Off On Our Own. Ted Carns
would like to share with you a little of what Dad breathed into my being. The gems of this mindset are scattered throughout this book.
The best I can describe The Stone Camp today is through other people’s reactions. There was a little girl, Emily, who used to make a game of spotting what’s new or changed between visits. Things change so rapidly here that when she hadn’t visited for a time she had to start the game all over again. My wife’s young niece Andrea walked in one time and said, “Aunt Kathy, nothing in your house matches, but it all goes together quite nicely.”
In our guest book I was surprised to read the reaction of a boy who visited with The Westmoreland County Conservation School. He wrote: “If we are ever to colonize the moon or other planets, this is how we must learn to live.”
Each year a group of students and staff from a well known university for the deaf comes to visit us for the weekend. I teach them wilderness survival techniques. One year I was in the house when the new students just arrived and I looked out the sunroom window to see a group of them sitting on the brick patio. That patio is where you first enter the grounds. They’d neither met me nor had they seen but a very tiny fraction of the place. All their hands seemed to be doing sign language at once and they all had intense expressions on their faces. I asked an interpreter what they were saying. He said, “Basically they all came to a sort of general consensus, having just this moment realized that we’ve all been deceived.” He explained that they felt deceived about the American Dream. They got no argument from me. I believe that the compass for the so-called pursuit of happiness has been seriously mis-calibrated.
My buddy Jeff, who visits regularly, often spoke of The Stone Camp to his dad. I was boiling off maple syrup the day he finally brought his dad up to see the place. The sap was running and I couldn’t spare much time to visit, so he showed his dad around. He told me later what his dad said: “You’re right, it’s almost impossible to describe . . . you have to see it for yourself.”
About three miles away lived a man who was almost 100 years old. He was a living treasure chest of vivid memories – like when he pointed out to me where certain Indians had abducted a settler boy. One day I was cleaning the manure out of his barn with my backhoe. He leaned on the fence and watched me go in and out. The dump was nearly full, so I went over and said, “Ovie, wanna go for a ride?” “No thanks,” he said, “never been more than 25 miles from home.” I said, “It’s only three miles.”
Two loads later he came over and said, “I think maybe I will.” I brought him up and gave him a two-bit tour. I showed him this and that and all the time I spoke he never said a word. I was thinking he forgot his hearing aid, but as we strolled back toward the truck he stopped, turned, looked me square in the eye and said, “Ripley himself wouldn’t believe this unlessen he’d seen it.” That was all he said.
I was to perform a wedding for a young couple from England who were educated in the Waldorf School System. It’s founded on the principles and teachings of Rudolph Steiner. At the wedding were three generations from the Waldorf tradition. An entourage of their family and friends arrived to attend the wedding very early Saturday morning after a long night’s drive. Seeing that no one was up and about, they walked around the grounds and checked out the chapel. I was still asleep on the living room couch when they finally ventured into the house. I was suddenly awakened to a room full of people I had never met. One man said, “Ah, now we see that Utopia actually does exist.”
When I really stand back and reflect on what this place was and what it has become, I realize it was the hardest of possible conditions in which to carve out a true self-sufficient and self-sustaining lifestyle. And it was accomplished through necessity taking precedence over desire.
Before you turn the page, Kathy wants me to be sure to tell you that three years ago we bought back the land from the family that had owned it since 1926. It was always our home, but we just made it legal.
The chapel
Inside the chapel
2
NEEDS, DESIRES AND MAGIC
“I’ve come to believe that life works for us and with us . . .”
Ours is a story about necessity becoming an art form. Because I refused the paycheck I was forced to focus on necessity. And because of that I just happened upon a certain magic. I was allowed to see what really happens when you have desires but can’t pursue them beyond a slightly stretched arm’s length.
My circumstance led me to simply reverse the equation we’re all taught. More specifically, it made me reverse the “order of acquisition.” What I soon saw was that if one keeps focused on necessity, primarily using thought as a tool to accomplish only what needs to be done, then things happen and unfold differently.
We have the option either to use thought or to let thought use us. If you take control of the reins of thought you’re inclined to follow the path of necessity. If you let yourself be the mule, desires take the reins and you’re led down one dead-end path after another.
There’s a strong force influencing us to become mules, with desires leading us here and there, everything in modern life telling us to pursue desires, to let them lead our lives, and to build our lives around them on credit. I came to see that what needs to be done is often the last thing we want to do. Doing what’s necessary can be the hardest path to follow because it appears so boring, drab and un-self-fulfilling. Facing needs just seems to lead us to the next damn thing that needs to be done . . . if you look at it that way.
What I found was when I took the reins of thought and focused the mind completely on what truly needs to be done, I got a big surprise. All of my wants and desires, every single one of them, eventually got fulfilled without an ounce of anxiety or a loan payment book.
I discovered the formula for this magic in the early ’70s. I wanted to return to the state of Washington to work for the summer but all I had was a 1941 Willys MB army jeep. It would go 50 mph if it was screaming. If I’d have driven it 3,000 miles I probably would have needed back surgery.
What I needed was a real car. I thought and thought what was the most economical and efficient thing I could drive across the country. I decided on a Volkswagen squareback. It’s like a mini station wagon with excellent gas mileage. I was looking for a ’66 or ’67 because those were the pre-planned obsolescence years. I went all hell on a search for one. As I love to paint cars, I was ready to paint it my favorite color, off white or light tan. I’d find one in crappy shape or just miss one in good shape or I’d find one way out of my price range. Finally I just said, “Screw it, I’ll stay home for the summer.”
I quit searching and within days I got a phone message at my parents’ to call an elderly woman friend of mine, Ruth. I rang Ruth up and she said, “Teddy, I just got a new car and I didn’t trade my old one in – how would you like it for a buck.” I hadn’t seen Ruth in a few years so in my head I pictured some huge old Buick rusting out at the seams. I said I’d come over for a look.
I got there, saw her new, bright yellow VW squareback and drooled. Then she led me around back to an off-white 1967 Volkswagen squareback with 13,000 original miles, price:
When I say all desires get fulfilled, it ain’t always pretty. I come from a family of horsemen. Great Uncle Eugene was a trick rider in the Roy Rogers rodeo circuit. When I got really into wanting a horse, I was offered three within