Eco Barons by Edward Humes

Author:Edward Humes
Language: nld
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9.

bees and trees

Roxanne Quimby’s journey to the Maine Woods began when she fled the raucous counterculture bustle of San Francisco after earning her art degree, embarking with her boyfriend on a cross-country drive in search of a simpler life. Helen and Scott Nearing’s 1954 “back to the land” manifesto Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World, had inspired her to seek out the agrarian lifestyle that they recommended and that Thoreau had sought before them: finding joy in quiet, in plainness, in work with your hands, in nature. It was 1975 and she was twenty-five, a child of the 1960s, disillusioned by Vietnam, by assassinations, and by Watergate. She was ready to drop off the grid and to see if, through getting close to nature, she might find for herself a different take on the vision that had captivated her European immigrant parents: America as a promised land. She would find it, too, though in an unexpected place and manner, as she became an even more unlikely CEO than the mountain man Doug Tompkins: astrologer, mystic, hippie, waitress, single mom, Horatio Alger character, magnate, idol of teenage girls everywhere, eco baron.

The journey started when Quimby and George St. Clair loaded up the requisite Volkswagen microbus and headed to Vermont, looking to buy a homestead. They soon discovered their $3,000 nest egg wasn’t enough to buy much of anything in the Green Mountain State, not even bare land. “Try Maine,” someone suggested.

On the edge of the Maine Woods, in rural Piscataquis County outside the mill town of Guilford, they found thirty forested acres they could afford, cool and fragrant with pine needles. They set about clearing a portion of the land and using the logs to build their own cabin, one big room with a loft for sleeping. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone, just an old wood stove and some kerosene lamps. They hauled water from a cold spring on their land. Nothing was wasted: Water from washing the dishes would be used to wash the floor. In winter, they’d cover the spring to insulate it from the subfreezing temperatures, but eventually they’d have to fetch water with an ax. In the warm months they planted and tended a vegetable garden. When the VW died, they walked the two miles to Guilford. During the muddy spring, they wore high black rubber boots. During the snow season, they wore snowshoes. Sometimes they needed snowshoes just to get to the outhouse.

You can live a good life without much, Quimby decided, with the added benefit that a lack of resources makes you resourceful. It was idyllic in many ways, but hard work, too, especially in winter, when the cabin seemed very, very small, and the idea she had of living off the land, painting, and selling her work for what money she needed didn’t seem to be working out very well. She took jobs as a waitress instead, but because of her innate

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