Escape to the Mountain

Expanded Edition with a New Epilogue by the Author

Summary

“This place doesn't exist,” a visitor once declared. After a mile and a half drive up a primitive road through a dark wooded hollow, he had been amazed to discover the Bontas’ sunny open farm right on top of the mountain.

In her book, Mrs. Bonta tells how she, her husband Bruce, and their three young sons discovered such an unusual farm. During their first year there they survived a blizzard, which snowed them in for nearly a week, a flood, which cut them off from the outside world, and a drought that destroyed their first garden.

Her book is a hymn of joy to sledding on moonlit nights in winter, to the arrival of the birds in spring, to insects of the milkweed patch in summer, and to harvesting garden crops in the autumn. She relates how they discovered a family of wild puppies in the barn, a porcupine in the apple tree, a shrew in the laundry bucket, mudpuppies in the well, and opossums on the back porch.

Despite their isolation, she and her family cannot escape the influence of the outside world. She deplores the excesses of our materialistic society and the “me-first” philosophy that also accompanies it. In an effort to make the family stronger and more independent, she tells how they decided to use the land by growing as much of their own food as possible.

About the Author

Marcia Bonta was born in 1940 in New Jersey. At Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, she met and married her husband Bruce. After one year of teaching in the Danville, Pennsylvania High School, she had her first son. Dedicated to staying home and raising her family, she found interest in studying the natural world with her boys, first in Washington, DC, then in rural Maine, and finally on her mountain top farm in Pennsylvania.

She has written numerous articles and books including Women in the Field: America’s Pioneering Women Naturalists.