What's a Modern Peasant to Do?

Squat? Be an urban dweller?

I never got a clear answer about what made my parents flee St. Louis in the early 1970s to try building a rural life on 84 acres of undeveloped wilderness in Northwest Arkansas – with four young children.

My father left behind his entire family on both sides. His parents, brother, endless aunts, uncles and cousins that he grew up with. The city of his birth and where he went to medical school (Washington University).

Perhaps a year in the jungle in Vietnam as an Army doctor played a part, but that topic was off-limits in our house. Was it white flight? The big cities were troubled in the 1970s, but my parents weren’t racists. My mom taught at an all-black school; my dad’s residency was in the inner city.

Maybe it was something in the air or water. Their bookshelves were filled with the Foxfire books, the Whole Earth Catalog, Mother Earth News and titles on folkways, such as “Garden Sass” by Nancy McDonough.

But my parents weren’t hippies. They showered every day, their closets were filled…