Lonesome in the Saddle: Or, how to feel at home in later life

Older people create a sense of self through the decisions they make about their sense of place in the world. Through a series of ethnographic life-stories, drawn from the lives of retired people in an upstate New York community, consideration is given to the meanings that mature men and women attach: to leaving work; to choosing to stay in or leave the home or residence that they have been living in; and to weighing the options of remaining in or moving from their community. The meaningfulness of family, home, possessions, travel, community, and ties to the land, all emerge from these accounts. In negotiating these issues, people also have to deal with a number of conflicting American values, including the tensions between freedom and responsibility, autonomy and rootedness, and adventure and security. The classic American images of the settler and the cowboy help to convey some of these contradictions