Once More Unto the Breach

by W.D. Ehrhart

I have just returned from the most relaxing, refreshing, rejuvenating, restorative, happy, stress-free four days I’ve experienced in many years. Decades even. Maybe in my entire life. There are not enough superlatives to describe it.

My wife and I had driven up to the Adirondacks to visit old college friends of mine. They live on top of a hill in the midst of 134 acres of forested land surrounded by mountains. You can’t see it from their porch, but there’s a beaver pond down below them in the valley.

You can see the hummingbirds that come to their feeders. And the blue birds that come and go from the two box nests on poles in their yard. One morning, three adult female turkeys and four youngsters slowly ambled through the yard between the house and the garage. That evening, they were slowly grazing their way through the tall grass on the opposite side of the house.

To reach the house, you turn off I-87 near Warrensburg, then work your way from one two-lane highway to another, each getting more narrow until you finally end up on an unpaved road going up a hill. And then you turn onto their even narrower lane for another mile or so to the top of the hill.

You see the four large solar panel arrays about the same moment you see the house in the midst of a wild meadow. You don’t see the geothermal system that is buried beneath the meadow. You park next to the canoe under several trees that produce apples good for making pies.

Our friends are not entirely “off the grid.” They do have electricity, though they use it sparingly. They drive an electric car, and have an electric utility vehicle. They use the utility vehicle to haul logs they get from the trees that fall in their forest, though most of the deadfall is left to rot because that’s good for the soil, the insects, and the whole environment.

Did I mention that our friends have spent their entire lives and careers immersed in conservation, working in Africa for many years, and eventually working all over the world?

The four of us spent one morning splitting and stacking wood for the winter of 2025-26. It will need to dry for a year, but the wood for this coming winter is already drying and stacked in the woodshed. I don’t know if I’ve ever engaged in that kind of activity before in my life, certainly not to that extent or to supply wood that will actually be used for real home heating.

Our friends kept apologizing for putting us to work, but Anne and I were happy to contribute a little something in return for their hosting us, and the company and conversation were fun, and the exercise was really good for my 75-year-old body.

Our friends are not total isolationists or fanatical ecologists. They both use laptop computers constantly for their work. And we watched Katy Ledecky on television winning a bronze medal in the 400 freestyle—not her strongest event—and the women’s and men’s 4×100 freestyle relays. Amy and Bill teach together every spring semester at a university. It’s not like they’ve withdrawn from civilization.

But they do live an unusual life that is much farther off the beaten path than most of us live. During our entire visit, I saw exactly one airplane pass overhead, and it was just a tiny dot in the night sky so high up that you could hear nothing. Indeed, except for the sounds the four of us made, there was no noise at all: no car engines, no train whistles, no police sirens, no gas-powered leaf-blowers; just the wind in the trees, the rustling of leaves.

And for me, the most amazing thing of all was no news. None. Nada. Zip. Though my wife brought her laptop (an instrument far too sophisticated for me with that damned finger mouse I’ve never mastered), I don’t know my e-mail password—I didn’t even know I have one; it comes up automatically on my ancient desktop machine—and therefor I had no access to my e-mail during the entire trip. I never touched the computer.

Nor did we watch any television news, or listen to the radio, or see a daily newspaper. Not a word about Trumpelstiltskin or Hillbilly Vance or Uncle Joe or Kamala Harris (my daughter likes cats and she doesn’t have children, and I like my daughter, so I’ve got no problem with Harris). No news about Ukraine or Palestine or the U.S. Supremely Reactionary Court or the latest murder in Philadelphia. Talk about ignorance being bliss.

Okay, I know I can’t keep up that wonderful level of detachment. In the long run, it’s not even desirable or good for me. Much as I dislike it, I have no choice except to engage with the world around me. Locally, I—we—need to fight to preserve the 500 old-growth trees at Oakwell. We Pennsylvanians need to help Senator Bob Casey defeat his super-rich Connecticut hedge-fund manager opponent. We Americans need to keep the White House out of the hands of the MAGAMonster.

But those four days of near-total isolation in the Adirondacks were really, really wonderful while they lasted. I’m almost ready to dive back into the fray.

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W. D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.