Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage

by Laura Waterman

In 1971 Laura and Guy Waterman decided to homestead in a cabin in the mountains of Vermont. For nearly three decades they created a deliberate life using no running water or electricity. It was an extreme that most of us can only imagine sustaining for a week or two.

The end of their marriage came on a frigid day, February 6, 2000 when Guy climbed to the summit of Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and sat down among the rocks to die. Losing the Garden is the memoir of a woman who was compelled to ask herself "How could I support my husband's plan to commit suicide?" It is an intimate examination of dark family histories and a marriage that tried to transcend them.

Laura’s father was the pre-eminent scholar of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, whose brilliance was muddied by alcoholism. Guy Waterman lost two sons (one son was a subject of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book Into the Wild ). Finally, Laura Waterman comes to terms with her husband’s long depression and his complex nature. Her awakening and affirmation of life after loss is a love story, a portrait of an intense and unusual marriage.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

336 pages, Hardcover

First published February 7, 2005

About the author

Laura Waterman grew up in New Jersey. Her father, Emily Dickinson scholar, Thomas H. Johnson, taught at the Lawrenceville School. Laura graduated from Hollins University in 1962 with a major in English. 

For the decade of the Sixties, she was an editor in book publishing in New York City.  In 1969 she began climbing and met Guy Waterman, a speechwriter, formerly on Capitol Hill. The couple were married in l972, and in l973, moved to Vermont to establish an off-the-grid homestead.

For the next nearly 30 years, Laura and Guy collaboratively wrote books about mountain ethics and stewardship, subjects that grew out of their own climbing life. Those titles include The Green Guide to Low-Impact Hiking and Camping (formerly titled Backwoods Ethics) and Wilderness Ethics: Preserving the Spirit of Wildness. They also penned two books on the social and trail building history of the Northeast's mountain ranges: Forest and Crag and Yankee Rock & Ice. Their collection, A Fine Kind of Madness: Mountain Adventures Tall and True was a posthumous publication for Guy who died in 2000. 

Guy's choice to take his own life steered Laura to write Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage, a memoir about their homesteading, writing, and climbing years, and Laura's attempt to understand her own role in her husband's decision. The book was  selected as an Editor's Pick by the Boston Globe. 

Most recently Laura has published a novel, Starvation Shore, about the Lt. Greely Arctic Expedition (1881-1884). Laura, and posthumously Guy, were awarded the David Brower Conservation Award from the American Alpine Club in 2012, and Laura, in 2019, was inducted into the AAC's Hall of Mountaineering Excellence. 

Guy's death prompted Laura and friends to found the Waterman Fund that works to conserve the alpine areas of northeastern North America. Learn more at: watermanfund.org.
Visit Laura's website: laurawaterman.com

Reviews

[Elyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir of Laura Waterman's marriage to Guy Waterman, the subject of Good Morning Midnight (see my review) is illuminating. I was concerned that it would be too repetitive after reading GMM, but instead it was interesting to understand Guy and their relationship through her eyes. What makes this book effective is that Laura gave herself time to really process and evaluate the true progression of her marriage, including her earlier blind spots and her unhealthy enmeshment with Guy at the expense of her own identity.

I also felt much less empathy for Guy after reading Laura's perspective. His resistance to addressing his grief and 'demons' is maddening. In the end, his stubborn pride is alienating and his act of suicide seems selfish.

On a lighter note, she goes into greater depth about the homesteading experience, which I also found fascinating. I recognized the rewards of their simpler existence.

I recommend reading these books together to get a full picture of both Guy and Laura Waterman, as they are interesting individuals and a compelling couple.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I was disturbed by Laura's acceptance of her husband's "selfishness" and her putting aside her own feelings and desires throughout the marriage, I was enthralled with the day-to-day activities of their homesteading life. I can see what attracted Laura to this dynamic, intelligent, interesting man but the way she suppressed her own identity is amazing to me....and for such a long time. It is evident that she blossomed after Guy's death. Can you imagine a life of such detail; documenting temperature readings three times a day, counting blueberries per bush, for heaven's sake!!??

I was also in awe of the detail she was able to share which is, of course, due to the journals and the documents and the calendar notations that were so important to Guy. Pretty impressive! I'm happy Laura has made a life for herself taking on some creature comforts but now determining what her future life will be without Guy making all the decisions.

All and all, a good read.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommend the book, but still loathe the subject as much as I did Into the Wild's Chris McCandless, another self-aggrandizing Republican who upon the shocking discovery that society is flawed and that people are imperfect (and parents--oh my god!-- are sexual beings with complicated lives),martyred himself to nature. Like McCandless, Waterman's self absorption makes him as oblivious to the impact that his party (Nixon gets a pass for environmental protection laws, but Reagan?) had on said wilderness, as he is to his neglect and damaging behavior toward others. Maybe he is meticulous in helping his wife prepare for his death, but this reads as if he is simply incorporating her into one last grandiose project. There are quite a few parallels here with McCandless's cluelessness about how his own self-righteous seeking, even the advocating for simplicity and "returning to nature" relates to the upper middle class cultural capital that both think they've shed. The most telling point is from Waterman's youth when he finally goes to a real public school, is surrounded by the poor people he longs to befriend, but is shocked when his teacher doesn't know who Thomas Hardy is. Seriously, f#ck you! This is clearly someone who needed more of the real world if he truly wanted to make more of an impact. But rock climbing and mountaineering provide more of an endorphin filled ego boost, and nature is a far prettier backdrop.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book is probably not 5 stars for everyone -- either the author and her husband are sympatico to you or they're not -- I was engrossed and moved by this autobiographical account of a couple whose marriage ended with the husband's suicide. The couple was committed to living a sustainable life off the grid, filled with reading, writing, hiking, simple hard work, appreciation of the natural world, music and culture, and guided by values of integrity and responsibility. Seemed idyllic...and yet the husband was unable to build meaningful connections to his family, friends, and find pride in his life. So the book is also the story of assisted suicide, and leaves the reader wondering over and over why it went wrong and what could have been changed to create a happier ending. A moving and thought provoking book.

[Sherrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be an excellent choice for a book club--there are so many things to discuss, and probably disagree about.
I found the sections of the book describing how Guy and Laura lived at Berra enthralling. But I thought that the sections describing Guy's long lead in to suicide and Laura's reaction to it disturbing. Perhaps its very intimacy made me uncomfortable, but the self absorption of both people made me cringe a little. I am not insensitive to the toll that depression takes on people, but there was so much more to this man's character that had nothing to do with his depression, and everything to do with his passive aggressive controlling nature, that it made him quite an unsympathetic character to me.
The book was well written and well told, but overall it left me quite cold. Perhaps after I think about it, I would change my mind, but I doubt it.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was as interesting for what it left unsaid as it was for what was said. By far the more intriguing character is Laura Waterman and not her husband Guy. Why did she so willingly go along with her husband's suicide? She starts to discuss some of this toward the end and I wish we had heard more throughout, but somehow in just seeing their daily lives together you begin to understand. It is a fascinating read to me simply because of Laura. The book, however, is slow at times. I'd like her to do more of the introspective analysis but then again if she could her story would probably have been very different.

[Alice Rojas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I think that the author’s honesty and self revelation during the book was particularly taking. You can tell how she has meditated on her marriage and the effect of her father’s alcoholism on her life and choices. It is human, as uncomfortable as it is to talk about for many, to give up your needs in service of others. This is especially important when we consider what we see as a functional relationship and marriage. The cradling of ones own self destructive habits by another’s feels safe. The interesting thing about the book was, for me, the author coming to terms with sense of self in relation to another and- more scarily- apart from them.

[Audra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is traveling among our married friends; couples read it and want to talk--with each other, with friends, about all that comes up in the book as well as suicide... That makes it a 5-star book for me. Waterman does such a fine job of involving the reader in the love and dilemmas of her marriage. We ask each other: ' What do you think? What would you have done?' From Library Journal's review: "unusual life ...loving marriage... well-written and heartfelt... will resonate with anyone whose life has been touched by the suicide of a loved one."

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to be honest and say that I found the first 100 pages rather uninteresting (way too much detail on rock climbing, and specific mountains, if you're not interested in the sport). However, based on the good reviews I continued reading the book and I'm glad that I did. The book details a lovely marriage relationship, and a way of life (homesteading) that I found fascinating. I found Laura Waterman's writing extremely well written (flows easily, creates a timeline easy to follow, extremely open about herself as a human being and obviously talented at reading those around her). Separately, the book prompted in me new ways of thinking about depression, specifically how it impacts those family members closest to a person fighting depression. Her insight into how people live with, and fight depression, spoke to me (i.e. the creative highs and the lows; the spurts of energy and focus; the struggling with pacing oneself and thinking long term -instead setting achievable short-term deadlines; the struggle with thinking of others when focused on mental survival). Laura's ability to communicate how she lived long term with such a person, and maintained her own sanity and authentic self, gives great insight for families struggling with issues of mental health.

Lines from the book that caught my eye:

"Memory distorts. Psychology, emotions, good health or bad -all drag their feet across events.
The details that I might remember one day are not those that I might remember on another day.
Certainly my memory has its own agenda -to show me off this way or that. My subjectivity is the smudgy window through which I squint." Stephen Dobyns

"Keeping records on birds [on anything] made us take time to stop what we were doing and look around... It was as though by keeping records we had grown antennae, like insects, and these feelers kept us a little more abreast of what was going on in the world around us."

The fear of someone suffering from depression confronting that depression in another: "He had spent years keeping under control, by prodigious efforts of mental discipline, a debilitating tendency toward anxiety and melancholy. He could not put at risk this hard-won control."

On why someone might survive depression and another person does not: "Maybe the reason he's not alive [Guy's son] and I am is simply that I found Ms. Laura and he never found his Ms. Laura. Well, more: I found a lot of things along the 49 years that preceded the spring of 1981, and I can be aware of them in the midst of the lowest lows. Johnny didn't enough enough of such things before the spring of 1981."

"You may grow old and trembling... you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of lesser minds. There is only one thing for it then -to learn. Learn why the world wags, and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." T.H. White "The Once and Future King"

"Shortly before his suicide, Guy told me that he had accomplished all he wanted. In a way, he was saying that he had come to the end of learning -that is, all he was interested in learning."

On relationship collaboration: "I [Laura] understood about pacing and not giving up. But my understanding was all at the intuitive level." "My job was to keep our frail little boat upright in a turbulent sea. Guy supplied the bursts of creative energy, the organization, the writing skill, but I see now he needed my steadiness to reach the end before he had laid down his pen."

Finding peace in finding one's talent: "All my life I've felt inadequate, but above the treeline in bad conditions -I feel good about myself up there."

"I needed his support [dealing with her parents' alcoholism]; Guy saw this, and it no doubt helped to pull him out of himself." "The scary, emotionally charged territory of my family had nothing to do with him. He couldn't blame himself for this [and thus could help without it compounding his own depression]."

Often those battling depression do such things as a way to show, if only quickly, how much they care about those around them, which they may struggle, on a regular/ongoing basis, to express: "Often my trips allowed Guy to accomplish some special task, like cleaning out the cellar or building a new set of shelves... I always found something. Some unexpected surprise he had kept a secret until I walked in the door."

[Glenn Ledbetter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early in this book, a couple of lines from Stevie Nick’s song, “Landslide,” spontaneously came to mind:

“Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you”

The book is the story of how a wife, Laura, could only become herself after her husband, Guy, died. Through her willing submission, her tacit permission and acceptance, in her fear of causing him pain, his being almost wholly subsumed hers.

Only by re-examining their married life, after he committed suicide in an unusual way, was she free and able to untangle things and figure them out. She did it by writing this cathartic memoir. Only by telling their story could she tell her story.

For 27 years, they lived in the cabin they built in rural Vermont, close to the earth in the rhythm of the seasons without electricity, indoor plumbing, or refrigeration, faithfully tending a large garden, and joyfully climbing nearby mountains together. To them and their many friends and admirers, their spartan life was idyllic. They were successful drop-outs—intelligent, educated, multi-talented young adults who spurned promising careers. They lived off savings and writing books. They bore no children. They worked very hard, subsisting on and taking care of their beloved 39 acres of land through harsh winters.

Fighting his Demons, however, Guy Waterman was self-destructive. On page 135, Laura names those Demons: “Though I was well aware of his sorrow, his pain on losing his sons, I was blind to how hungrily, how eagerly, it fed upon his deepest feelings of Blame, Guilt, Remorse, and Regret—his Demons, all tangled under a blanket of immobilizing, suffocating Shame.”

As the story of their married life unfolds in her book, I kept anticipating that I’d soon be reading diagnoses like depressed, chronically depressed, clinically depressed, manic depression bipolar disorder, compulsive obsessive disorder, perfectionist, or such. But Guy loathed psychological labeling and defiantly refused counseling and medications. So, writing in hindsight, Laura used only one such word to describe his wild mood swings that he hid from all but her—depression (and depressed). His dark emotions twisted his successes into failures.

To me, Guy’s friend, Lou Cornell, said it best on page 269: “Guy’s nobility of spirit, combined with an extraordinary force of character, gave him the power to lead a good life…Guy was different [from most of us]. He planned his life carefully, carried out his plans with force and deliberation, and took responsibility (too much truthfully) for what he considered his failures. His end was therefore much closer to tragedy than anything I’ve ever encountered.”

Yes, like ancient Greek tragic heroes, he was an exceptional man who had a “tragic flaw” that destroyed him. On page 262, he wrote to her of the lifelong, warlike tendencies within himself, “the constructive and positive versus the negative and destructive.” He likened it to Ariel versus Caliban in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. “As I look at where I have come to, after 67 years of struggling, I see that Caliban won.”

The night before he left home to die, as they prepared for bed, he mused, “Maybe I am depressed.” She writes, “His words catch me by surprise. He has never mentioned depression. Neither have I. Certainly, he has never applied that word to himself before. If he is asking me for my help, I am unaware of this. I am on my own train now and cannot slow it down.” And then the next morning, he was gone, Sunday, 6 February 2000.

Six months later, as they had planned, she left their homestead, and hence, the book's title, Losing the Garden. His death relieved her of his omnipresent, publicly-hidden shadow, liberating her to renew and reform her own identity.

I was referred to this book by a friend of mine, a mountain climber from New York. He said to me, “What Guy did was very unfair—unfair to others—very unfair!” But I have not walked in either his or her shoes, so I am reluctant to judge them. I just know that I would not choose to be Guy, and I’m pretty sure that I never could have gotten even one date with Laura. However, I will judge her book—5 stars!

This is the second book that I have read recently about a married man who committed suicide—“accompanied suicide” for $10,000—at an institution in Switzerland. It, too, was written by his widow. You’ll find my review of In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom elsewhere on Goodreads. Quite a different story.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of a marriage, told by the wife. Before the opening lines, Laura (wife) acknowledges that this is her subjective account, colored by her memories and her feelings. But it is also very much based on Guy's (husband) prodigious records of their years together.

Who knows what attracts one person to another? The obvious common thread for this couple is their love of mountaineering. Both work in NYC, and live for weekends, when they go off to the Shawangunks to climb and hike. In time, they decide to create a way of life for themselves that cuts out all the middlemen, by themselves providing their necessities, so that their time and energy can be entirely spent doing what they love. For them, the necessities included music, books, writing, climbing, along with food and shelter, friends and family. Freedom to do what they loved was the goal.

Achieving this lifestyle required some seed money, some ongoing income (small pension, publishing fees) and a good amount of physical labor. Aware of the example of Scott and Helen Nearing, they decide to settle in the mountains of Vermont. Without electricity or plumbing, they needed a woodlot, a large cleared space for a garden. and a source of water.

Each day was planned according to the season: gardening, cutting wood, hauling water, cooking, laundry, sugaring, canning. And evenings were spent reading aloud, collaborating on articles and books, playing piano, visiting with guests and friends. They came to love their place in the mountains, even naming maple trees and blueberry bushes.

The real purpose of the book, however, is Laura's desire to understand her relationship with Guy, a very complex person who was loved and respected by friends and who also suffered from great anxiety and melancholy. His way of keeping control of his self-destructive tendencies made his private life and hers a huge challenge. Living with him in love and compassion is the achievement of her life. And this is the record of it.
A compelling, heroic story of two people choosing to live their lives their way. It is not, as she says, a model for anyone else. Their story is unique to them, but full of provocative considerations and insights for others.
A heartrending, deeply humane story.

[Lydia Freier]

this book, like any good one does, felt so conflicting for me. several times i put it down in anger. but im left with laura’s absolute gracefulness. her ability to accept the complexity of her husband and his impact on her life with such grace felt so real, so full of grace. while i wish that she leaned more in her writing into what remained unsaid, i understand that in a sense she maybe still preserves that inner garden of her love for him. i think that is very real too. all of this, the unsaid, especially, made this book more compelling to me, left a deeper mark.

[Joanne Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many aspects of this book appealed to me, mostly the simple off-the-grid life the couple created for themselves, filled with books and fulfilling work. However, I simply did not understand the author's willingness to stuff her own feelings and go along with whatever her husband wanted. I would love to visit the author and share a cup of tea and a long talk with her.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This the fascinating story of a Laura and Guy Waterman, who homesteaded in Vermont for nearly thirty years before Guy Waterman committed suicide in the White Mountains. An unusual marriage told from Laura's perspective after Guy's death.

[Joanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very depressing

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cried so many times reading this

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book by chance in the “library” at the AMC highland center lodge couldn’t stop reading. Loved it on so many levels. Thank you Laura Waterman for sharing your story ❤️

[Rilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been described before as heartwrenching and beautiful. A couple whose passions meet in rock-climbing (she much younger, he previously married) decide to forego life in New York where both are professionally successful to live off the land in Vermont. Among other things, this meant no running water or indoor toilet, wood for heat and cooking, kerosene for reading, growing their own food, trekking a mile or more to where their car is kept. It also meant joy in proximity to rock climbs, tending the garden, putting up food, reading aloud to one another. These two people partner with each other and their physical environment in earth-friendly ways.

But mental illness shadows the marriage. The husband lives with demons that cause him to withdraw emotionally, to experience serious depression (exacerbated by grief over the probable suicide of a son), and ultimately to control the timing of his own death by freezing on a mountain ledge. The wonder in this may be the acceptance his wife offers, heartbreaking as it is, of his plan to end his own life.

Because he shared the plan with her a year ahead of time they are able to say their goodbyes through the final seasons of their life together, though never explicitly. He helps to plan and build a house in town for her where she will yield to the luxury of running water. She begins to think about the shape of life on her own. They welcome friends for one last new year's celebration.

Another wonder is to see how she begins to blossom as she anticipates no longer having to live as if walking on eggshells around someone she loves dearly but who is difficult to live with. She cherishes the time together but grows into herself as she is freed from the mantle of his depression. The title seems to be a metaphor for her marriage and love for her husband even as he slips away. But it occurs to me that "Living the Garden" might have served as a metaphor for both their time together and the bloom of her life alone.

[Jodi Mae · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rather strange nonfiction (memoir) by Laura Waterman, analyzes and retells the story of her life spent with her devoted husband, Guy. They are inseparable, living within each others shadows. For 30 years living a rustic, wilderness, back woods life in rural Vermont that is completely off the grid and isolated. They eat the same meals every day, follow a very rigid schedule of chores, write and read aloud to each other for entertainment. They also mountain climb and hike and are very physically vigorous and great lovers of Mother Nature; especially the tall, snow covered peaks of Vermont and New Hampshire. There is a dark side to Guy Waterman though. And at age 60 he routinely finishes his breakfast, does his usual chores, tells his wife she needs to bake some bread, climbs to the top of a New Hampshire mountain to willingly freeze to death. Complicit in the knowledge of her husband's potential suicide, Laura does nothing but watch him go; without questioning him or attempting to stop him as he walks out their unpaved road toward his calculated demise. Laura goes about her chores, thinking to herself how thoughtful he was to chop extra wood before he left. This is her story.

[Laura Sheffield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suicide. That is the driving topic.
It isn't exceptionally well written, but worth a read. The book is a couple's story of leaving society where they were both successful, and living off the grid. She went into the daily details, practically an instruction manual of how to live and plan your off-the-grid life. All the while she developed her character and her husband's. Ethical, personal questions grow from the writer's true experience of helping her husband who was plagued by depression for years, to commit suicide. She opens up at the end about her own insights, hindsights, and regrets.
This book left me with a gnawing in the back of my mind, critiquing her, feeling angry, disgusted, and preoccupied at times with her life and her husband's death. While I only gave it a 3 star rating, I would still say it was worth the read. It will confront you with the conflict between love, and ethics, integrity, and the introspection, "What would I do in her shoes?"

[Jessica Craven · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had so much promise but ended up being disappointing. While the author flirts with examining her total complicitness with her husband's suicide plan, there is never any real soul-searching on the subject and as a result, the book is left wanting.

Although it's clear that the author loved her husband deeply, her distant manner of writing makes it hard to really connect or empathise with her feelings as her husband goes about planning his death. You get the feeling there are a lot of conversations that didn't make it into the book.

It's also frustrating that the author really only pays lip service to her own character failings which allowed her to stand by as her husband took his own life.

Ultimately, it was a disappointing book, mainly through the author's reluctance to really examine herself and her marriage.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book certainly had its moments, it was mostly disappointing. It is a really compelling story, but instead of showing us what meaning these experiences had for her or allowing us to feel the heights and depths of the passions and tragedies in her life, the author chose most of the time to stay safely on the surface, only reporting events, sometimes with statements of hindsight that were mostly not very insightful.Too bad, because there is so much this story could have been.

[Gary Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a haunting story of loss told honestly and truthfully. I picked it up in a small bookstore in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Reading it in that melancholy setting in October may have spoiled my objectivity and earned it an extra star, or perhaps gave me a deeper understanding of the story. I have given away thousands of books I've read. This one stays on the shelf of two hundred I can't or won't let go. I am not sure why. Read it and perhaps you will know.

[Clint · Rating 5 out of 5]

just wonderful I had already read of guy waterman in chip brown's book "good morning, midnight", but reading laura waterman's own account of her life with guy was insightful and heartbreaking. a must read.

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Given the complexity of the issues in Laura and Guy Waterman's lives, and in his death, it's difficult to understand how this memoir could have failed. Maybe it had something to do with too much reportage and very flat writing. I wish I had liked it. I did not.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was hard to get through the first couple of chapters & I really liked the middle part. I liked reading about their experiences on the homestead. I would love to live off the land and be so connected with it, but like my running water and electricity so I doubt I could go all the way.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this immediately after reading Good Morning Midnight and thought the books complemented one another. Interesting to see Guy's life and death from his wife's perspective. I think I will be thinking about this book for some time to come.

[anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i could give a 6 star rating to only one book, this would be the one. i never knew a book could be like this, absolutely incredible!

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching story.

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

a unique and open look into a fascinating life full of choices- reminds me of my new englad home.