1973--John and I and not-quite-one Ethan are sitting in a daisy -spangled field under a Carolina blue sky. Seduced by The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News, we are on a quest to find a new place to live and a new way of life.
We are also on our way to look at some land in New York State, but a fortuitous stop to see a college friend of mine has introduced us to the rich culture of Appalachia and we're pretty sure we're home. We begin to look at places for sale. This mountainside acreage-- fields and pastures, two barns and one derelict log cabin--is the third place we look.
The long views, the deep forests, the scent of honeysuckle and wild roses in the air, call to us and there, in the daisy field, we decide. This is it. The earthly paradise--or as close as we're likely to come.
We still have to make our way north--it's my brother who lives up there and is offering us a piece of his land at a very fair price. But we are smitten with Madison County and ask the folks who are selling this beautiful sixty acres to hold it for a couple of weeks. We give them a payment of 'earnest money,' and continue north, looking wistfully behind us.
The New York property is nice--wooded and near some lakes--but it doesn't call to us in the way the daisy field place did. And when we learn that my brother keeps his furnace running pretty much nine months out of the year, it becomes obvious that the north is not for us. And so we return to Madison County, purchase the place, and camp out in one of the barns for the rest of the summer. We return to Tampa and our teaching jobs then, come June, it's back to the mountains where John and friends start work on our house, getting it to the dried-in stage before another return to Tampa.One more year of teaching and in '75 we sell our house in Florida and haul all our worldly possessions to NC and the barn where we will live till snow comes and we move into a not-quite-finished house.We've never regretted that moment of madness in the time of daisies.