“The sweet, simple things in life, they are the best and most important.”
These wise words from Melissa Gilbert’s Little House on the Prairie character, Laura Ingalls Wilder, have stuck with the actress all these years later.
In Gilbert’s new book, Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade A Life Rediscovered, she talks about quarantining during the coronavirus pandemic at her home in the Catskill Mountains in New York, and living a life away from Hollywood.
“When you’re going through something like that, we really realize what you need versus what you want,” the 58-year-old actress told ET’s Rachel Smith, reflecting on the pandemic.
“I think that we were really focused on the want, want, want, want, want collectively and I hope we remember what’s really important,” she continued. “The things that were really taken away from us. Community was taken away from us, our families were taken away from us, some people lost loved ones and dear friends permanently, our jobs were taken away from us. Life changed completely and the things that really matter are the things we love the most and the things that bring us the most peace and comfort.”
Gilbert found comfort in her Catskills home, which she calls “cabbage,” that she shares with her husband, Timothy Busfield. After leaving Hollywood behind and settling upstate, Gilbert admitted to ET that her life is somewhat reminiscent to how Laura Ingalls lived with her family in Little House on the Prairie.
“The cabbage is very restorative,” Gilbert said of the home she moved into with her husband in 2019. “My life is just a lot more gentle. I don’t have that burning ambition that I used to have.”
Gilbert starred on Little House on the Prairie from 1974 to 1983, and during her time on the show, Gilbert said she had the perfect blend of prairie life and rural California living, giving her a glimpse of the life she wanted.
“I loved being on the set,” she said. “I loved being around the horses and the chickens. I would go home to our lush rural life at the end of the day to my chores and my schoolwork and all of that and our nice house in the San Fernando Valley. But I loved being outside. I loved to be in nature, and I always wanted to have that in my life.”
Now that she finally has that piece of nature, the only piece of California she misses is her family. “I don’t miss the pressure. I don’t miss the race. I don’t miss the competition. I don’t miss the feeling bad because I’m not younger and thinner,” she said. “I do miss Los Angeles. I miss, not the city itself. I miss my mom and I miss my sister and my nephews, and I miss my kids who live there, and my granddaughter who lives there, and my girlfriends who live there. That’s the hardest part is being away from those people. But the rest of it? I don’t miss.”
For some, leaving the world you were more familiar would be difficult, but for Gilbert, it’s simply her third act.
“I think I finally reached a point and a place in my life where I wanted and want and love having a peaceful, settled, calm existence,” she told ET. “A lot of the trauma and drama from my past is gone and I’ve moved on from it. I want to have that in so many different ways and I made a conscious decision to not have anything in my life that was not peaceful and calm, especially with the move to the cabbage. And that’s how I’ve chosen to live this last third of my life.”
If there is one person who can put Gilbert’s current life in perspective for the outside world, it’s her husband of nearly 10 years, who she said perfectly articulated who she is in the forward of her book.
“I love the forward in this book so much because it’s an incredible love letter from my partner in life,” she said of Busfield. “But it’s also he’s so honest and so revealing of who I am and who he sees me as and I think it really gives people an in.”
The first season of Little House on the Prairie aired in 1974.
The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder served as the inspiration for the American Western historical drama. The show starred Michael Langdon, Melissa Gilbert, Karen Grassle, and Melissa Sue Anderson as a family who lived on a farm in Plum Creek, Minnesota, close to Walnut Grove.
The story takes place in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s respectively. The works covered a wide range of topics, including childcare, religious dogma, contemporary societal problems, and many more. The program was mostly a drama, but it also had a good deal of humor and other comedic and lighter moments. The former child actress, Melissa Gilbert, reflects with fondness on her time spent working on the program.
From 1974 till 1982, she played the character as Laura Ingalls.
Melissa now makes her home on the farm that she owns in Sullivan County, New York. She is all about living the simple life on the farm. She has become so used to working on the farm that she no longer blinks an eye when she gets blisters on her hands from shoveling or gets covered in dirt. As she likes to call it, it’s her very own “Little House on the Catskills.”
“It was like a very nice summer camp, but I also got to play the ultimate game of dress up and be in those beautiful costumes and button up boots, and I don’t recall their being a single moment when it wasn’t fun,” she said.
It is also seeing a rise in demand in recently. According to Melissa, it might be a result of everything that is happening in the globe right now. The story of Little House serves as a gentle reminder that life used to be much more simple. The nation was forced to contend with an oil crisis, a recession, and the Watergate affair during the seventies.
Just like it is nowdays. And if it has happened in the past and people have made it, then the former star believes that it is possible for it to happen once again. Compassion, community, faith, and love are the four pillars that are essential to overcome global problems we face today.Moreover, she does so while maintaining a cheerful attitude.
What about a version that includes a quarantine? You bet!
There is even one that addresses the issue of race. The Ingalls family takes in and raises a kid who was born into slavery as they are traveling through Walnut Grove. In addition to this, the acting and the conversation are quite good. There are various points during the show that demand a moment of stop and reflection from the audience.
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