November 19, 2025

By Wendy Carlson
Photograph by Deborah Lopez

Ever since grammar school, author Elizabeth Gilbert has been writing. By middle school, she was mimeographing poems in the principal’s office and handing them out to classmates. At Litchfield High School (Class of 1987), she was already sending short stories to The New Yorker, hoping for publication.

The author of nine acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction—including the best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which catapulted her to international fame, and became a film starring Julia Roberts—Gilbert returned to the Warner Theatre in Torrington this fall to discuss her latest memoir, All the Way to the River. The riveting story centers on the love of her life: a queer, recovering-addict hairdresser from Queens, and how her death led to Gilbert’s greatest awakening.

Litchfield Magazine spoke with Gilbert about how growing up on a Christmas tree farm in Litchfield County helped shape her lifelong pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.

First, what was it like during the holiday season growing up on Bees, Fleas & Trees, the Christmas tree farm your parents, John and Carole Gilbert, own? 

 I’ve often said that selling Christmas trees is like selling ice cream (and I’ve done both, so I really know what I’m talking about here!) in that people are always cheerful and happy to buy these products. I loved December on the Christmas tree farm—the physical labor of cutting down and bailing trees, the joy of little kids running around the farm, and the endless hot chocolate and doughnuts. My parents really had (and still have) a talent for making people feel warm and welcome, and over the decades my friends from high school, college, and beyond all loved working on the farm. It’s an exhausting but ultimately really satisfying time of the year. 

 What was a typical Christmas like for your family—anything that might surprise people?

 The joke (not really a joke) that we always tell in my family is that we always had the worst tree for us! People assume that our own Christmas tree must have been the most lush and beautiful one, but nothing could be further from the truth. My dad wasn’t going to waste a perfectly profitable tree on his own family, and anyway we were all pretty tired of Christmas by the time the actual holiday rolled around. So we always got whatever un-sellable tree was left on the lot. “The cobbler’s children have no shoes,” is what my Dad always used to say! 

How did farm life teach you independence and spark your creativity?

What I learned more than anything else is that you are allowed to make your own thing in life. You are allowed to have passions and curiosities that exist outside of the “normal” realm of day-to-day life. My mom was a nurse and my dad was an engineer, but that’s just what they did to make a living; everything on the farm was what they did for love. Gardening, sewing, taking care of bees and chickens and goats, growing trees—these were just some of their sideline artistic projects. So what I grew up seeing were two really important lessons about how to be an artist, even though I don’t think either of my parents would have called themselves “artists.” I saw that you should always have a day job that you can rely upon to be financially independent, AND you get to pour all your love and passion into your heart’s true calling, which is your own business, doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else, and will fulfill your spirit. This is fantastic training for the arts. So I followed in my parents’ footsteps—not by becoming a farmer or a master gardener, but by moving to New York, getting a day job, and working on my writing in the evenings and on the weekends. They modeled that dual sense of responsibility and freedom beautifully for me. 

Who encouraged and inspired you as a young writer growing up in Litchfield?

I was writing my whole life—as soon as I could spell! (okay, to be fair, I still can’t really spell.) I remember writing poetry in grammar school, plays in middle school, and short fiction in high school. I had a slew of teachers who were so encouraging—but Bill Bucklin and Sandie Carpenter [Litchfield High School] were the most generous with their praise, guidance, and time. The librarians at the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield were also like a team of loving literary aunties to me—and they gave me the run of the library, which was so kind. I consider myself so lucky to be the product of a really good public education system and really good public libraries. As the years have gone by, I have only appreciated more the education that Litchfield offered to me, in so many ways. 

What places in Litchfield feel most like home to you today?

While much of Litchfield has changed, the most special part of it to me remains the same—or is even improved. The woods at the White Memorial Foundation were always a haven of silence and beauty for me growing up, and I still love to go wandering those trails, which are even nicer now and better kept up than they were 40 years ago. There is something about the Connecticut woods that isn’t like anything else for me, that mix of sun and shade; the smell of pine and ferns and even skunk cabbage; the moss and the outcroppings of granite. Being in those woods brings me right back to the best memories of my childhood, where, even as a restless teenager, I knew that this was a beautiful and special place. So my favorite thing when I come is to put on some hiking boots and go straight to the woods. It clears my spirit the same as it ever did. Of course there are more bears now than there used to be, but that just makes life more exciting! 

Readers eager to join Elizabeth Gilbert on her journey of love, loss, and self-discovery can seek out her memoir, All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation. Bees, Fleas & Trees is at 551 S. Plains Road, Litchfield.