Sue Halpern

Ned and Mae live off the grid, literally, in a world of their own making.  I was struck by how Sue Halpern illuminated Ned and Mae's intentions in a way that humanized them.  The common perception of hermits to those of us living within society is not favorable; they might be crazy people with bad intentions or missing the ability to connect with others.  Halpern gives life back to Ned and Mae to the point of making those of us in society seem somewhat dehumanized for choosing the consumer culture of our time.  For a writer to convince me out of my comfort is unusual, and respectable.

Obviously, targeting consumerism strikes a nerve to a reader, like me, who only takes some time away, to "escape" to a small town and live in a well-constructed rural place.  Tide detergent and Kraft macaroni are still sold in the grocery store, espresso is served in fine china down the road, and my home is a luxury estate on the side of a mountain.  Escape means less than it once did, when the Adirondacks really presented visitors with wilderness and few feeble structures.  Ned and Mae noticed an impending shift at a time of development and settled deeper into the same woods I merely occasion.  Halpern doesn't commend this pursuit, in fact she suspends judgement just enough for a reader to see Ned and Mae as humans yet still consider them specimen under Sue's lens.

So, they have lived full lives of self-sufficiency, but I must ask to what extend they merely pretending?  How can the fringe of their lives brim the tight hems of our society?  Do they exist apart from everything, as they desired?  Or are they more embedded into the world as most know it than they cared to admit?  I think my distrust stems from Thoreau.

My romantic side wishes them the detached lives they so desired.  My questions are aimed at Halpern, wishing that this essay were a book because her voice seems not to color the depiction of Ned and Mae.  I can smell Mae's nightly popcorn batch I want to hear Sue coax out the inner weavings of their lives.