the shore. All the apprentices were there, and other people I didn’t know. Heidi and I’d gorged ourselves on strawberry-rhubarb crisp, and our blood raced with the sweet-tartness of it. Mama said it was the shortest night of the year, so we were allowed to stay up after dark for the party, a special treat, but her face was somber in the firelight as she sat on a rock nursing Clara, while Papa sat with Bess and the others.
“Almost time to go home,” Mama called, shy of parties, we knew, and glad for an excuse to leave.
“No, no,” Heidi and I screamed. We ran from Mama in all directions. We were full of the light of the endless June days, fields swaying with the purple-blue temples of lupine. The light, too, was full of itself, sun rising before we woke and setting after we went to bed. It bubbled up from some endless underground spring, tumbling over itself to be free. Even after the orange of sunset faded from the horizon, the light burst through the darkness in the blink-blink-blink of fireflies and the flash of phosphorescence in the black water of the ocean, mirroring the sparks of stars above. The moon was like a hole in the fabric of night, allowing the constant light to show through from behind.
Everyone sang and laughed and talked all at once, swimming and splashing naked in the ocean. We chased fireflies with Larry and Barry, catching them in our cupped hands, and stirred the sea with our toes to watch the phosphorescence follow their path in the water. Heidi was another light in the night, a lively firefly, bouncing here and there, sitting on laps, singing in her little voice to herself, putting pebbles in her nose. And then she ran out into the ocean after Michèle, tripped