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.