Spencer Smith was one of those great anachronisms of the Twenty-First Century. He was a patriarchal polygamist who was scrupulously careful to avoid problems with the law. His women were all over eighteen when he took them and he was careful to say that his only legal wife was his first wife Moriah.
Despite his best efforts Spencer and his family had been the target of a raid by police, Federal authorities, and social workers. The raid had made international news in part due to the inflammatory accusations that had been leveled against Spencer along with the almost mandatory language about how he was a white separatist, a sovereign citizen, and how the cluster of nicely kept homes the family lived in somehow constituted a dreadful 'compound'.
The police made a big show of shaving his beard off and then cutting his long hair due to 'prison standards' all while the man was in a county jail awaiting arraignment and yet to be sentenced to a state prison that had such rules. They repeatedly called him a 'sovereign citizen' although he fiercely loved his country and had proudly served it in uniform.
The media were paraded through the family's homes and fed stories of abuse and somewhere along the line the media started to question the official narrative they'd been fed. Such as the accusation that Spencer's women were underage when their actual birthdates on actual police reports said otherwise.
It took only two weeks for the official narrative and the criminal prosecution to crumble once the media turned their eyes from Spencer to the authorities.
The charges were shortly thrown out by a judge, several investigators were suspended from their jobs, and two of them were even indicted for perjury in the matter of the illegal warrant they'd obtained. It was quite the embarrassment for the forces who had thought to build their careers at the expense of Spencer and his unorthodox family.
The civil rights lawsuits were closely followed by the media and by civil liberties organizations. In the end there followed legislation from Congress that severely limited the ability of law enforcement to pursue cases based on flimsy or fictitious evidence.
Spencer and his family were eventually reunited and they used much of their multimillion dollar court ordered awards rebuilding their erstwhile compound.
Yet even with the legal problems behind them the story about the family remained an object of fascination for the media. Paparazzi were frequently chased off the property along with teams of reporters who were all looking for a salacious 'inside' story.
In time the story eventually faded from the headlines.
But a couple years later a recent college graduate in her first job as an actual reporter decided that she was going to approach the story a different way. Rowan brought the idea to her editors who initially shot the story down as old news but then she persisted and told them of her unique idea. They finally consented and sent her on her way to see about getting Spencer to agree to the idea.
She had to take a room in a nearby town while she made numerous efforts to contact Spencer. Finally he agreed to meet with her after she'd sent him a full resume and background on herself along with pictures.
Spencer himself drove out to meet her at the hotel coffee shop where they had a friendly discussion.
"Well, Rowan, I'll give you this, you're a lot more persistent than the other reporters. So tell me what this original idea of yours is?"
Rowan folded her hands in front of her, "I'd like to come live with you for a year. I'll live according to how you live and when it's done I'll write about my experience and let people know who you folks are and just how you live."
Spencer sighed. "And then you'll tell everyone what a freakshow we are and how we should be arrested and put in jail for living the way we want to live, right?"
She put up her hands, "No, I mean it. I promise I'll try to fit in and live the way you folks live and then I'll be honest about the experience, I promise."
Spencer looked at her intently. "So that means you'll be under my roof and you'll live like a woman under my cover, and no special treatment, is that right?"
"Yes, exactly that. I can live like one of your wives and see what that means."
"Secular women generally don't like this life, why would you be different?"
"Well, it's for a year and then I'll be gone. I suppose that makes some difference."
Spencer stood up. "I'll think on this and so should you. If you do this and you live like one of my wives I won't be easy on you. You might not like it when you find out what a difficult life it can be. But at the same time you just might discover how beautiful it can be to live the way our Heavenly Father intended."
He put down a few bills to pay for the coffee. "If you truly want this then meet me here this time tomorrow."
Rowan stood up to say good bye but Spencer just turned on his heel and strode off.
She hadn't even left the table when she called her editor and told him the good news. She imagined she'd be in the running for a Pulitzer with a story like this one!
She also wondered if she'd find the kind of evidence to destroy Spencer that the authorities had missed. It outraged her that a liberal judge of all people had dismissed the charges against Spencer when the man clearly belonged in a cage.
The next day she was waiting when Spencer showed up.
"You're serious then?" he asked her.
"I am." she replied.
"I'm going to make clear here that you're asking to live as one of my wives and submit to the rules of my house, am I right?"
Rowan nodded insistently, "Yes, you are. I'll do these things just like you ask."
Now Spencer's face pinched, "No, you don't understand. I won't be asking you to do anything, not at all. You will be told what to do and when to do it and if you can't accept that then this is not for you."
So close and yet so far! In her eagerness to get the story Rowan could only see the destination and not the journey. She doubled down.
"Oh, no! I'll do what you say, I mean it! I really want to find out what your life is like and this is the best way to do that!"
Spencer put out his hand, "Then we have an understanding."
Rowan shook his hand and felt the calluses from the hard work he did.
There were details to work out. Rowan returned her rental car and then put her bags in Spencer's truck for the ride back to 'the ranch' as he called it. She still thought of it as a compound and fought back the urge to call it by that word.
They were about a mile out of town when Spencer spoke up. "The jewelry comes off. All of it. It's not allowed in my house."
"What?"
He pulled the truck to the side of the road. "The nose ring, the earrings, and anything else you have for jewelry, it all comes off before we get to the ranch. I don't want those things being seen by my children."
Rowan sighed and complied. The nose ring came off, her other rings came off, the earrings came off, her anklet, and finally the belly button piercing. All of which she had collected since her freshman year in college.
Spencer put the truck back in gear and got going again. Rowan made a few attempts at conversation but Spencer would just grunt an acknowledgment and continue driving.
When they arrived at the ranch Rowan expected there would be some sort of greeting and instead Spencer directed one of his many daughters to get Rowan set up with a bed and 'what else she needs'.
This included a simple button down dress that the teenager told Rowan to put on. Once that was handled the teenager took Rowan out to the orchard and showed her how to pick apples.
There was a break for lunch and Rowan tried talking to the different family members but they more or less ignored her and went right back to the task at hand. Flustered at their lack of response she focused on the task at hand.
"That was a lot of work!" she announced when the end of the day was announced and everyone headed in to get cleaned up.
One of the women started walking beside her. "We have to get the apples in before the weather turns and before the deer or the bears come and get them. We're not just working for the sake of working, we're bringing in a harvest that we're depending on to help get us through the winter. If we don't work we won't eat. It's that simple."
Over the next month Rowan discovered the many connections between the 'pretty farm' and the food on her plate.
She also discovered that living with the family meant giving up her urban style of eating. She'd been a borderline vegetarian who would eat fish and seafood but she'd avoid anything that walked. She'd had to give this up when no one cared to cook anything vegetarian for her. Instead she was compelled to try the bacon, the pork roasts, the home raised chicken and beef, and whatever else ended up on her plate.
Rowan couldn't help but notice that the change in her diet was also accompanied by a growing stamina along with a paradoxical gain in weight and reduction in waist.
"You're getting stronger." one of Spencer's wives explained to her.
Rowan admitted to herself that she did feel better. All that work she was doing amounted to ten hours a day at the gym.
The cooler weather of fall came on and with the harvest completed the hard work became less harder. Rowan made notes about the pace of life and the connection to the weather and she liked how things were in synch with the rhythm of nature.
