Marleen Troutt marleen@columnist.com
First things first, I'm a sentimental nerd. That is why I have forsaken precious midnight study hours in this crazy pre-finals mayhem to instead soak up the PBS program, "Frontier House." If you're not familiar, allow me to explain.
Three families leave modern life to brave the Montana wilderness for six months, building an 1883 homestead armed with nothing more than calloused hands, nature's riches and the knowledge of a PBS team of historians.
It's a test really. The families will be judged afterward to determine if they would have made the shortlist, joining the 30 percent of pioneer families who did survive the ensuing six months of brutal Western winter.
Their chores will soon seem insignificant as the families wire their brains back to the computer age.
The community-crafted log cabins. The root cellars the youngins helped dig. The magnificent mountain sunrise. The gardens and the chicken coops. Even the tear jerking memory of the death of Jo-Jo Punkin, 8-year-old Logan's pet pig, sacrificed for the fall festival.
These modest accomplishments and life lessons will fade into the everyday striking of business deals; earning the master's; shuffling the kids off to soccer practice while they play their video games; and filling up the old family SUV for another round.
After all, the homesteaders didn't accomplish much in the way of material gain or corporate success. They were just surviving. Just getting by. Not knowing the real answers, and sweating out their mistakes. Jumping for joy when the outhouse was finally built. Up at 6 a.m. just to milk the cow, and make sure she doesn't wander over to the neighbors'. They hate that.
However meager this might seem in the modern world - where our cabins are pre-made and our milk's in the fridge where it belongs - this project touched the people involved more than anything ever had.
For the millionaire businessman, the frontier was the only place he truly felt job satisfaction. The children missed the livestock they raised and loved, the scuffles with wild animals and the one-room schoolhouse where they learned guitar and taught one another.
"The 21st century is boring," they would later lament.
Unfortunately, the upcoming graduates don't have a frontier house from which to learn joy in the trivial and pride in the less-than-glorious before navigating the wild world.
Chances are, we won't be satisfied if we don't rope in that dream job, that house on the hill, that modern American dream modeled loosely from pioneers' Lincoln Logs.
But our failed expectations don't really matter so much; I guess it's the attitude that counts. And those big victories like the first cool mil in our savings account - or that niche of suburbia we will call our own - won't be our biggest accomplishment.
It'll be the little things. The things we worked hard on, even when we were the only ones there to see the results. The relationships we built, and the ones we ended. Morning coffee and that pink Southern Illinois sunset. The way we shared in our community, and the way we retreated in our families and friends. The times we had to let our own little pig go, biting hard on the bittersweet meat of life and death.
Most likely, the most meaningful incidents will happen by accident. On the highway to our goals, they'll be the sidetrips.
The Femme Factor has been one of those sidetrips for me. I didn't think anybody would really care, or that I would. It was just something I was doing. Add it to the laundry list of everything else I do. Nothing special. Nothing that's going to get me an award, further my career, raise my GPA or my salary.
But here I poured my heart anyway, and worked through my insecurities. And, amazingly, people wrote their hearts back to me, and storied their own struggles.
Here I laid out my biggest pet peeves and my tiniest pleasures. And, amazingly, e-mails with grander pleasures and littler pet peeves crept unsuspectingly into my inbox.
Women of all kinds, colors, ages and aspirations shared in my sentiments, and helped me grow in theirs. A few brave men would courageously flaunt their sensitive, cultural empathy. These incredible beings assured me that real gender equality is a real possibility.
When I walk the graduation plank in August, plunging into a murky future, I'll be thinking that it doesn't matter whether I end up a plain housewife mixing molasses or a powersuited publishing magnate. Neither of those are necessarily recipes for the good life. Those things aren't necessarily what will determine my worth as a woman.
So I just have to survive happily, and be proud of the gardens I do raise - even when they're small.
I have to learn to veer off the 80 miles-per-hour interstate every now and then, and walk that dirt path back to the homestead. These contemplative strolls are not insignificant as they seem. If you follow, they always seem to wind toward a loftier view.
The Femme Factor appears every other Friday. Marleen is a senior in journalism. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.
Published on 11/17/05; 12:24:44 PM
