Summer is really heating up out in the highways and Hollers of the North Country. Lots of tourist types propping up the local economy, and more than one “family emergency” pulling locals out of work early on Fridays. Hay is coming in fast and strong, as farmers reap bales of sunlight stored in endless fields of grass. I’ve always been fascinated by the energy stored in a bale of hay, and always wondered how it could possibly be turned into electricity. Recently, I learned about stuff called Producer Gas. It seems that in WW II (the big one), diesel was in very short supply in Finland and other cold rural places. Farmers learned to make a controlled, smoldering fire, and use the smoke to power trucks and tractors. So I went onto the worldwide web and for $25, was soon the proud possessor of actual plans and instructions to use Producer Gas to run a diesel generator and make electricity. Looks like it will run great on poplar and hay. Perhaps there is hope for the Holler, should Western civilization come down around our ears.

Speaking of the end of life as we know it, (read the end of cheap oil and the seizure of the Federal Government by multinational corporations); I have been accused lately of rooting for the end of the Western rein. For those of you who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, hang in there, because coming up next is the Handy Holler Guide to the Development of Western Thought.

You see, once, not so long ago, people saw themselves more as part of the landscape, and less as, well, developers of subdivisions or interpreters of law. You can still see this way of thinking in remote indigenous peoples, and in old Vermont farmers and their intrepid wives. Some of us here in Vermont feel and love the land like it’s part of our own bodies. Others seek to recreate comfortable flat country images, but with a Yankee flair. That is because there are two great schools of thought, two ways of looking and being in the world. We used to refer to this as East and West, however these directional descriptors no longer apply. I prefer to think of them as specialist thinking and generalist thinking.

The specialist is the ultimate anal attentive mope. Thus, with thirty years of active focus, absolutely amazing things can be accomplished. This is the type of thinking that creates nuclear power plants (lots of clean, cheap power); while ignoring the waste product (hundreds of thousands of years of very strong, life mutating poison hanging around someone’s back yard). The generalist would never, not in millions of years, build a nuclear power plant. Looking back through time, and ahead through the future, she or he sees future generations of humans, and all other species in relation to a particular course of action. Nuclear power plants have no place in this kind of thinking. Who would clean up the mess?

Indigenous peoples on the other hand, do not change their culture or technologies quickly. Today, three and a half billion people will carry their firewood, dried dung or roots on their heads to fuel their day. Someone you know will gas up their Chevy and cook their food off nuclear power. What makes it so?

The idea of the specialist developed when field crops began to be cultivated in Western Asia. This allowed a surplus of energy/food/wealth to accrue. A new class of people who did not have to be directly involved in the day-to-day mess of food gathering/cultivation/energy gathering arose. This new idle class soon indulged in Art and Science and Architecture. Thousands of years slip quickly by, and we find ourselves divorced from food/energy production entirely, while each of us pursues our chosen specialties, get paid on the coin of the realm (after the ubiquitous tithes of the land), and purchase our food/energy needs from other specialists.

Thus it is, that we quickly lose track of who we are, and our own place in the general field of creation that we call life. Throughout history, a few individuals have transcended these mind barriers, and merged generalist and specialist thinking. We call them renaissance people, and their influence on the course of Western civilization is phenomenal. Renaissance people merge east and west, and in doing so, find the crux of their own creative being. Their names are synonymous with the best of our highest achievements; Leonardo, Michelangelo, and many others who remain unknown.

I also wonder at the Hitlers and Mussolinis. Did they also discover their own personal link to the general wave of all being? Trust in the Force, Luke, Yoda has joined with Bin Laden. I do not know if it’s possible for us, normal Holler folk, to merge east and west, to become creative renaissance people, and to somehow avert the impending crash of the oil empire (which has to go anyway since no one wants to clean up the mess the oil/nuke civilization leaves behind).

I am not claiming that everyone tossing hay this summer is contemplating the nature of matter, thought, and being. But I will paraphrase Tom Peters of Stowe and tell you that change comes from the edges. And here, on the edge of the galaxy, at the edge of the northeast monopolies, out in the Hollers, anything is possible. Time to get your firewood in. Winter may now be a vague memory, but it will soon be an urgent reality. And don’t forget to go swimming. If you do you will regret it when the waterfalls freeze!

These essays were written for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Vermont Soap, its employees, board of directors, our Web host, Web designer, the neighbors who live up the road; or any of the thousands of people who use our stuff. Originally published in edited form by Comic News. Many thanks to Seasoned Books, without which, life in the Holler may never have become a reality.