Abstract:
During the 1960s and 1970s, many in North Carolina and America were a part of the back-to-the-earth movement. The author describes her experience as a middle age adult moving to a commune in the Piedmont area to build a house by hand and live off of the land. She talks of the effect it had on her marriage and how the dream of true self-sufficiency was never reached by anyone in the community. Now, the community is largely changed and the Piedmont’s development has taken a away much of the land the group tried to live with.