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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
I learned about this book from his son’s IG account that I follow about making natural meadows. No wonder he has such a love of nature as it wants to be.
It was a pleasure to read about the work of simple, off grid living through the lens of appreciating all the benefits. Heating the house each day - a reflection on the beauty of fire. Cooking and canning? Gratitude for the abundance. Chopping trees? The meditative time and tension of attention and inattention. Dealing with a poorly placed washed out road? The detachment of “how it should be” and simply navigating what is.
No wonder he and his wife were drawn to Buddhism. What struck me was the abundance of time that he felt and that he lived at a pace commensurate with time to observe, reflect and write (sparely, poetry). Others looking in might see the plethora of chores and that each task had significant effort and multiple steps. But that wasn’t the experience he shared.
His love of books and words and all things nature came through as well as his appreciation for his “simple life” - one so many would find arduous and overwhelming. And a life not chosen by politics or to make a point as much as one chosen to feed the inner needs of he and his wife.
Really loved this book.
“Libraries were about patience, possibility, and persistence.”
It was a pleasure to read about the work of simple, off grid living through the lens of appreciating all the benefits. Heating the house each day - a reflection on the beauty of fire. Cooking and canning? Gratitude for the abundance. Chopping trees? The meditative time and tension of attention and inattention. Dealing with a poorly placed washed out road? The detachment of “how it should be” and simply navigating what is.
No wonder he and his wife were drawn to Buddhism. What struck me was the abundance of time that he felt and that he lived at a pace commensurate with time to observe, reflect and write (sparely, poetry). Others looking in might see the plethora of chores and that each task had significant effort and multiple steps. But that wasn’t the experience he shared.
His love of books and words and all things nature came through as well as his appreciation for his “simple life” - one so many would find arduous and overwhelming. And a life not chosen by politics or to make a point as much as one chosen to feed the inner needs of he and his wife.
Really loved this book.
“Libraries were about patience, possibility, and persistence.”
Very elegiac work. An ode to living off the grid, in a manner that puts the work it takes in proper proportion. Wormser’s poetic appreciation for the work, and the choice to live as they had, really drives this memoir.
To read about a part of a state I love, and spent many summers around, I am deeply grateful for this book. My grandparents were the Calebs and the Stantons in many many ways. This book reminds me of them and the place they loved and the place they let go of one day. I carry it with me though and this reminded me of why that is.
To read about a part of a state I love, and spent many summers around, I am deeply grateful for this book. My grandparents were the Calebs and the Stantons in many many ways. This book reminds me of them and the place they loved and the place they let go of one day. I carry it with me though and this reminded me of why that is.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
3.5, really. It's an often beautiful book about living fully in the country that does not shy away from both the heady highs nature provides and the desperate lows rural life not infrequently produces. I did have trouble with the book's meandering structure and the contrasts Wormser sometimes drew between himself and his neighbors. They are, of course, living where they live for a wide variety of reasons, but they occasionally felt oversimplified.