Abel brought his hands down and clasped them before his chest. “It’s time to break fast, good people. Take all you want, eat heartily. As for this grand cake, it represents the last of something and the beginning of something, as well. The cake was made with the very last of our wheat flour stocks. And it was whipped up with refined beet sugar that we scavenged. There may be no wheat for a good long while. As for the sugar in the icing, that will be the end of it. So think of the sugar in this cake as the passing of an era, as moving from one epoch to another, from one human system of organization to another completely different one. The old system is slipping away from us, yet our way of life has a bright future ahead, as bright as the sunlight streaming through the glass above us all.”
As the sun advanced into the heavens, the greenhouse warmed rapidly. Nibbling at their food and listening to Abel’s words, colonists stood about, soaking in the rising heat and humidity. Some closed their eyes and let the warmth cradle them gently and soak deep into their pores. After nearly six months of a brutal, record cold winter, the solar heat trapped by the glass seemed a great luxury.
Abel reached below the table and pulled up a large sign with the numerals one-seven-zero on it. He held it aloft and watched the crowd as all acknowledged the placard.
“We are more than one hundred strong at Independency. We have been that many since a few weeks after that terrible fall day. Remarkably, we have lost no one since. There have been no deaths and, really, few serious illnesses despite the ash and what is going on elsewhere around the nation. We are blessed. We really are.
“The spring equinox tells us that life renews itself endlessly. It reminds us that we must renew our efforts to create a just, self-sufficient, productive and peaceful society, one that lives within its means and in balance within the greater framework of the natural world.
“I would like to think that this great strawberry house will be our cathedral most Sundays, until the ravages of the Yellowstone disaster are spent and we can resume life as we knew it, outdoors in the fields and orchards. I had hoped that we might meet here indefinitely, among the strawberry towers, to celebrate our good fortune, our good life, our full life.”
Abel quieted down for a long pause and scanned the many. Vigor seemed to drain away from the man as silence filled the vast greenhouse spaces. He closed his eyes and rubbed the palm of his right hand into his flesh of his face. Many citizens looked up from their plates, sensing their founder was not quite himself.
Abel exhaled abruptly. “Good people, like the spring equinox, we must renew ourselves,” the town founder said flatly. “We cannot stay here on the bluffs much longer.”
Every eye fell upon Abel at once.
“When winter breaks and the lands to the west dry out, dust from the Yellowstone ashfall will blow into this community on the wind night and day. It will go on for years, decades, maybe even centuries until the prairie grasses and river bottom forests reestablish their hold on the Plains. The coming dust storms will be far, far worse than the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. We will simply have no choice but to leave.”
Amid a rising crescendo of howls, a shout among the strawberry towers rang out: “Where will we go?”
Abel closed his eyes and bit down on his tongue for five seconds. “We will remove from here when the weather improves and, hopefully, settle at our fledgling Canadian sister community in the Maritime Provinces, on the Atlantic coast, at Prince Edward Island.”
Throughout the room mouths hung agape.
“Our forebears settled the West, arriving by horse, by ox team and Conestoga wagon. We will reprise their toil and effort, only in reverse. We will settle the East, and bring with us our potent brand of self-reliance and self-determination, tenets that are just about extinct on this continent. We will rebuild our town there on the rim of the bountiful ocean. And like here at Independency, will we forge a new community, one that is just, peaceful, fruitful and beautiful amid a world of gathering famine, fear, and darkness.”
The entire congregation stood stunned by Abel’s revelation. Servings of cake sat neglected on plate after plate.
Relieved to have finally aired thoughts that had been fermenting in his souring soul much of the winter, blood returned to his face. His backbone straightened. He seemed to grow in stature before his audience. He peered to his left and sought Winnie’s eyes, seeking one last measure of assurance before addressing the flock again. Winnie simply nodded her sentiments his way.
For thirty seconds he scanned the room and made eye contact with each and every one. Slowly, he raised his right arm chin high, palm open, fingers outstretched. He held is hand in the air for ten seconds, then slowly rotated it and held it palm up, fingers now closed together. He reached out to his neighbors, as if motioning to each of them to take his hand.
“Join me.” Abel said firmly. “I can’t do this without you.”
About K.R. Nilsen
Author K.R.Nilsen is a retired natural foods industry marketer and manufacturer who began a writing career right out of college behind cramped desks in the chilly newsrooms of small northern New England daily and weekly newspapers. He gravitated to magazine editorial work at Yankee Publishing at Dublin, New Hampshire, and eventually earned a CASE Grand Gold Award for educational publications, before changing careers abruptly and becoming a marketer then producer of shelf-stable fruit juices and all-juice sodas.
Outside the confines of working life, Nilsen became a factor in New Hampshire’s hiking community by planning and developing the 170-mile Cohos Trail and its shelters situated from the White Mountains to the Canadian border. For his all-volunteer work creating that lengthy outdoor recreational resource, he was presented the Granite State Legacy Award in 2015. He is the author of several hiking guidebooks and trail databooks, including 50 Hikes North of the White Mountains from Countryman Press.
A strong advocate of self-reliance and for self-sufficient lifestyles and communities, the author channeled his interests into developing a fully-fledged alternative living community within the pages of this novel. Not one to idly preach, he recently put his ideas into practice, developing and expanding a small organic farm on the campus of a year-round Waldorf educational camp, Camp Glen Brook, at Marlborough, NH.
Wedded to a life-long love of the earth sciences, particularly paleontology and geology, his passion invariably led him to the geological minefield that is Yellowstone National Park. For more than twenty years, he has spent his leisure hours reading the works of scientists who were unraveling the mysteries of the immense volcanic structure beneath the national park and similar features beneath other slumbering calderas scattered about the planet.
To this day, Nilsen dabbles in freelance article writing. His work has been published in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, Private Pilot, Country Journal, New Hampshire Profiles, and the like.
Nilsen lives with his wife, Catherine, on a small farmstead in the rural southwest corner of the Granite State, sharing outdoor chores with Havanese and Polish Lowland Sheepdogs and an eclectic assortment of chickens.
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