Wednesday evening, Michelle called upstairs, “There’s a bear on the beach!”
Aly and I clattered down the stairs to join her in our bedroom, where she watched out the window. Across the garden, we could see a young brown bear wandering down our beach toward the cabin.
As we complete our eleventh year of residence on our homestead, I recall a motto we adopted early on: “work like a peasant, live like a king.”
From the very beginning, the strange dichotomy of our life became apparent. We deliberately, voluntarily reduced our quality of life in order to improve it. We dedicated ourselves to a new lifestyle, economy, and condition set—a new paradigm, if you will—that recasts us almost literally as peasants. Yet, by doing so, we live like kings!
