The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living

This rollicking, inspiring tale of Tremayne’s journey from being the creative director of N.Y.C. marketing firm Green Galactic to being a Burning Man volunteer, yoga teacher, Sufi seeker, and hardscrabble DIY urban homesteader in a former trailer park in the eccentric community of Truth or Consequences, N. Mex., is alternately funny, tender, philosophical, and practical. Tremayne and her partner, Mikey Sklar, in their “decommodified life,” choose time over money. As she convincingly writes, “Our clothing wears the signs of our labor: stained, torn and burned.... Every stain and tear contains a story, a moment that we treasured on our adventure.” Illustrated with whimsically florid drawings by a variety of artists and interspersed with essential how-tos for living “life in the waste stream”—from fermenting tempeh and brewing mead, to building a papercrete dome and removing rust from wrenches with electrolysis—the memoir riffs off Scott and Helen Nearing’s 1954 Living the Good Life with much more style and humor than the original, bringing the back-to-the-land genre up to date with impressive sophistication and appeal. Color photos and illus. throughout. (May)