Helen Nearing

Who was Helen Nearing?

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 their relationship together in 1928. They married nearly twenty years later on December 12, 1947. The couple lived in rural Vermont where they grew much of their own food and erected nine stone buildings over the course of two decades. They earned money by producing maple syrup and sugar from the trees on their land and from Scott Nearing's occasional paid lectures.