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AFTERWORD When a naturalist is thoroughly comfortable and settled, it is time to uproothim. DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE 'A Transplanting," Flowering Earth ^ot long after Mac died, the veil of protection lifted, confirming my premonitions and exposing the pristine world where I was living to the gremlins of postindustrial and monocultural America. Various family members appeared from across the country, and soon there was talk of clear-cuttingthe 25o-acre mountain farm aswell as cutting down the old orchard in order to graze some Scottish breed of longhaired cattle. And sure enough, it wasn't long before the sounds of chainsaws and timber trucks could be heard from holler and ridgetop all across the land. While this was going on, I raised another garden and tried to carry on as usual. But as the song says: the thrill was gone. With the changed consciousness of a younger generation and the loss of my mentors, the woods around me had taken on a different personality. Even though in many respects things remained little changed, the subtle and not so subtle differences were enough to put me on edge. The comfort zone of wildness that I had felt for four years was gone. Instead of living in nature, I felt like I was simply living in the country—with an increasing amount of machine noise, development, and unenlightened vibes. While it was true that I had been spoiled during the almost four years I had lived next to Zoro's field, and was living, some would say, on borrowed time, I found it difficult to sit still and watch what had taken generations to build and to protect falling away around me. I was generously given the opportunity to stay and live on in the cabin that I had helped WaltJohnson build, but in my mind I had already left and so respectfully declined the offers to remain and work the old mountain farm essentially as a hired hand. With my mind made up I faced the problem of where to go and what to do. Luckily, or unluckily as the case may be, I knew a fellow on the other side of 210 N Saluda who worked as a carpenter for a small construction business, and it wasn't long before I was riding to work every morning (while still living in the cabin)all the way to Black Mountain, where his boss was building a house and where I was now working as part of the construction crew. Just going back to work for someone else on a regular basis was a huge adjustment,not to mention I was spending the better part of my days out in a world alien to my energies and more primitive values. While the people I worked with were good-hearted enough, the pace and quality of life they led and that surrounded me each day was a true shock to my system. I felt a little like Dersu Uzala in the 19705 film of the same name about a Siberianwoodsman who isbrought into a Russiancity for the first time to livein the apartment of a military surveyorwho befriends him. All Dersu does is sit on the living-room floor and stare into the window of the woodstove, watching the fire—the fire being the only thing in citylife to which he can relate as a reminder of his former life. The kind of shock I was experiencing was much like the kind of culture shock I had experiencedwhen reentering the United States after living abroad following my graduation from college and before I set out for California. Then, as now, I felt a stranger in a strange land. I havebeen back in what most people consider the realworld for more than twenty years. The real world of the twenty-firstcentury isvery different from the world and the "real work" I did and experienced in the cabin next to Zero's field, and in some ways I'm still getting used to it—if one ever really can get used to such a world, with its mindlessness, its madness and machines. Twenty years ago, when I finally said my good-byes to my bee-loud glade, my Walden Pond, I took my culture shock and moved acrosstown into the attic of an old two-story farmhouse owned by a couple who had come there from Indiana to get away from the rat race and start a family and ahealthconscious bakery. Living with the Thomases, I...

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