Yes, we have a lot of outlooks in common. Once you’re a Scout, you always feel pretty comfortable camping out. But having to live on the land day after day for years gets tiring.
I think of my great-great-great-grandfather, who owned 200 acres of NW NJ back in the 1820s and 1830s. He had a homestead he’d built himself, a plow and a cow and a feather-bed (I found his property list in his estate papers.) He and his wife had eight children! One day in 1831, this 36 year old man tried to pull a stump out of a new field he was clearing. He “ruptured,” lingered for a winter and died in the spring. The entire homestead was auctioned to pay for his debts at the local general store and for his bar tab (lots of cider).
The kids were split up to various family members or just sent out to find work. My 12 year old forebear spent the next 5 years leading mules along the Morris Canal. His memoirs, written in his 90s, describe sleeping rough in the stables, crying for his Mum and family. He didn’t see any virtue in it.
Life on the land can be rewarding. It can also kill you and leave your children homeless. We have a tendency to only remember the winners, unfairly I believe.
Oh, I understand the unsteady nature of it. As a former Scout, I spent many days and nights in the field with nothing more than a compass and a Bowie knife. I ate local plants, setup a camp, trapped a raccoon, skinned it and ate it, and made fishing tackle out of a vine and a bottle top. I agree with your ancestor: there’s nothing virtuous about any of it. I would take air conditioning and high speed Internet any day, but those of us who wish to be prepared for the worst need to understand that the worst might come and it will likely be worse than what we expect. I’m ready for that eventuality. I’m trying to get my better half to get it, but it’s a tough sell.
I don’t have any ancestors with stories like yours. Most of my family emigrated here from parts of Europe back in the late 1800s. The most I know is that my Russian family owned a few hundred acres in what is now the Ukraine and half of them were mowed down by Russian troops seizing their lands. My great grandmother told me stories of her father being executed while she and her mother and brother watched. Once she fled with them to Greece, they got on the first boat to America to begin a new life.
I love history. It tells us where we’ve been and warns us where not to go. I wish our politicians took that lesson to heart.