A dvd I ordered came in the mail yesterday. It's PBS's Frontier House, a 6 part series profiling the lives of three families trying to live life as settles heading west in the 1880's. Given that we do not have a television, I did not know this show existed until recently.
It was a similar Canadian show, Pioneer Quest, produced years ago that got me interested in the lifestyle I am pursuing today. At the time this show was airing on television we did have a tv and I was enamored by the concept. I would have volunteered for such a show in an instant, without hesitation. That is not to say it is how I would like to live but just that it sparked an idea. Is it possible to live and work so close to the land in modern times?
At the same time I was also making my way through The Complete Tightwad Gazette, reading about self-sufficiency, and the book, Your Money Or Your Life. Typing in Self sufficiency into a google search I came across the books by John Seymour, and that led me to Carla Emery and then later Henry David Thoreau's Walden. With the release of the Food Inc film, and the books The 100 Mile Diet, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I made small but steady steps on this path.
All these things lead me in the same direction, on the path to simplicity, a path to resist the consumer culture and forge my own life using my own belief system and values, not those impressed upon me by mainstream media. At the root of all this was an idea that, without romanticizing the hardships, life possessed more meaning when people were more directly involved with their food, their families and their day to day tasks.
It has taken a long time to get to this point and I still have a fair distance to go, but I keep going. Luckily I stumble upon little bits of inspiration like Frontier House to keep me focused.
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