Helen Knothe Nearing was an American author and advocate of simple living.
Helen Knothe was the daughter of Frank Knothe, who had a clothing business in New Jersey. She grew up in an economically comfortable family of Theosophists.As a young woman, she had a romantic relationship with Jiddu Krishnamurti.She and Scott Nearing started a relationship in 1928 and married nearly 20 years later, on December 12, 1947. The couple lived in rural Vermont where they grew much of their food and erected nine stone buildings over the course of two decades. They lived an ascetic and self-reliant life, earning money by producing maple syrup and sugar from the trees on their land and from Scott Nearing's occasional paid lectures.In 1952, Helen and Scott Nearing moved to a homestead in Brooksville, Maine, on Cape Rosier, where they continued growing much of their own food. They cultivated blueberries as a cash crop.Helen Nearing died in 1995 as the result of a single-car accident in Harborside, Maine.
✵ 23. February 1904 – 17. September 1995
