. . .

They had sold their condo and Helen’s father’s house. Both sales were quick and easy, despite dire warnings from well-meaning friends about the crappy real estate market in Connecticut. They’d quit their nice, secure teaching jobs at the Palmer Academy, giving up not only the bimonthly paychecks but also their health insurance and the matching contributions to their 401(k)s. They’d even traded in their little Prius for a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. They’d sold or given away a lot of their belongings, putting the things they were most attached to into a rented storage unit.

Their colleagues and friends thought they were crazy when they described their plans to build a house, grow a garden, raise chickens and goats.

“Mmm, lovely. Sounds like all nine circles of hell,” Helen’s friend Jenny had said at the going-away party Jenny and her husband, Richard, hosted. Helen had laughed.

“Did you ever think maybe you were born in the wrong century?” Jenny had asked, narrowing her eyes, topping up their glasses of pinot grigio. Helen had nodded. Yes. She thought that often.

Jenny was Helen’s oldest friend—they’d known each other since kindergarten.

“Think of everything you’re giving up,” Jenny had said. “And what for? So you can go freeze your asses off in the middle of freaking nowhere while you act out this 1960s back-to-the-land fantasy? You’ll be isolated. We’ll never hear from you again.”

“Of course you will,” Helen had promised.

“Yeah, on the news maybe. We’ll hear about how you were eaten by bears.”

“Black bears don’t eat people,” Nate had said.

“Wolves then,” Jenny said.

“No wolves in Vermont,” Nate countered.

“Whatever, Nature Boy.” Jenny rolled her eyes dramatically and gestured with her wine glass. “Something bad will happen, I’m telling you. You’ll join a commune or cult or something, and Helen will stop shaving her armpits and Nate, you’ll go all Jack from The Shining. Or Unabomber.”

“Stop,” Helen had said, laughing.

“Seriously,” Jenny said. “Ted Kaczynski did the cabin-in-the-woods, self-sufficiency thing and look how it turned out for him. Please, God, do me a favor and change your minds before it’s too late.”

But they didn’t change their minds.

When Helen expressed any apprehension about all the security they were giving up, Nate would say, “But remember, what we’re doing, what we’re going to create for ourselves, that’s real security. When we’re done, we’ll have a house without a mortgage that we’ve built with our hands, enough acreage to grow all the food we need. It’s what you’ve always dreamed of, isn’t it? Your place in the country?”