Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 4, 1992 TAG: 9202040236
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
IN HARMONY WITH NATURE
On clear days, you can look out the living room window in the Carroll County home of writers Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska and see North Carolina 10 miles away.The view is peaceful, a harmony of fruit orchards and rolling hills backed by the front range of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Infrequently, a car or truck finds its way down the winding road that borders the Levering orchard. Otherwise, stillness is pervasive.
Contrast this to the couple's environment seven years ago. Levering and Urbanska lived in a cramped two-room apartment with four desks, two computers and two typewriters a half-mile from the busiest intersection in Los Angeles.
"You could sit at a stoplight for 15 minutes," Levering says. "You learned to drive like a fiend out of hell."
"The traffic is a metaphor for the state of mind out there," his wife adds.
The couple fled the Los Angeles fast lane, leaving their movie and publishing contacts behind for the quiet high country of Orchard Gap where Levering grew up. Urbanska and Levering turned their decision to unclutter their lives into a book, "Simple Living: One Couple's Search for a Better Life," published by Viking in January.
The book is many things: a dual autobiography, a report on other people who have made the conscious move to simplify their lives, a history of the family orchard, a chronicle of the writers' experiences and a how-to manual. Readers also get a liberal sprinkling of philosophy in the form of quotes from such writers as Henry David Thoreau, John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde.
Urbanska and Levering met at Harvard in 1977 and moved to Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1980s. Each was determined to pursue a writing career. Levering free-lanced movie reviews, wrote screenplays and finally saw one reach the screen. It was a 3-D science-fiction movie titled "Parasite." Urbanska went to work as a reporter for the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
Their careers, their lifestyle and their social life converged into a high-stress existence.
"It's beat the clock. In LA, you plan your whole day around how much time it takes to get from one place to another," Levering says.
"You're either work-working or socializing-working. What it's about is business, and that gets old. It's kind of a one-dimensional life."
"Everybody was our age," Urbanska says. "They had no children, and there were no old people. It was Johnny and Janie One-Note."
About 1985, they concluded that they were miserable. They had little time to spend with each other; they saw no possibility of owning their own home on writers' earnings; and small, everyday pleasures were lost in the frenetic pace.
In 1986, Levering's father suffered a heart attack, and he and Wanda traveled to Orchard Gap to help bring in the fruit crop.
It was a turning point in their lives. They looked around and saw possibilities to enrich themselves that Los Angeles didn't provide.
"Hollywood is not the kind of place to put roots down - if you define it as owning your own home," Urbanska says.
They made the decision to move to Orchard Gap, taking over the operation and assuming a $125,000 debt that hovered over the orchard.
There would be sacrifices. Friends in the writing and film communities would be missed as well as the adrenaline-pumping atmosphere.
"In Los Angeles, there's a real sense of adventure. It's a lotus land of opportunity. There's a gambler's mentality," Levering says.
They moved back with the commitment to become farmers and writers. Once at the orchard, they found their lives governed by rhythms and circumstances older than traffic gridlock.
In the winter they wrote. Doubleday published a hardback book by Urbanska - "The Singular Generation - Young Americans in the 1980s." And, under the nom de plume Lindsey Mitchell, the couple co-wrote "Official Secrets," a paperback political potboiler set in Washington, D.C. They sell copies of it down at their packing house along with the apples and cherries. "It was a best-seller in Orchard Gap," Levering jokes. "It's made us famous from here to Winston-Salem."
Come spring, they put aside their personal computers and turn to the 75 acres of fruit trees planted in a thermal belt that runs alongside the ridge where they live. Thirty are in a wide variety of cherries; and the rest is in apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, pears and apricots, the biggest delicacy.
"You work like banshees from the first of May until the last of October," Frank says. "You put in 12- and 14-hour days."
When Levering and Urbanska moved to the orchard and decided to redefine their lives, they looked to Frank's parents as examples. Both Quakers, they lived frugally, bought second-hand clothes and spent much of their time working toward world peace.
Miriam Levering died in November on her way to a National Council of Churches meeting. Sam, 83, still works around the orchard and devotes much of his time to the peace lobby. He served as head of the Friends Committee on National Legislation for many years. Since 1943, Sam Levering has devoted half his working life to peace causes.
"Being close to Frank's parents, living simply became more of a philosophy," Wanda says. "When I saw Frank's parents building security outside of gathering money, it appealed to me."
Urbanska and Levering buy clothes at Goodwill stores, drive a used car, can food and try to conserve and recycle as much as possible. They take pride in making things last. Their approach to material things is to "tread softly on the Earth."
"Simple Living" is an outgrowth of their lives, and their next book may be as well.
"We're thinking about doing a year at the orchard," Frank says.
"What's an orchard like? How do you produce these fruits? Who are the personalities involved?"
Meanwhile, the two writers are making promotional trips to the West Coast and the Midwest to promote their current book. After that, it won't be too long before the orchard demands their attention again.
"I'm probably the only member of the Harvard class of '78 to be in the produce business," Urbanska says.