Waiting

I am obligated to hold off on publishing  A Morningstar romance until it is reviewed by Pam or Larry. I committed myself to do so... hold on.

A Morningstar Romance

I sent off copies of the manuscript of A Morningstar Romance to Larry Read and Pam Hanna, as promised. It is essentially what I posted on this site but I cleaned up the typos and grammar as best I could and will be submitting it to be published upon their review. I enjoyed writing it and reliving those magical months from February until June of 1970 on the high plateau that was cut through by the Rio Grand north of the town of Taos New Mexico. I wasn't  there very long at all chronologically but it was as though I'd passed a lifetime on the mesa at Morningstar and it was a memory that was beginning to fade before I wrote the novel, A Time Ago and Then. I also thought that some of these people might still be around and hoped that they would enjoy reading the experience of light and joy from one of the those who merely passed through Morningstar East.

     It was in trying to build a model of The Kiva that inspired me to write this memoir and it was in seeking out photos of Morningstar New Mexico that I made contact with Pam Hanna (Read). This was one of those serendipitous things because, unknown to me at the time, it was her then husband, Larry Read, that came up with the design for the Kiva. My model shows eight timbers but I was to find out from Pam that it was actually ten timbers that made up the self-supporting architecture of the roof. The hole it covered was dynamited out of the hard soil and then the tiers were dug out by hand below an adobe brick wall of a few feet that circled the hole. The wall had placed in it windows made of wine bottles planted there for stained glass lighting that made the Kiva a small cathedral. A non-supporting pole with steps cut in it went through the hole at the center of the roof to the ground for entering and exiting.

     There are plenty pics of the shelters in the original Morningstar West in Sonoma County but I still have not been able to find many pictures of the pueblo, or magical Kiva, at Morningstar New Mexico. Though I have a good memory of the Kiva, I only have a vague idea of how the actual pueblo was laid out in detail other than it was a triangle arrangement with about three rooms in each wing. One wing on the north side stood alone but the two other wings were joined in a sideways V with the south wing positioned east/west. In the midst of these was a small plaza where the grain grinder became the communal place to pick up on whatever was going on. There was also an adobe oven outside...maybe twenty feet to the north and on the east side of the pueblo where flat-breads and so on were baked. I am hoping someone will help me round out this short memoir before I go to publishing it.

     I call this memoir a romance because, in on sense, it is a love story. In another more classical concept of a romance it is a faded looking back to an ideal memory. It is painterly romantic for the beauty and powerful landscape it all takes place in. It romanticizes the people to some degree because I remember so little that I give only a glazed over perspective of their most positive qualities in my memoir. I do so because I've heard enough about the negative aspects of communal attempts at creating an alternative social and spiritual reality. The influence of psychedelic drugs, the misuse and positive use of them, had to be touched on, however, because so much that drove us all to the high mesa above Arroyo Hondo had to do with a spiritual quest that opened our minds via LSD and other mind-altering natural substances. The negativity of my own alcoholism was featured too because I felt the need to explain why I couldn't stay there and had to move on. It is all covered in this blog that I used as a rough draft.

Departure

     Dennis wasn’t around the fire-pit at the parking lot all that much. His bailiwick was mostly at the Kiva where he spoke of Jamaica and how one could go to the mountains there and hang out with the growers of Jamaican weed. He had a good grasp of the history of the country and seemed to know a lot about the people. Not too many of us had smoked what would become known as the “bud” of the plant so Dennis was able to intrigue a few of us about his experience. He told us about how these people in the mountains held onto the “bud” and exported only the “shake”. He knew some of them and was welcome in their homes.

     We sat and listened intently as he told us a bit of the history of the island: how the Spanish exploited the natives there from Columbus on; how they had fled the Spanish to the Cockpit Country in the mountains; how after that the British brought the slave trade, big time, to the island that some of the slaves escaped to the Cock-pit Country too; how these people mixed with the natives to become what is known as Rastafarians. Furthermore, what sealed the deal was what he told us about how some Rastas believed that white hippies were the reincarnation of the Indians who were wiped out by the Spaniards. Therefore, for the most part, we would be welcome in the Cockpit Country even though not so much in Kingston where mountain myths hold less sway. Rasta culture and Reggie music wasn’t heard off yet, so these people with marijuana spliffs tucked into the weave of hair matted into dreadlocks sounded exotic enough to be discovered for ourselves. I wanted to go and had visions of myself settling down in the mountains with a beautiful black Rasta woman to make babies and smoke the bud from marijuana grown off the wild land of my front porch.

We had not yet heard of Reggie Music

     During this period of making plans for departure we got a strange visit from a man at the dome. I remember that dried fruit and nuts were all he ate. That didn't seem so strange to me then as almost everyone I'd met in those days was on some sort of esoteric diet. It wasn't strange either that he carried with him a set of Tarot cards. Several times people had done things like throw coins, or sticks, reading I-Ching or cards for us, but this was different. The guy said he wanted to do a reading for me... just one reading... but for me. He fasted a day and then sat down in the dome and laid out the cards. His reading said I would be imprisoned by the end of July for three months and that I would go through a very dark period for several months after that. However, he said that I would come through it all well enough. I don't remember much more about the reading but it turned out to be more than prescient... his reading was absolutely on target... down to the details of months and the depth of the journey. I disregarded it at the time but I would be able to digest his reading since then and am in awe of it. The tribulations of those times can be read about in A Time Ago and Then from the chapters following our experiences in Jamaica and the curse of Hoss Baz.

     I talked with Byron about leaving; about how my drinking was getting out of hand and that I felt I was being called to go to Jamaica. Byron agreed that I should go where the spirit takes me and that there was only so much room in New Mexico. I began planning with Stanley and Dennis to figure out how we were going to get there. I had applied for unemployment benefits when I first arrived at the mesa but I never followed through. It turned out that it was probably a good thing because, with those back checks, we had plenty to get us to Jamaica.

     There were five of us… Dennis would need no help because he would sell his little Hillman in Miami that we’d all crammed ourselves into for the trip across America. My checks paid the airfare for the rest of us. Two were turned back at customs so that made for three getting through to another adventure free wheeling through the mountains and seashores of what was then an island paradise. That was how we left Taos, New Mexico and, though I’d always planned on going back, I never returned. Dennis stayed in Jamaica while Stan and I made it back to Miami where my troubles had just begun. This was the place I entered under a mountain of despair described in Gilgamesh… the oldest account of suffering on record.

     This adventure took me through a couple of years wandering until I lit in Santa Barbara, California. Santa Brabara has been my home since then (except for a couple of years when I took a job facilitating prison arts at Vacaville for the Arts in Corrections Program) but I have found a spiritual vortex in this place almost equal to what I experienced in Taos.

Arroyo Hondo Incident

     Something happened after Magic Mary’s bash that must have unraveled me. I spent more and more time at the fire-pit at the parking lot and less time anywhere else. There was an almost constant quest for spare change enough to make a run down to Arroyo Hondo for a jug. It is hard to imagine how it was done because, after all, it was mostly a minus-cash economy. However, most often, someone came up with a little extra from whatever money they had coming in, or maybe a new arrival… a hippy tourist or two… I couldn’t have kept myself drunk all the time but, whenever I could, I was.

     Now, I gotta say something about Red Mountain wine. It had a twist-off cap… no cork sniffin’ here… It was sold in one gallon jugs that were to be tipped over to one's lips on the fore-arm and anchored with a finger through the ear. Burgundy was the usual fare and it cost a whopping $1.89. It was cheap and nourishing in a sad way. We passed the jug around that same as we would a joint in a communal manner but the most sanitary minded among us wiped the brim off with their sleeve before taking a toke. Sometimes a hit or two or ten of acid would spike it off on special occasions but most of the time it was consumed straight out of the jug.

     Someone, I don’t recall who, left a 1949 International Harvester flatbed truck in the parking lot and gave me the keys. I recon that whoever had the keys in their possession had ownership of the truck. It was perfect for hauling people into Taos or making runs down to Arroyo Hondo for a jug or two of Red Mountain. Many good intelligent people have no idea how to double clutch a stick shift truck and that was also a good deal of why I was given the keys.

      Most of the drinking was pretty non-violent but there were sometimes flare ups now and then. Once, a few of us had been sitting inside of one of the vans parked by the fire pit. I think we were probably getting ready to ride into Taos. One of the regulars was called Red for his red locks of hair braided and beaded. He was a Vet too, with some pretty heavy… walking time-bomb… Viet Nam War baggage… wearing a fringed deerskin jacket and a belt with a k-bar knife… he could be somewhat menacing. The van had a wood floor and, while we were waiting to get rolling, Red pulled out his knife and proceeded to flick it… sticking it to the floor… he did so deliberately getting closer and closer to some of us sitting cross legged in the cramped van. One flick put the knife between my knees, barely missing me. Though it was well aimed I was getting tirte of his intimidation and as soon as the knife stuck I went into automatic reflexive action flying across the van and with both hands around his neck U flattened him to the floor boards. “I don’t need a fucking knife to take you out Red... God damn you… now back off!”

     Red avoided me as much as he could after that incident and I too avoided making eye contact with him. But there was an evening when the us boyos were hanging out at the fire pit and we’d collected enough for a jug of wine. Gleefully, I headed down the winding dirt track from the mesa through the village on to the gas station/store where highway three cut through town. Down and back because of the road, I lumbered in the truck all the way up to the parking lot… it was about a forty-five minute trip. Passing the jug, unopened, across and over the fire pit, a spark popped up out of a stick like it was a spitting viper… it caught me on the forearm and I let go of the jug just as another hand almost grasped it. I’m telling ya, that damned jug went down to meet one of the stones around the pit to a bloodycrashingshardsaflyin’red-winesplashing end. Silence hung over those who saw it all happen like they were witness to the death of a dear one.

     The silence was broken with the first insult, “You fuckin’ fool… What are we gonna do now?”
Then Red said, without hesitation, “That one was for Mother Earth…Now, we’re gonna pool our cash for another one… that’s what were gonna do now.” He was referring to the custom we had borrowed from our Native Pueblo friends… even for the most hard core winos… to spill the first of a jug to the earth out of respect for Mama Earth.

     So, Red and I got back in the truck with enough cash for one jug from the group and another jug I got myself with money I had intended to use for a sack of pinto beans… oh well, food or wine… wine won the debate that night. I atoned for my crime well enough then and there were no hard feelings. That, the incident with ole Crewcut, and another one down at the saloon in Arroyo Hondo were the only occasions where anyone resorted to violence in any of the time I was there at the mesa in spite of all the drinking. 

     The showdown at the saloon was the other time I saw the naked face of violence threaten to undermine the ideal I’d hoped top find on the high plateau of Taos. One evening a bunch of us went down to the joint on the highway down in Arroyo Hondo. I don’t recall why but we all were hanging out in the bar and dancing to the juke box. The cowboys; and, what I suppose would be considered rednecks, sat in their booths watching us with evil eyes…. commenting snidely. Beatrice was there dancing with Willie… his Afro and skin color disturbed them greatly…. We could hear words like “nigger-lovers" and so on… I also remember that Linda and Joe with his braided jet-black Native hair called for some insults too… "white whore", "Injun" and etc. There had to be seven or eight of us… out-numbered the cowboys… but that didn’t stop them from commenting louder about how we smelled and how hard it was to discern whether or not we were girls or boys.

     It got a bit nasty so we all decided it would be best to leave after a few more cowboys entered the place. It was then, as we were leaving, that some pushing and shoving on the way to the truck called for some action. Joe got to the truck first and pulled out a tire iron and swung it in front of the most aggressive taunt-monger, holding him off until we got in the truck. They feared a wild “Injun” wielding iron enough that we were able to depart unscathed. The truck bounced and graveled up the road to the mesa with a tense crew looking back through the dust cloud to see if we were being followed. It was a the unashamed bias and racism that fueled the aggression and it was perhaps the first time I’d been exposed to the venom most people of color were quite sadly accustomed to. I was white-by conflicted... was I really non-violent or was I allowing myself to be protected by Willie and Joe?

Joan Baez and the Crewcut

     Hanging out at the dome we heard another car graveling its way toward us. This time it had a very unlikely couple: a young, long haired, kid with a middle-aged dude in a crew cut looking like a Nark or FBI. They stopped their rent-a-car at the dome and introduced themselves. We asked the kid about their situation and he told me that the guy was okay and that he’d rented the car in LA but just wanted to get away. I was suspicious about him but, what the hell, all kinds of folks ended up at Morningstar.

     The two pitched a little dome tent in front of the pueblo. A few days later a party of some sort was going on. I think it was a special occasion whereby we had been roasting a kid goat for it. There was plenty of wine and other stuff and this crew-cut dude got way outa hand. He was hitting on a dark haired woman and carrying on and I was also drunk and in no mood to put up with his antics… we almost went at it. Somehow we didn’t… I think it was Byron who broke us up. I was crushed out of shame for letting this guy evoke my old violent behavior. I made the connection with wine but felt powerless as far as doing anything about it. I felt that my sojourn at Morningstar was coming to an end and a renewed feeling of hopelessness had begun to seep into my conscience.

     The dark haired woman seemed oddly familiar. She comforted me after I apologized profusely and had been crying on her shoulder about my sudden outburst of violence. She assured me that it was okay what I'd done and that she thought I was a saint for doing so. As I was attracted to her and fed on her compassion, my interest perked up. She must have sensed my awakened libido so she told me she was married to a guy who was in prison for dodging the draft and that she was celibate until he would be released.. His name just happened to be David. I always wondered if it was… hmmm … naw… a coincidence? Taking advantage of my newly ordained sainthood and, being drunk and horny, I hit on her pretty heavy. However, my sainthood was disregarded and she rejected my advances. I will always wonder whether or not her name was Joan... as in Joan Baez. Really, had I been ordained a saint and rejected by Joan Baez?!!!

     The next day some of us, along with Magic Mary, decided we needed some pot and no one had any. Magic Mary said she knew someone in Ranch De Taos who had some but we needed transportation. Crewcut was very hungover but handed the keys of his rent-a-car to a go-getter named Dennis… one of the new guys staying at the kiva. So, four or five of us headed into town with Magic Mary and, as we passed through Taos, a cruiser got behind us and followed us all the way through town. We were finally pulled over in front of a bar. As Magic Mary was awaiting trial for the previous bust she wanted nothing to do with these cops. She was not so eager to be nailed for some minor offense. We had no idea how legit this rent-a-car was and had no idea who this Crewcut was. Anticipating the worst and, in the confusion of what was going on with some of us distracting and clowning with the cops, she asked to be excused to use the women’s room in the bar. I think it was Linda who was with us and she went to the restroom with Mary. She came back alone after about fifteen minutes. Mary had slipped out the back door but the cops seemed to be unconcerned about where she went or who she was. They were focused on the car. Dennis told them about the guy on the mesa and flat out asked the patrolman whether Crewcut was a Nark or something. It was kind of funny when I think back on it.

     After the cop checked on Dennis’ driver’s license, we were put in two squad cars to follow Dennis in the rent-a-car to the mesa. The cops just wanted to talk to the Crewcut to see if the car was rented by him. I suspected that there was more to it than that… was he an agent? Was he sent up to reconnoiter and find out what was going on up there? These things were common at Morningstar in California. Folks up on the mesa who’d come from there had endured worse and had the attitude… “let them check on us all they want.”

     We told the cops that they had to stay with their cars in the parking lot and that we would retrieve Crewcut for them. They obliged, much to my surprise. Regardless, once Crewcut was awakened from his hangover and checked out by the cops, they departed. Crewcut left soon after and the Kid stayed. I’ll never know exactly what that business was all about but I have my ideas.

    Dennis was an unusual character that I will have much more to do with soon.

The Tobacco Incident

     Shep was an interesting character. He had evidently been a speed freak before coming to Morningstar… his brain completely fried. At the oddest times he shouted out, “I’ll do the fixing, Jude!” It was like he had Tourette's syndrome. Other than his usual silence he was a friendly enough guy and didn’t stray too much from company. I just wondered what hell he had been through and hoped he could come out of it. I’m not sure where he came from or very much about him at all, but before he hooked up with Candy, he wandered around the mesa saying nothing much to anyone. He was much more communicative after that tryst.

    Other folks had their own quirks. One guy, who had a hogan on the other side of the mesa called himself “Strider” after a character from the Tolkien Trilogy. Once, right after a tremendous thunderstorm had passed over the mesa, he came dashing across to the A-frame exclaiming that he’d seen a UFO. I had watched the same thunderstorm and marveled over its power and beauty but had seen no such thing. But, like everyone else, I humored him to some degree but did not discount it as an authentic observation.

    At one point a pair of guys… brothers from the Dakotas or Nebraska, had shown up and planted an umbrella tent near the latrine and parking lot. They had been dodging the draft and claimed to be evading the FBI… cut off from their family. They had all the camp gear needed for such an adventure: Coleman lantern; air mattresses; Coleman stove; their tent was a luxury palace compared to the primitive conditions some of us had. I spent some time with them out of curiosity and the fact that their camp was between the goat pasture and the pueblo. They told me about how their dad disowned them and before that had confessed that when he saw hippies hitchhiking he had to resist the temptation to swerve his car to run them down. After hearing that, whenever I hitchhiked  I paid more attention to approaching vehicles.

    Then there was a woman everyone called Magic Mary. Magic Mary lived in an adobe at the side of the highway on the outskirts of Taos. She was a forty-something artist who hosted a celebration of her birthday. Almost every one, including freeloaders like me, had convened at her place. There was plenty of Red Mountain and acid around for all of us. It was an all day and all-night affair that was accompanied by musicians at times and a stereo with a collection of record albums playing full blast otherwise. I’m not even sure whether or not all of us were welcome when I think back on it.

    Magic Mary had been recently busted... a U-Haul truck loaded with bails of marijuana… she, and her husband had been arraigned and she was out on bail awaiting trial. He was still locked up. This might have been a source of tension but it only showed itself once that I can recall. There were several of us who had dropped a considerable amount of acid and were sitting in a room tripping to the stereo when a man came into the room sniffing and gesturing… “Does anyone smell gas?” sniffing some more… “No kidding, I smell gas.”

     The power of suggestion maybe… we were all tripping… some agreed, “Yes, I smell gas!” and hastily left the room… others just sat on the floor and couch sniffing… agreeing and disagreeing… what was this guy up to? I sniffed, smelling nothing but the smell of pot everywhere… then that smell turned to the odor of gas… then back to pot… what was it? I was about to get off my ass and leave the room just in case when someone lit a match, “Look we would all be dead now if it was gas!” he declared.

    Any time I was offered a hit of acid, I took it. I’m not sure now how many I dropped but it was over a dozen… plus what was already in the Red Mountain. I was so very fucked up. I had a pouch of tobacco that one of the women hit me up to roll one. It just happened that I had previously insulted her a few days before back at the dome… I thought it to be nothing and, truthfully, I thought I was just making a joke… at least I thought it was funny. I don’t remember the joke at all but I do remember that I had used the "C" word. She had rightfully taken offense at whatever I said and harbored such resentment that she refused to return the pouch and papers after she rolled one. Tripping my brains out, I decided that I had been wrong but that she would have to give me my tobacco back. We hounded each other for what seemed like hours and, only after a complete act of contrition on my part, did she return the pouch… albeit, half gone. I have never made an off color joke demeaning women since then and have a hard time even writing the “C” word to this day. These things seem trivial but made a hell of an impression on my acid drenched brain.

     The party at Magic Mary’s broke up long after I had left. Arroyo Hondo is eleven miles north of Taos but I considered walking just to get out of the madness in there or in my head... which is which! Someone offered me a ride on the back of a flat bed truck and I rolled around there all the way to the mesa. I know I had to be pretty damned blasted from all the Red Mountain spiked with acid but to tell the truth I don’t think I got near as high on all of that as I did from the few bites off  peyote buttons previous to that… something about alcohol and LSD… just plain don’t mix. Wine simply flattens the... takes the edge off acid and what is the use in that?

The Eyes of Hoover

The Easter Peyote Ceremony and Vision Quest impacted me in ways that were not at all mysterious, given the circumstances. However, much of what occurred, the coincidences and serendipity of several of the encounters, still give me cause to wonder.  After that sometimes I hung out down at the Dome with the Georgia Peaches and Stanley. This had more to do with it being warm and a good place to shoot the shit and relax than curiosity about the novelty of the threesome they had goin’ on. There were also projects on the mesa that I involved myself in. The community got together to put up a sturdy chicken coup. The bobcats, coyotes, and mountain lions had to be kept away from the chickens and some control over the laying hens had to be established. As in everything else the leadership was more or less invisible… or barely visible.

     Sound carried so well that any vehicle coming up towards us on the gravel road could be heard far in advance from the mesa and even down in the draw where the dome was on the road below. On one such afternoon the gravelling of tires alerted the four of us as we stood by the road to see who it might be. A young paranoid speed freak named Shep had been watching from a point on the mesa and came running down to us a few minutes ahead of the car warning that it was a sedan like kind the Feds use. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do about it if it were the Feds. Shep dashed up to the mesa and left us wondering. Stan and the girls went inside the Dome but I stayed out front just to see. The sedan pulled off the road in front of the Dome. Two, crew-cut-six-foot-plus-suites in their thirties got out of the sedan. I couldn’t help but notice the spit-shine on their shoes getting dusty. One of them held a binder and approached while the other flashed a badge from his wallet.

     “FBI: Do you live here?” The man with the badge asked the obvious. I wanted to say no but thought better of it.

     Stan opened the door enough to see what was going on but was not going to let them in the Dome.

     “I live here… what do you want?”

     “We just need you to check out some pictures and tell us whether you’ve seen any of these people here.” The agent with the binder said it in such a way that I could see he wasn’t asking for cooperation, he was ordering it.

     Stan was going to close the door right then and there but I answered first, “Sure, won’t hurt anything.” I had caught a glimpse of some of the pictures and those pictures were like high school year-book pictures. I knew I could honestly say I hadn’t seen any of these folks because this was a collection of clean-cut suburban white boys and girls in letter jackets and glee club sweaters: a world apart from anyone now on the mesa.

     The agent paused on each page as I looked at the pictures, hoping not to recognize anyone. As the pages were flipped I did recognize one girl who had arrived only a few days before. I think she called herself Candy. Under her photo was her real name and birthday... 1957! She had paired up with Shep, coincidently, and I knew she was very young. This birthday put her at around thirteen. Shep was only about fifteen or sixteen himself… but the girl was … well, jail-bait. When I first saw her at the kiva I was sure she was very young… but thirteen! I did have mixed feelings about it. So many run-away kids were on the streets in those days that a thirteen year old girl with a young kid hardly turned a head.

     The agent caught me hesitating at her picture and I knew it. I would have to bluff my way out of it if I was going to trip-up this guy. I wished I could get to Shep to warn him but decided to simply shrug my shoulders, “Naw, nothing here… haven’t seen any of ‘em.”

     “Are you sure, now?” The agent wasn’t buying it. “You know it is a federal crime of perjury to obstruct a federal investigation. Any statement you make is subject to Federal Law.”

     That did it, “You know, none of these kids look anything like these picture now. If I were looking straight at someone I grew up with I couldn’t recognize them.” I took a deep breath and made like I knew what I was talking about; “Now, this is private property and you are wearing out your welcome… good-bye, sir.”
  
    I was a little surprised when the Feds turned their sedan around and went the other way. I was expecting them to put me in cuffs and plow further onto the property. I took the same shortcut to the top of the mesa that Shep had taken before the Feds arrived.

    I found Shep and Candy in front of the Kiva and warned them that the FBI had Candy’s picture in their folder. Shep then told me that her dad is the chief of police in her home town back in Florida. Candy couldn’t pass herself off as eighteen so they stayed out of sight from then on. I wished them well but, when I think of it now, I wonder about all the kids who’d left their homes… their mothers and fathers… brothers and sisters… who had escaped to the streets. Though she was relatively safe at Morningstar, the streets were pretty vicious for anyone that young. I don’t know how the others felt about it but I still harbor some guilt that I helped to cover for her and Shep. I didn’t want to see him go to some juvenile joint and I didn’t want to see her returned to what could have been an abusive home. Who knows now what I could have done. The times were very different back in those days and it never occurred to me then… what? I still don’t know.

Lion's Den

There are times I have taken drugs whereby what actually happened is clouded, subverted and twisted by imagination or hallucination… sometimes it is merely an innocent lie… an exaggeration for the sake of telling a good story.  I have told this one so many times in bars, around campfires and to friends in confidence that I don’t truthfully know what happened. I found myself across a draw with a rifle in my arms… I don’t remember how I got the rifle or from whom; but there it was and where I was I made out a figure of the cat between some rocks… I watched and waited. Principally, it was to see whether what I saw was real. After all, the ground was still vibrating and the trees still had auras. I thought I saw a cub falling out from between the rocks and a large paw pulling it back. As suddenly as the cub was pulled back the lion put its face out in plain sight. I drew a bead on it but the idea that she had a cub… or maybe two… behind those rocks let my finger on the trigger slip back down with my grip on the hilt of the rifle.

     It was mid-day before I took my leave without taking a shot. Did I even have a rifle? Was there ever a cat? I can’t say for sure… too many brain cells gone. I never… ever… never blacked out on psychedelic drugs before or since but I am certain I took that hike and vividly remember details that seem too real to be mere peyote induced hallucinations. It confuses me that I did so on such a monumental trek. I do remember, however, jumping boulders and letting one foot fall in front of the other in a jog down hill… stopping and resting and imagining seeing the cat on the opposite ridge as though she was escorting me away from her lair. I wasn’t running to escape… it was just the easiest and fastest way to get downhill… let gravity take the legs swinging like pendulums during the daytime and hunching over leaning slightly forward letting the arms drop down to feel the way at night.

     I arrived at the mesa at sunset… smoke from evening chimneys rising over the pueblo and the sound of meals being prepared greeted my senses as I gave Charlie goat a nod as if to apologize for not avenging the kid that had been taken. Going back to the A-frame I lay that night and dreamed… was it all a dream? Had I actually gone? Dopes it matter? What was real was that I had my vision and that vision of the cat stays with me today. It was a vision of a protector spirit… the cat Kachina… or something like that. After I would eventually leave Morningstar I would need all the protection I could get.

     The days that followed were a distraction and I soon felt that it was time to move on. I was able to breathe in the experience of the vision quest at my A-frame in the goat pasture. The rest of the time I was there we never lost another kid to mama cat. It was as though some sort of cosmic agreement had been made between us on that spring day in the canyon. Some people would say that it was just a coincidence but I felt that I knew better. I drew pictures with lines in the dirt near my fire pit of the cat and the two cubs. I filled in the lines in with different colored soil and ashes and offered up a prayer. I thought about it after that as time passed, and even though felt a bit embarrassed at the superstition; I could never shake the impression that a special bond had been formed with that cat in particular, but with the spirit of cats in general. Years later, when I see a cat; whether it is a mountain lion, a house cat, or a tiger, I sense a bond. I came to understand this was a bond with a form of spirit-guide: like the ones spoken of by shaman and medicine men or healers almost universally. It was most certainly the high point of my stay at Morningstar.

    Something else had happened to me on this quest. I wasn’t compelled to tell anyone about it. Part of the way out into the wilderness I had taken note of all the wonders I had experienced and couldn’t wait to get back to civilization to tell someone about it all. There was a point where I had merged so totally with everything around me… that I was in it so deeply… there just wasn’t any way to describe it with words. Once I did want to tell someone I went to someone… maybe I think, Byron… and sat with him an hour. I couldn’t say much of anything. I would start, “Uh… yes. Trees breathe… I saw them.” And Byron would simply nod in agreement: he’d already been there.

     “I was there breathing with them.”

Kachina/Cat-Cheena

There was enough peyote after the meeting for more than a few buttons to be dispersed to anyone who wanted them. I found this to be an opportunity to take what some of the indigenous people call “a spirit or vision quest”. A mountain lion had taken one of the kid goats from the herd and that gave me good reason to find the cat and to see what I could do about its intrusion onto the mesa. I wasn’t sure what it was that I would do about it if I found the goat… or the lion… but it was a chance to find out something about myself. I started out with a pouch of two small buttons and nothing else to eat. I had taken a bite or two before heading out so I was already high. This trio of nourishment would take me up the Arroyo Hondo… past the ranchos, beyond… upward and branching off, up the sides of steep draws and slopes.

     I saw some fresh stool, and a big cat track here or there that seemed magnified by the peyote. I sat for a spell and ate one of the buttons in my bag. Rested and with renewed vigor I arose and stripped off my boots to let my bare feet touch the ground. I stashed my boots behind some rock where I could find them. My clothes were a burden too so I stripped them off and left a marker by the creek below …. the branches of the piñón, juniper and prickly pear vibrated with an aura… the ground under my bare feet… the rocks even… made for a cushion and seemed, how can I say it? friendly? Yes, a friend to my feet.

     Whoa, how can it be? I found cat tracks in a shady spot where the snow hadn’t melted… going up from there and through some brush. It was more out of curiosity than anything else that kept me going… kept me going until nightfall. Wondering about my clothes I sat on a rock thinking… what was I thinking? I’d heard of these monks going high into the Himalayas wearing only a diaper… why couldn’t I? The stars in the moonless night spread out over me… they didn’t look cold or distant. I sat in the lotus position as the hours passed. I would start to shiver but then a warmth would come over me. My thoughts slowed and I saw in the sky… imagined… hallucinated… dreamt of  a cat standing and dancing in a circle above me. She was dressed like one of the kachina dolls I’d seen with paws from under the skirt pounding out a rhythm… the pounding was my heart but it was beyond my heart…and then it stopped… gradually stopped… the cat turned and the night sky stars shone through the garments where the beads had been and the cat vanished… it was Pleiades. I was thrilled… I am having a vision… the reward of the vision quest like I’d heard of!


     The cat then appeared out of nowhere… it wasn’t a hallucination… she crossed over and beyond by twilight silhouetted against the sky on the ridge above me. What was I going to do? Was she stalking me? Was it just a coincidence? The words of one of the folks by the fire back at the parking lot, Red, was known to say: “There ain’t no coincidences… everything happens for a reason and it don’t gotta be explained by mystical mumbo-jumbo: God is in charge here.”

     The cat stopped… turned to glare in my direction. I glanced down for a rock to toss or stick to defend myself with and, when I looked back up, the cat was gone. Was it a threatening glower or was she telling me to follow her? Was she telling me to stop… go back to my little goat pasture and wait for the next time. I figured it to be a taunt…. “Come if you dare or go back!” I rushed up the ridge hoping to catch sight of her. The Kachina image still burned into my consciousness… “Go… go see… go look for yourself at where I am and what I do.”

     “Yes,” I answered out loud… “I will see for myself.”

     The morning light grew bright in the sky above me as the ground cleared a way for my feet.

The Sacred Order

The Georgia peach had taken Stan that night down to the dome by the road in the arroyo leading up the hill to the mesa. It was there that Stan found the Georgia peach had a sister who’d stopped by the dome to see a friend. The friend that lived in the dome was someone I hadn’t met. He wasn’t the one who'd built the dome: he was just living there after the original builder had moved on.  It was a beautiful building made in the manner of the domes in Drop City out of Trinidad Colorado. It was heated by a converted fifty gallon drum stove like all the others. However, the heat went directly up to the loft where a giant sized mattress could accommodate several people but was of no comfort to those shivering on the couches below.

     It turned out that Stan had it made from there on because the guy the Georgia peach sister was visiting moved on after the short visit and poor ole Stan had to meet the needs of two young women. He was young enough though so he could keep up. However, it isn’t like it was a pornographic dream come true for Stan. It was a natural situation whereby the three got along in and out of bed. These things happened back then because people were earnestly seeking out alternative relationships and, for the first time after the Eisenhower, “Leave it to Beaver”, era the door was open.

     Sunflower left the next morning back to Mordar..., L.A., in the VW with her two other friends. My heart wasn’t exactly broken but I felt as though she would be my only chance to stay at Morningstar. I did not want to stay; no matter how much I loved the people and the place, if I was not going to have a woman at my side to help each other like the couples I admired from my squat in the goat pasture. I wanted to have children, o build perhaps a hogan of my own and to become settled. I longed for the relative stability of a natural New Mexico country hearth. I thought I had meandered around the urban drug scene enough and had found a slice of heaven. I would find out later that my wandering had only begun. I wasn’t at all ready for such a mate or a home; I had far too many demons to expel before a partner or home was for me to have and hold. Anything more than a few blissful nights at a time would be all I would have to hold onto hope for almost a half-decade.

     There were the children… I have often thought of the children raised on the mesa in the very rough back-to-the land communes like Morningstar. I remember more of the children than I do some of the adults because there were several and they were all over the place… very precocious and into everyone’s business much to the delight of anyone with a heart. I needed not to worry however, they would grow up into well adjusted adults as far as I knew. A three year-old Andre was one… Siddhartha was another… and a few I saw all the time but don’t know much more at this time. Those were the boys and I don’t remember the any of the little girls for some reason… they certainly had to be there. Any names I could come up with now wouldn’t be from my memory as much as from what I could glean from some of the histories and tales told by Pam Hanna (Read) of her midwifing in various posts and blogs: i.e., Morningstar Scrapbook web site and from Iris Keltz (Scrapbook of a Taos Hippy).

     One incident seared Andre’s name in my consciousness when somebody hanging out in the Kiva decided it would be a good idea to give Andre a hit of acid. There were some very misguided and sick folks back then who saw no harm in turning anyone on to acid whenever the urge struck them. I don’t know who did it but I did hear about it as soon as Andre’s mom, Beatrice, found Andre acting strange. These mothers were anything but irresponsible and Beatrice went mama-bear ballistic. No one copped to it but the whole Kiva was to find them selves facing the ire of Beatrice. The women of the pueblo took turns helping Andre through his experience and he seemed to be perfectly fine afterwards but everyone got the point: Don’t even fuck with the kids!


   

Easy Rider don't Ride Too Far

     The ceremony ended with the ashes of the fire being spread out. The way the sticks had been arranged had made a Thunderbird of the mound called “The Road” that spread like wings from above the fire pit. I stepped out of the teepee after the ashes were dispersed and the closing prayers to be greeted by the morning sunrise; drums within what seemed to be the cells of my body were still reverberating in a hum. The ground under my bare feet felt spongy and soft. The tables were set with plates of roasted honeyed blue cornmeal and some other tid-bits that I don’t exactly recall. The women, who didn’t attend the meeting, were serving and they all had an aura of love that is hard to explain. It isn’t so much that I felt love… the earth was love and love was more than kindness. It was a vibration I could actually see… a note I could hear in the low hum of the earth.  The beauty of everything and everyone on the glimmering mesa wasn’t obtrusive but was as gentle as a mild breeze… it was as a bow across the strings of a viola… the viola of the earth.

     My feet took me back to the goat pasture… at that time the Bible thumper was harassing the women serving with scripture. I watched him and then called him over the gate of the fence. Charlie goat greeted him with a push on his hand when he entered. I warned him that he was getting himself committed if he shoved back. Scratch his chin and pat his side but, beware, don’t push back his head or you may regret it. The thumper was not to be told what to do by any heathen so he shoved back. By the time he got out the gate Charlie’s intent to put his butt over the fence with a last head butt halfway succeeded. So much for curses, I laughed in a deep and satisfying guffaw that rumbled so I feared I might explode.

     On another day, Beatrice’s Afro-mate (I can’t remember his name) and, three year old André’s father, invited everyone to the Kiva for a group meditation. Most of us hadn’t tried it since the meditation at New Buffalo. We sat around the tiers of the Kiva… some could sit in the Lotus position and knew quite well how to meditate but most were like me. He was a great instructor as he took us through the ropes in a guided meditation explaining how the word, “Om”, works. What I remember most about his instruction was the advice that “Om” is a word that needs no embellishment. Just let the word come from the breath he advised. The breath should rise from below the lungs… from the gut, if you will. Let the “Om” out from there and let the word regulate your breath… something like that. I truly don’t remember much more but that much stuck with me. I remember this much of what he taught when I now meditate some forty years later.

     Stan was a cynic about all this spiritual jive, especially the claim that meditation was a high above drugs. We talked about it afterwards in the A-frame. Stan was a few years younger than me but he was far more honest about his feelings and so much more spontaneous about acting on them. He brought up the subject of women and the fact that he had heard a lot about free love but had not had any sex since leaving Detroit. We talked about how it wasn’t that much different from the way it was with straight culture. Women and men seem to gravitate towards each other for qualities of strength, security and so on… is the man smart enough and able enough to provide protection and care for their children? I noted that Charlie goat has quite a harem because he is able to do just that and I’m sure we laughed about it.

     Stan then asked whether or not these chants would be of any avail along the lines of fixing us up with a woman. It was then that we started chanting; “Pussy… Pussy… Pussy…” We must have repeated “Pussy” a hundred before we stopped. We blew out the kerosene lamp when Stan asked in the dark, “Do you see any women?”

     “No, Stan, I think it might take some patience."

     The very next day a VW van pulled up into the parking lot where two women and a couple of men unloaded from it. I didn’t think much about it but the idea of the chant the night before stuck in my head. Later that day I heard music and smelled pot coming from the room with a door facing the Kiva. I’m not sure but I think it was the room of a guy named David. Stan and I stopped in to see what was going on. A frizzy-haired dark skin beauty was playing a twelve string guitar. She smiled at me directly while she played. The other women with her, whose name I can't recall was from Georgia, and sang along in a sweet Georgia peach accent most obviously eyeing Stan. The one playing the guitar stopped playing and introduced herself to me as Sunflower. Sunflower then asked me where she and her friend could bathe because they had been on the road a few days and longed for some water. I told them about the Stage Coach hot springs and how far it was but she declined that idea asking if there was anything closer. I then mentioned the pond but that the ice was barely thawed from winter. She said that she didn’t mind if it was closer and asked if I could be their guide.

     Well, my answer took no hesitation. I was more than willing and we headed out directly… she and her friend but left her guitar and the other two guys at the room. We hiked over the mesa and down to the pond stripping off our clothes. My eyes feasted on the bodies of the gorgeous nymphs along our side. Stan and the women were dipping their feet in the water to test it when I decided to show some bravado and dove in over their heads with a huge splash. I have to admit that the icy water was a shock I could hardly bear and would normally leap immediately out of but I stayed in it to show off yelling above my shivers, “Its fine…, th…th… the wa… water’s fine!”

     The high altitude of New Mexico held snow on the south slopes in the shade but, if you were out of the wind, you could sunbathe. The four of us sunned after everyone got wet and played around in the freezing water at least long enough to clean ourselves. Yes, we sunned on towels and I held Sunflower close allowing the goose bumps to melt away with the passion of chilled bodies warm themselves in love making that went higher than a mere roll in the hay… or should I say, grit of the earthen dam. I fell for Sunflower right then and there. We had been pretty unabashed about getting it on with each other as was Stan with his woman.

     Stan stayed with his squeeze down at the dome and Sunflower spent the night with me in the A-frame. It was a great night for me as we made love and talked. I then spoke of Easy Rider and how my character was like Wyatt’s and Stan’s was more like Billy’s. At least, that was how I saw myself…, as more serious and looking for something while Stan just seemed to be just going along for the ride. She seemed to agree and actually said something like, “I saw that when you came in the door today.”

     Woah, I thought, I got this girl charmed. She finally told me that she needed to sleep as she would be heading out back to Los Angeles in the morning. Then I threw in something I’d read about Easy Rider and that how Peter Fonda’s character, Wyatt’ had been given an option as Captain America to stop at New Buffalo… get right with the earth but instead he chose hit the road to his destiny as America was doing and all those implications. She agreed with that too and that is when I made the proposal, “Why don’t you stay here with me. We would work well together, I can’t make it here without a woman and your arrival was no mere chance.” I said that earnestly in reference to the chant the night before.

     Curling up to me she said, “You seemed to have a mystical power that commanded the room when I saw you today George. I can’t stay; I have a boutique to run back on Sunset and responsibilities.” Then, after she kissed me full-on, added, “Don’t allow your fantasies of who I am to you sap you of that power… you are going to need all you have.”She moaned, "Easy Rider, this is far enough for us to ride for now, eh?"

     Sadly, I knew she was right but I had no idea what she meant… a premonition of sorts I believe.

Morningstar, Easter Peyote Circle

As spring approached the whole area became awake with it. People started to get busy. A chicken coop was put up, the field was plowed and the pioneer commune, New Buffalo, invited everyone from all the communes everywhere in the area to a calibration of the birthday of a guru: I don’t remember which. Stan and I had smoked some opium before hiking down from the mesa through the town and up on the other mesa to the beautiful adobe pueblo of Easy Rider fame with a pack of us from Morningstar. There was a noticeable lack of wine and drugs… maybe a chillum or two of pot… but it was small scale consumption going down compared to other get-togethers. Then someone announced that we would all sit in a guided meditation in honor of the guru’s birthday whose picture with garlands of flowers was propped up in front of us. Though I’d sat for hours at a time while tripping, this guided group meditation business was foreign to me. We were all given these strips of wood to hold that represented our egos. At the end of the meditation we were instructed to throw our strips of wood into the fire… burn our egos. I missed the whole point and held up that strip of wood and then tucked it in a pocket… I kept my strip of wood along with its attendant ego. I just wasn’t ready to let go… it seemed so final to burn it.

     It was all so innocent and oh-so-holy to be there though. I was touched by the spirit of it. I longed for that kind of fellowship… a deep and abiding hunger. Around that time a couple of the founders, Jason was one but I don’t remember the other, headed out towards Loredo Texas with Little Joe from the Taos Pueblo on a peyote hunt. Little Joe was a sort of the sponsor saint of the communes from the Taos Pueblo who’d ventured to teach the “founders” skills such as the making of adobe brick and how to conduct a peyote ceremony. Now this was a big deal. I’m not sure if the Native American Church had been sanctioned yet to use Peyote back then but Richard Nixon was President and I don’t know how tolerant the Texas Rangers or Border Patrol would have been regardless had they been caught with a jeep loaded with peyote. The DEA was something entirely new then too…. does anyone remember when the War on Drugs started? … it hasn’t ended, that’s for sure.

      I was advised by Byron to fast at least a day before the Peyote Ceremony planned for Easter. I had never fasted before and knew nothing about such things but I had damned near starved a few times in my wanderings and did know what it was like to be real goddamned hungry. So, I went out to the goat-pasture for three days and sat with nothing but water and a nibble here or there… just a nip or two off a piece of  chapatti. Chapattis were a sort of tortilla I was shown to make by grinding wheat or whatever other grain into a flour and with nothing other than water. I found I could make them with multiple grains besides wheat… brown rice, barley, rolled oats, even soy beans for protein. That and oatmeal were my main staples along with cheddar cheese, tahini and a soy bean pop-corn kicked in once in a while. Fresh vegetables didn’t last very long but there were some around right after a supply trip into Taos.

      Water was always a top priority and most of us kept very few eating utensils that would require water for cleaning because we either had to hike over the terrain with a five gallon plastic container. Having to take that trip with one such can balanced on my head I had fit one neatly into an improvised back-pack, trekking cross the mesa and down into an arroyo to a small trickle of a stream emptying into a pond formed from a recently bull-dozed earthen damn (I can see from Googling it that the pond is still there). It was a third of a mile as the crow flies but considerably more negotiating my way down the sometimes steep trail to the pond. Packing along my bowl and spoon, I rinsed them out there and filled the plastic can after taking a dip in the near freezing water of the pond to get some of the campfire and smell of sweat off of my body. It was at least a twice a week hike but I was young and healthy then and enjoyed the wonders of it. Other than that a truck could load us up with a fifty gallon drum to fill our bottles and so on down at a gas station in Arroyo Hondo.

      The Easter peyote hunting party arrived and the folks who knew what they were doing busied themselves for the ceremony. It was to be held in the teepee fixed in the depression at the beginning of the gully that split the mesa off from where Reality Construction Company had its claim. The traditional ceremony excluded women but Morningstar assumed an exception to this rule in acknowledgement of the Age of Aquarius I was told. However, a larger contingent of the women respected the tradition and busied themselves preparing the breaking of the fast. I remember vividly the woman, Beatrice, who actually sat next to Byron at the head of the circle opposite the entrance flap of the teepee. The circle around the fire-pit sat in two rows… Some were experienced with the ritual and some not. A peyote ceremony has a certain arrangement that doesn’t vary much. An earth crescent was formed in front of Byron and Beatrice between them and the fire. The fire was made by laying down two sticks at a time, one crossing the other at the ends closest to the crescent on which was place in the center the Peyote Chief… the largest of the peyote buttons. Jason was the fireman. The fireman had the responsibility of keeping the fire going and stood at the entrance flap.

     The whole ritual of the ceremony was fixed around the idea that one was expected to stay put from sundown to sunrise. There might have been a break at midnight but I don’t have any recollection of that. It just seems impossible today that I could have sat that long back then. If anyone were to leave the ceremony’s intention or spirit would be broken. There were five items passed around from the beginning. One was the thunder stick… a stick adorned with bells tied around… spiraling the length held upright, striking the ground to accompany the steady beat of the drum. This drum was unique in that it was a fairly large bowl (was it brass or ceramic?) half full of water with a skin stretched over it. I hadn’t ever really heard ceremonial drumming before and didn’t expect it to be a steady… bom-bom-bom-bom-bom… simultaneously with a ching-ching-ching-ching of the thunder stick… carried on hypnotically through the night. These were passed around the circle with attendant prayers offered by each.  I can’t really recall the sequence but they made the full circle before the peyote tea and then the buttons were passed. The vomit bucket was passed as needed.

     One of the characters that hung out at the Kiva a for a few weeks before was a Bible thumper who preached to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would not, the traditional Baptist babble of John 3:16. He was tolerated and very few objected but I was surprised to see him in the ceremony. The drums and thunder-stick came his way it it was time for him to pray. He stood shaking his bible at everyone declaring that we were participating in a Satanic ritual and would be damned to hell if we continued. He then left the teepee at the protest of some about breaking the circle. He could care less because he had the Sword of the Lord on his side I suppose.

     The ceremony continued and it was some time after everyone had at least tasted one of the slices of buttons that my tripping began. The drumming and thunder-stick were a powerful inducement to take me higher than I’d ever been since my original trip on Waikiki Beach. I saw no such thing as a Castaneda spirit world vision but my heart overflowed with a pure and simple love. I believe that for me this was the single-most important part of the whole adventure. All that resentment and anger… cynical distrust and alienating anxiety dissolved into a wholeness of spirit. I felt at one with the bom-bom-bom-bom of the Spirit Drum… the ching-ching-ching-ching of the Thunder-Stick and the power of the chants in native tongue combined with the ones prayed in English as voices raised and ebbed in synch with the beat.

     Then it happened… the spell was broken… the entrance flap flew open and there stood a majestic looking man with a rifle glowering over us. Jason, whose position at the door welcomed him. He stood without saying a word for an eternity… then said, “Some white kids playin’ cowboys and Injuns, eh?” After which he departed.

     It was either Byron or Jason that then said flatly, “Thank you Bodhisattva. Let us continue.”

The Grandeur of the Rio Grande

      I could see there were two distinct types at the mesa; probably were many more; as many types as there were individuals; but I noted that the typical parking lot winos had a concept of free-love, free-land and communal living that more resembled the crash-pad mentality I found in Los Angeles and San Francisco. While those who were what I will call “the founders” for only the purpose of clarity, differed in several ways. They were the builders; the workers; the people who made things work: the women had babies and the babies had needs. The mothers were good mothers and the children were, by and large, very good children. It wasn’t possible to do all of this as well as they did and stay stoned at all times. Standing around waiting for a turn at the grain-grinder we talked and shared what was going on. The simplicity and natural beauty of it was what I needed. Clothing was at all times optional. Women walked bare breasted and children ran naked. Men stood at the doorways smoking a chillum naked as we chatted. It was as natural as anything I’ve ever experience before or since. There was also an attitude towards drugs that was at times sacramental. Peyote, mushrooms, psilocybin, mescaline and LSD were respected as vehicles used to take them to a better awareness while the winos basically just wanted to get stoned. No one seemed to hold their noses up at it but there was this difference and I don’t believe that alcoholism and drug addiction was well understood at that time. There were those who could have wine and not become winos and these were those who were able to use drugs without becoming addicts.

      Solitude in the A-frame gave me plenty of time for reflection and reading. The Aquarian Gospels of Saint Thomas was standard reading on the mesa. Trivial books like a biography of W.C. Fields made for good laughter. Another biography of Tesla inspired some interesting introspection and awe for the gift that guy had tapped into. I even read the Bible and some other stuff like the Bhagavad-Gita the Krishnas gave away so freely. I was definitely looking for something… I didn’t know what.

      However good it was, I was then, and still now, an alcoholic; it was a constant struggle not to drink. The psychedelics were at first a consciousness raising that gave me temporary relief from the bottle. They were what kept me from going full bore into alcoholism and I never became addicted to those types of consciousness raising drugs. At the time I was at Morningstar I tried to stay away but drifted towards the parking lot with the winos. I wanted very badly to be a part of the commune… a working part of Morningstar. I felt that I had missed the boat, however, and as I drank, I gradually saw that I wasn’t yet made of the stuff it took to stay there.

      Someone was always at the parking lot fire-pit. It was between the goat pasture and the pueblo and kiva. I know that it isn’t much of an excuse but I gravitated towards that damned fire-pit and jug. I know now that one taste of wine would have compelled me to walk miles out of my way for another. Before long I was spending more time with the winos than the pueblo and became, albeit part/time, one of the guys sitting at the parking lot, panhandling new arrivals and hippy tourists for spare change towards a jug.

      Wine might be good for some people but for people like me wine sinks me into a cynical outlook about everyone and everything: a lower spirit level after a time. Thankfully, there was enough positive energy about the people and place to distract me from the jug most of the time. Exploring the mountains and hikes down to the Rio Grande for several hours soaking at the hot springs called Stage Coach was a powerful experience and one that was arduous enough to make carrying a jug too difficult to take along. Someone always managed to have a bag of weed, a couple of extra hits of acid or something to enhance the day. The Stage Coach springs were inside the ruins of a stone structure built years before… I don’t know how long ago but it looked old… old enough for a stage coach stop at any rate. The hike down the Rio Hondo to the Rio Grande and a trail that went through boulders (sometimes boulder hopping) alongside of it surrounded my senses with awe: the need for alcohol faded away on that trail hiking by that sacred river.

      Another hot springs down a dirt track into the chaparral out beyond Rancho De Taos was good too. The hot springs were originally made for a spa back in the thirties or twenties. The water was trapped into three levels of concrete pools. The smallest at the top, the size of a considerably large hot tub, was the hottest: a dozen people could sit in it comfortably. An outlet from it dropped down a few feet into a larger pool in which one could cool off but still hot enough to stay comfortably warm in mid-winter. That one too let out into an Olympic size pool that you could to cool off in but it was only as mildly warm enough to swim in but not warm enough for soaking.

      At the time I had gone to the one near Rancho de Taos it was in mid-winter and no one was hanging out there. I heard later that a group of questionable characters discovered they could survive in those ruins by hitting-up the fairly regular stream of folks who came to enjoy the pools. I heard stories of some violence that took place but I don’t recall any details now. I stuck to the smaller spring by the Rio Grande. It was magical and closer by. It was the one from the Easy Rider movie I was told. I’d seen that movie when I first got out of the Navy and its message was clear to me: there is more to this business than just staying high.

Storm Goats and Grits

     Pam was hooked up with Larry Read, the designer of the kiva’s roof. I have to mention the kiva again because it was such a marvel. I believe it was Jason who explained to me who designed it and how the concept of it was presented to the group. First of all, there was no center beam for support and each timber supported the other. It was a brilliant idea and I believe it symbolized the commune’s basic tenet of an open society. We support each other and form a wonder of social architecture. I wish I could remember all the people and I might get some of the details wrong but I believe that Larry demonstrated how these beams would work by arranging spikes in the pattern and standing on them to show how strong the roof would be. The memory of that explanation sticks with me however true it might be. This memoir is about my experience there and I aim to be as honest as I can about that but some of that experience is clouded. I have recently made contact with Pam Hanna and she has been helpful in refreshing the memory of some of these details

     The mesa away from the pueblo had a magic of its own, especially in thunder storms. Storm clouds came directly at eye level dark and menacing… Zeus tossing bolts… a metaphor understood… I feared… knelt in awe… sheltered in the A-frame… nature was booming and there was a glory to its thundering. Hell, thundering is a mild word for it… the booming cracks of electricity… strobes flashing white light from heaven... hail stones staccato pounding the earth… all of this going on at once as I looked out across the pasture to see Charlie and his harem huddled together in the brush on the side. I was touched at how they held together and endured. It was as though they knew that this too would pass and life would go on.

     After one such storm I had been sitting on a stump by my fire-pit cooking up some rolled oats when a bread truck pulled up on the parking lot. Two men got out of the van. The winos, who seemed to always be at the parking lot’s fire pit, immediately hit them up for spare change towards a jug but these guys were old hands at hippie-dom and, seeing me, passed by them and walked directly towards my place. I met the two at the gate along side of Charlie goat… greeting them, opened the gate, and offered a couple bowls of oatmeal. One was an older man with straight-grayish-shoulder-length hair in a fringed sleeve suede jacket who had been driving the van that stood by silently. The other was a younger man with jet black shorter curly hair… almost an afro… who introduced himself as Stan. He told me the other man’s name was Ghost. Ghost rarely said anything. Stan didn’t like the idea of oatmeal so he went back to the truck bringing a jumbo sized can of Government issued peanut butter and a loaf of white bread. I hadn’t had hydrogenised peanut butter in some time so I appreciated the gesture. We folded the white bread on sticks to warm them up and spread the peanut butter on it regardless of my efforts to eat only organic food.

     Stan and I hit it off pretty good while Ghost sat quietly by the fire and just listened as Stan explained that they had heard about free land back in Detroit from an article in Newsweek or Time magazine. Stan had been a streetwise kid who’d met Ghost dealing pot and acid. Stan had no real desire to be a farmer or to join a commune. He had just come along for the ride. Ghost only stayed about a week but he was generous with what he had and a few times he loaded up the van with several of us for a trip into Taos and the General Store in Rancho de Taos.

     Food was a constant problem until I applied for food-stamps. Just about everyone in Morningstar either had food-stamps or some other provision from families or, perhaps, trust funds. I don't know about that for certain about that but food-stamps allowed me to establish credit at The General Store down in Rancho De Taos south of Taos proper until I actually got them. I stashed a larder good enough… buying bags of brown rice and cracked wheat to share with the community and  I kept for myself a large tin of  tahini, olive oil, a five pound roll of cheddar cheese (it was winter and cheese kept well enough at the high altitude without refrigeration). Macrobiotics was the big topic among most of us then: brown rice and whatever other grains and veggies but… very few had actually read anything on it except for the folks I would call “the founders”. However, we all supposed that this was what we were doing and there was, among most us, a disdain for eating all processed foods, hamburgers, milkshakes and anything not grown organically.

     On our trips into town almost all of us with any cash on us succumbed to temptation as we had to pass, on the way in and out of Taos, a fast food joint (Foster Freeze or Dairy Queen… I don’t remember which). As we entered town we sneered at the idea but on the way out… after we’d packed our bags in Ghost’s bread truck with organic lentils, brown rice, blue cornmeal, wheat grits (easier to grind), black eyed peas, rolled oats and so on from the General Store … we just had to indulge in "just one" milkshake or hamburger. There were only one or two holdouts able to resist... Ghost was glad to oblige us as he was most definitely not into this whole idea of vegetarianism. He even treated those who had no money… he was a demonic god to us.

     The bread truck was where Ghost and Stan stayed. I showed them around the place and introduced them to people in the pueblo. There were some kind folks who were curious and open to meeting new people but there were some… only a few… who kept to themselves. A couple, Kathy and Joe, had the first door when approached from the pueblo via the parking lot and they invited us in their room just to get to know us. They were among the “founders” who came from California… Sonoma County… on Lou Gottleib’s (of the Limelighters fame) property he had deeded to God during a controversial court struggle to stave off the authorities from evicting his friends. These were the pioneers of a free land movement. It is probably hard to imagine a time in California when there were rural areas that people could build any structure without building codes and have as many folks on the property as they wished. There were no laws regulating such things until folks freaked out about this idea of communal living introduced it in the mid-sixties. While I was off touring the Pacific in the U.S. Navy, these people were building an adventure; an effort at creating something completely different.

     There have been communes before in our history… mostly religious based ones, but this was different. Morningstar was a free land movement that supposed we all would get along better if there were no rules, leaders (i.e. enforcers), or ownership of private property. Mostly middle-class kids, had it made during the Eisenhower years, left for college, dropped acid, saw God, and played around the Haight Ashbury before the media picked up on it and called them Hippies it was invaded with pushers, runaways, speed freaks and junkies. Some tried to heal the city by organizing efforts creating a free store and providing improvised free kitchens... free food, clothing and health clinics services: they would be called the San Francisco Diggers.

     Others escaped the city altogether in a back to the Earth movement. Morningstar was just one of these deals. Even in Colorado there had been a group of artists who’d left the academic art scene to build a vision of their own, building geodesic domes, Buckminster Fuller inspired, on the range outside of Trinidad called Drop City. I was a latecomer to all of this and was desperately trying to catch-up with what had gone down while I was away. After all, since joining the Navy from San Francisco in 1965, I had not been any closer to the mainland USA than Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Everything I knew of the so-called “Hippies” came from the little contact I had with pot-dealers in Waikiki and whatever the media of the times talked about. My new found psychedelic mind was in search of something like I’d found on my first “trip” and this was as close as I was ever going to get to “it”.

     “It”: I had been burnt out by the dog-shit on the sidewalks, the decay of San Francisco since I left four years before and had been further disillusioned at Altamont Speedway… the street scene in Hollywood and the whole media frenzy around the Manson murders. Sidewalk gurus of every sort hawking wild-eyed visions of a perfection none seemed capable of besieged me everywhere I turned. I needed something to restore me and Morningstar fit the bill at the time and I'd hoped that Morningstar would have "it".

The Golden Rulers

   I stayed at the kiva and hiked around the mesa’s perimeter… on down far enough away to forage for wood. The area nearest the pueblo was pretty much picked clean of any fallen wood so one had to go further away to gather windfalls, dry branches and twigs. Firewood was always needed as it was winter and everyone burned wood. Those drums, small and large, were very efficient and needed very little wood to heat up a space and cook with. There were prickly pear cactus, sage brush and piñón trees all around the mesa for foraging. The high chaparral was something new and magical even though it was winter and the months of dormancy had hidden the glory of most the plant life.

   The kiva’s little transient group spent most of the cold days hunkered down… talking, reading, playing instruments and tripping. Somehow, it seems now, there was always a hit or two of acid or chillum of pot to smoke. One of us, Shep, was but a kid… burnt-out speed-freak. He had a good heart but there were times he’d space out and shout, “I’ll do the fixing, Jude!”  God only knows what agony of despair he was going through most of the time. Others would talk about their experiences with super-natural; or political beliefs and what they hoped for in life. Overall it was positive even though at times we got on each other’s nerves. I was there about a week when I came down with a bug that had me curled up on the top tier of the kiva in my bag sweating out a fever that had floored me.

   The fever and chills… weakness… so weak I could barely climb out to piss and shit. I thought it was the end for me. In the midst of the fever I though I was dreaming when Jason, a wild looking mountain man with braided blond hair, woke me. He held a plate of blue stuff and a jar of some kind of hot tea: roasted blue cornmeal and honey. “Eat it; it will break your fever.”

    I pulled up some of the concoction on a large spoon to my mouth and believed what Jason had said. As the sweet mixture was washed down with cautious sips of the tea, I felt as though I would be okay (I think it might have been Mormon Tea). Furthermore, my heart was touched because I didn’t even know Jason but he still nursed me with his concoction. Of course, my mind went back to its usual skeptical self as soon as he left but I fell into a deep slumber awaking only until the next day. I got out of my bag feeling well enough to climb out of the kiva to thank Jason. He had gone back to his place down of the Rio Hondo.

   After that I felt as though I ought to get out of the kiva and make my own space. There was an empty improvised wikiup available (made the usual way with a circle of bent saplings, tied together into a dome, leaving a hole at the top for the smoke of the fire-pit in the center). It must have been too leaky for its former occupant because an attempt to seal it with concrete dipped burlap draped over it made for a somewhat ugly piece of work. Still, I could make myself a little more independent there and, after I made it home, a few others from the kiva moved in with me. I wasn’t too happy about that but the spirit there was one of open sharing and my heart couldn’t go against that current.

   I would, during my time in the kiva, and at the community meeting place… the grain grinder in the pueblo’s triangle plaza, learn more about what Morningstar was about from casual conversations. My skepticism had me wondering exactly who the leaders of the community were. I knew that it was an egalitarian commune but I thought that there must be some leaders, elected or not, to organize things… like building the kiva and pueblo. I heard the theory but couldn’t believe Morningstar could survive without some sort of leadership, or council, to see that the needs of the community would be met. Whenever I’d ask anyone, a smirky-smile and perhaps, a short explanation that Love was the leadership, and that the only rule was the Golden Rule, was all I got for an answer.

   None of the people I met talked about a philosophical war going on between Morningstar and the other occupants of the property, The Reality Construction Company. There was a war however because of the huge abyss of thought behind the two communes. Reality Construction folks had an organized and closed commune based on certain Anarchic-Marxist principles fused with a post-apocalypse withdrawal from society in general. The friction between the two was most likely based on a sneering tolerance of the supposed hippy-dippy free-love naivety of Morningstar. Time would prove out which ideal would last. I have no idea but it would seem most probable that a fusion of the two would eventually prevail. As an experiment, however, I believe in my heart that the Morningstar principle would be the bolder and more experimental in the long run. Innovation thrives in the open and tyranny grows like a mold in the dark.

   Conversations by the fireside… cooking over an open fire in the wikiup… curled up in my bag around the fire pit: those were sweet nights I will always hold dear to my heart. I was alone but happy. I was alone but loosely connected to the commune at the grain grinder. After a time I saw that a little A-frame in the goat pasture was uninhabited. It was slightly larger than a pup-tent… more than adequate for one person but two could sleep there comfortably. A small fireplace at one end … only big enough for twigs to burn was plenty to heat the space. A fire pit outside in front was good for cooking. Some nights I would be lulled to sleep with my head out the door to watch the parade of stars over the mesa.... so bright they alone were enough to light up the pasture. Others nights I read by the light of a kerosene lamp. Kerosene lamps were good enough for reading if the chimney was kept clean and the wick trimmed. I haven’t had such a cozy hut since then.

   I have to mention the goats. Charley Goat was the Alpha Goat of the herd. He made sure anyone entering the pasture knew it too. Often times he’s come up to me with his head bent inviting me to a pushing contest. Putting a hand on his forehead between his horns would be enough of a challenge to begin a long and losing proposition that ended only when I’d find a place to exit the fenced pasture working my way to the gate. To give up would be a hazardous alternative because that would only give Charley a chance to charge with a full on head butt.

   The first night I stayed in the A-frame, I awoke to a thump-clump on the roof. I peered out the door to see Charlie perched on top. I suppose he was making sure I knew in uncertain terms that he was the king of the mountain. Charlie spent his days guarding his harem and I admired his protective persistence. He allowed few to get near the other goats except for one of the women (I think it was Pam) from the pueblo who came out to milk them.

Escape to Paradise

    Having had that mountain-top experience I hungered to find people to share it with. After I was discharged I hung out in North Beach selling underground rags, the Berkeley Barb, and so on at the hub of Grant and Broadway or down the street in front of the topless bars. It gave me enough money to eat and enough contact with others but the scene in San Francisco was going to the dogs… street dogs, runaways, heroine addicts, speed freaks and those who preyed on them. The psychedelic revolution I’d hoped to become a part of had moved elsewhere and I had almost given up hope when the Rolling Stones came to Altamont Speedway. That gathering turned out to be a fiasco almost directly opposite of Woodstock… it was touted as Woodstock West but I saw the whole thing through the lens of LSD and it was not anything I wanted to have anything to do with. I stayed on there with a rag-tag group that had been foraging for whatever was left in the field… at first it was sandwiches and pot… later we were the clean-up crew and lived in the race track tower. My experience there is covered with detail in A Time Ago and Then published as an E-book in Smashwords.com.

      I left there for Hollywood to see what that scene was about but it was decaying faster than San Francisco. It was depressing and, when word got out that there was a Free Land movement in Taos New Mexico, my road-dog buddy, Norman, and I put our thumbs-out. I was introduced to the magic of New Mexico on a ride that picked us up at a corner we stood at for hours. A woman in her forties (which was an ancient age to us then) told us of the mystery and power of the landscape. She had been a Black Jack dealer in Vegas who one day packed up and moved to Questa. She was familiar with the communes in Taos and encouraged us to find one we liked and explained the history and philosophy of each that she knew of.

     I wish I could remember that wonder woman’s name, I think it was Maggie, but time has clouded the old muscle between my ears. I do remember being dazzled by her spiritual awareness as she drove that Volkswagen bus, weaving back and forth over the center line, gesturing with abandon and shouting over the rattle of the engine so affectionately, the sights and history we passed through.
We came to Taos where she had friends that were mostly musicians. I have no idea where it was or who the house belonged to but we sat and talked, played music into the night as a pipe was passed around, into the late hours of the night to the light of a small kerosene lantern common everywhere. There was no electricity and flatbread was cooked on the top of a fifty-gallon drum made into a wood-burning stove. Those drums would be common everywhere.
 
     One of these folks explained that New Buffalo and Morningstar were the closest and most open communes. However, New Buffalo, being the first communed in the region, was pretty much full up and harder to get into. It was explained that Morningstar and the Reality Construction Company were on the same property owned by Michael Duncan and were close by. Of the two, Morningstar was friendliest to newcomers and allowed anyone to join.... if that is the right word ... it was more like welcomed in. There was no visible leadership and the only rule was Love. It sounded like the kind of place I needed to air out because I had enough of authority in the Navy… street corner gurus, cultish Christian preachers and manipulators of every sort in Hollywood. The whole bit about Charlie Manson had gone down already by then and the wild chaos and disappointment at Altamont had sucked my soul dry of what little hope I still desperately held on to. I just had to check it out. It sounded like the vision I had for my future on the beach in Waikiki. Could it be fulfilled here? Could I find honesty and love in such a community? If there was hope, could I find it at Morningstar?

     We woke with sunrise and headed eleven miles north to Arroyo Hondo. Maggie knew the history of the town and how the Mexican and native rebellion shed blood in this little town a hundred years before: How mountain men like Kit Carson and others were part of battles in Arroyo Hondo and Taos: how the rebel leaders were all hanged after the army defeated them. She briefly told us about it all as the Volkswagen passed the general store, church and homes on the only street that headed towards a mesa beyond the town. A dirt road led us up a winding path held to the sides of an arroyo switching from one side to the other passing a geodesic dome and climbed up a series of S-curves to the top where a parking lot with a few vehicles were parked. This was as far on the mesa as any motor vehicles were allowed.

     At the parking lot was a fire-pit with a few scrubby looking men sat passing a jug of wine. One of the fireside fellows hit us up for spare change towards another jug. I had a few quarters and dimes on me and gave them a couple. I took a hit off the jug but I can’t remember much other than what some of these guys looked like: no names come to mind. Maggie led us across the field to a newly constructed pueblo.

     The buildings were arranged in a triangle and each held three or four living spaces. We went to the first that was occupied by Little Joe and Kathie. Little Joe was a trimly built native with long black braids and Kathie was a petite reddish-blond haired woman with bright blue green eyes. They knew Maggie and greeted us warmly. After a few friendly minutes Little Joe showed us the Kiva, a round hogan building with adobe bricks a couple feet up from the ground around a pit with two tiers and a floor. Another fifty-gallon drum burned wood to heat it. Though there were portholes of light from windows made of wine bottles set into the adobe it was dark and only shadows of people could be seen until my eyes adjusted to it. This was where transients were able to have shelter temporarily as a kiva is usually a ceremonial structure and not used as a dwelling.

     I put my gear down and, after getting to know some of the folks, I climbed out the hole in the center of the roof on a pole with steps carved into it for a ladder. I could see that the pole wasn’t a support for the timbers that radiated over the space below. The ends of timbers around the hole we climbed out of were notched; one was placed on top of the other so that the simplicity and strength of it was in their mutual support. I had never seen anything like it. To me it symbolized what communal living would be about. I was anxious to see how true this was and, when I was told by Jason how they had all worked together to put those timbers in place standing under them in faith that they wouldn’t be crushed if it failed as each let go of their end… what a wonder!

     Norm said he was going to keep going with Maggie and I understood. We’d had some adventures together and I had grown fond of him but I was glad he’d found a companion in Maggie. The Volkswagen left down the grade and that was the last I’d seen of either of them. So there I was, alone and on the plateau of another adventure that would affect my outlook on life from that day on.

     The next days holed up in the kiva were interesting enough; the people I met there and all, but I needed to get out on my own. There was one place on the side of the small arroyo near the pueblo that a couple lived that was also built into the ground with adobe bricks a few feet high having only a piece of cloth for a door. It was incredibly cozy and warm. It was clear to me that these people had accomplished much and had done some amazing work the summer before. They were all hunkered down for the winter but I understood that they had labored hard for their dream. Could I make their dream my own? Could I become a part of that dream? I hoped so.