The youngest Shaker in the world is 67 years olddc188, and his name is Arnold. He lives alongside Sister June, 86, in a magnificent brick building designed to sleep about 70 — the dwelling house of the last active Shaker village in the world, at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. Together they constitute one of the longest-running utopian experiments in America.

It’s a triumph, as utopian experiments aren’t known for their durability, though the impulse — to start afresh apart from the mess of mainstream society, to reinvent society with like-minded people — has always been strong here. Out of the many that America has fostered, this is one of the most abiding. Out of the tens of thousands of Shakers who have lived out their faith in the last quarter-millennium, these two remain.

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Brother Arnold Hadd and Sister June Carpenter live in an active village that is also a museum — they are inhabitants and custodians and exhibit all at once. Sabbathday Lake is a tidy, elegant configuration of buildings anchored by the brick dwelling house, constructed when the brethren numbered around 200. The Shakers maintain a small farm, with a herd of 70 sheep and four cows, and they sell herbs and teas harvested from their garden as well as furniture, beeswax candles and other “fancy goods.” Curious members of the public drive through even when Sabbathday Lake is closed to visitors, and pop out of their cars to wander up and down the dirt driveway, squinting at the Meeting House. Brother Arnold — Shakers go by their title and first name only — frequently comes out to greet people who show up, though he no longer offers tours. One weekend, two teenagers knocked on the kitchen door to ask if they could hunt turkey in the Shakers’ woods. He told them to go ahead.

These days, Brother Arnold gets up early and spends an hour alone in the kitchen, cooking and enjoying the chance to be by himself before the day’s inevitable bustle. He is a strong, tall man, big enough to pick up a sheep and hold it still for shearing, but his features are delicate: light eyes, a close white beard and a small mouth. Because of Sister June’s age and health, her role in the community is a private one, and it is Brother Arnold who serves as the head of the religion, the village leader, the farmer, gardener, shepherd, printer, housekeeper, cook, baker, author, editor, historian, spokesman and elder. This, he admits, is not what he imagined when he became a Shaker at age 21. He never wanted to lead a religion. When he arrived, he’d never dealt with sheep.

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