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“. . . a simple life that works.”

A woman came by one afternoon a while back to talk with my soon-to-be wife about catering our wedding. She had brought her brother along to meet us. He was some sort of businessman who had just flown up from the south to visit her. When they got here I was locked in an emergency plumbing crisis, the water to the house was shut off and there were tools scattered everywhere. I apologized and encouraged the brother to go have a look around until I could be a proper host.

While the women were working and I was otherwise occupied, he went off on a self-guided tour of our place. There was a lot for him to see. Now it also happened that the previous day he had had a chance to tour one of the wealthiest estates in the valley below.

Time passed. I finally got the crisis under control and turned the water back on to the house. I looked over at the upper patio where Kathy and her friend were sitting and saw that they were closing their notebooks. I set out to let the brother know things were winding down at the house and maybe show him some of the things we love most about living here.

Later, as we were all saying goodbye and heading out to the gate, the young man turned to me and said with genuine feeling, “You know, yesterday I saw how the richest man lives, in great detail, and today I come here. I just have to tell you what I’ve concluded from these two experiences. Not only do you have what the rich man has, you have what he wishes he had but he never will.”

Now, the funny thing about this very true story is that I’m probably one of the poorest men around, if all you’re counting is dollars.

Kathy and I live on five acres adjoining my family’s 46 acres in the rolling, forested hills of western Pennsylvania. The geography around us is defined by two parallel mountain ridges running north and south: Chestnut Ridge to the west and Laurel Mountain to the east. We’re on the western side of Laurel at 2,000 feet elevation, a little above the frost line. In the evenings we watch the sun set on the Chestnut. Between the two mountains runs a long valley dotted with many towns, both rich and poor. Our place is on the old Forbes Trail, which has seen its share of American history.

Six miles due west of us is the town of Ligonier. That’s where our farmers market and grocery are. The nearest big box stores are 17 miles further on. As for neighbors, the nearest are half a mile below, due west. But in the other 359 degrees surrounding us it’s pretty much unsettled wilderness – miles and miles of it. We like it that way.

What the businessman-brother was responding to that day is what people often feel who experience The Stone Camp for the first time. They encounter two 21st century people who have chosen an independent, self-sufficient, self-sustaining way of living and in doing so have found a measure of true contentment.

There are two prominent aspects to our lives here, one having to do with what is unseen, the other with what is solid and three-dimensional. What is unseen is the way we co-exist with nature, which in turn blesses us with gifts too many to enumerate, most of them gifts for the spirit. The second aspect is what people see with their eyes when they come here: 15 buildings, more or less, including the main house, four guest houses, a summer kitchen, a sugar shack for making maple syrup, a chapel, a library and various storage sheds, two of which are like giant kitchen cupboards. One has place settings for 300-plus people and another has every type of manual and electric food processing tool you can imagine, plus all our canning and preserving equipment.

A visitor would also notice my “tool bus,” an old converted school bus filled with parts and tools, and the vintage farm tractors – my workhorses – hooked up to various implements. It’s not unusual to see a cat sitting motionless pretending to be a hood ornament. We have a sizable orchard, a huge garden, a small vineyard of purple and white Concord grapes, and Siberian kiwis, and berry patches everywhere. Some of the most important elements of The Stone Camp are not so easy to see, but they’re there – the rainwater collection system and the gray water and black water processing systems, for example.

Through a series of small steps, learning as we went, Kathy and I have designed a lifestyle that can survive and flourish even if we were totally cut off. With a laughably small amount of money, we’ve created systems that will last well beyond our lifetimes. They guarantee our year-round comfort and insulate us from hunger, energy loss and even prolonged drought.

This book is about how it happened, why it happened and how anyone can cruise the archetypal avenue we’re on, in whatever way works best for them.

Now, Kathy and I love comfort as much as the next folks. We have most of the usual modern conveniences: fridge, freezer, washer, computer, cell phones, hot tub, vacuum, hair dryer, flat screen TV, stereo with surround sound – but we’re not plugged into the power grid. Our house is wood-heated, we use solar and wind power, and we are in the process of weaning our vehicles entirely off of fossil fuels. We grow most of our own food, put up our harvest, make our own wine – and often drop fresh canned peaches into the solar-powered blender for our morning smoothies. It’s a simple life that works: zero waste, total recycling, using systems that I invented and continue to invent, sometimes under the pressure of sheer, unavoidable necessity. I’ll tell you how they all came about, the pleasures and the pains.

This is not a conventional how-to book. There are helpful how-to’s already out there and the Internet has all the tech information you’d ever want – though you’ll find a goodly number of creative projects here, both small and not-so-small. This book belongs to a category I’d call “how to how-to,” meaning it introduces a way of thinking about solving problems, the kind that confront almost everyone who has a desire to live more simply, and successfully, in a complicated world. It really doesn’t matter what your starting point is or how far you want to take it.

I’ll also share some philosophical viewpoints that have evolved along with our lifestyle. Not too much, I hope. I’ll try to warn you when I feel them coming on. You can’t carve out a life like ours and not think about the deeper implications of things we choose to do as human beings.

Let me introduce you to The Stone Camp.

Madonna and Child in the woods