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# 2018-10-16 - Naked In The Woods by Margaret Grundstein | |
# Prologue | |
Swaying together singing "We Shall Overcome" was no longer enough. | |
The tanks lumbering through my neighborhood, clanking down my street | |
brought home the futility of confrontational tactics. We needed a | |
new plan, one that was plausible and released us from the politics of | |
mutual hate. If we couldn't change the world, we could change | |
ourselves and build communities, where, as the Beetles told us, "All | |
You Need Is Love." | |
Did we fail? The measure is not in the duration of our community, | |
but to what degree we rode the rapids of the pent-up need for change | |
in Western, middle-class lives. In that sense we surely succeeded... | |
Our struggle to belong, to each other and the earth, was more | |
influential than we had anticipated... We lived an adventure, changed | |
ourselves, and left our legacy. The evening news covers a black | |
president in the oval office instead of sits-ins [sic] at the | |
Woolworth's lunch counter. Women run multi-national corporations and | |
are on the cusp of running our country. Sexual freedom, | |
environmentalism, alternative health care, and the politics of food | |
are part of the national dialogue. Organic is big business. Weed is | |
medicinal. | |
Now it is time to add our tale to the collective consciousness, to | |
feed the dreams for those who follow. | |
# Chapter 1 | |
One thing was clear. This was not how i wanted to live. | |
# Chapter 2 | |
[Margaret and Hak got married, bought a van, converted it to a | |
camper, and drove to Eugene, OR.] | |
Escape was as far as our vision took us, and that felt good enough to | |
me. | |
# Chapter 3 | |
I stood there, camping pot in one hand, paper towel in the other, | |
slowly absorbing the impact of this information. Hak knew. He knew | |
all along there was no risk of deportation. When he pressured me to | |
marry him, arguing that he would be kicked out of the country if we | |
didn't, it was a lie. The asylum law protected him... All i knew was | |
that Hak had manipulated me. | |
# Chapter 4 | |
Goodbye Armageddon, hello Paradise. Greenleaf, Oregon, became my new | |
communal home. With the move we stepped onto the stage of our new | |
life... When else if not now, when we were beautiful just by being | |
young and anything still seemed possible. | |
Most of the men in our group, being architects, regarded every | |
physical environment as a work in progress. We didn't buy beds, we | |
built them... Draped parachutes softened our bedrooms. Doors | |
disappeared from their frames. We celebrated the open and shared | |
quality of our new living situation. | |
[Margaret and Hak moved into a tree house that Hak built.] | |
# Chapter 5 | |
We were children of the times and the grandchildren of past utopians. | |
Greenleaf became a stop on the underground map that marked these | |
longings; tribal tales passed through word of mouth. | |
In June, five months after our arrival at Greenleaf, we decided that | |
the upcoming solstice was a great opportunity to host a celebration | |
and further expand our network. Carol and Clint had discovered two | |
sister communes, Footbridge and Three Rivers, while exploring on | |
Clint's motorcycle. We invited them to our party. | |
Across my line of vision paraded Amazons, tall and confident, boldly | |
striding through the stubble of our backyard. The Footbridge women | |
had arrived. They were dark in mien, dusky in color, and perfumed by | |
a touch of wood smoke. I'm in trouble, was my first thought. These | |
women have knives. Not jaunty Swiss Army ones with mini scissors and | |
a can opener, but serious weapons with wooden hafts and six inch | |
blades set in leather sheaths tied to their thighs. They oozed | |
bravado. | |
# Chapter 7 | |
Seed catalogues are to gardeners what Playboy is to men, fertile | |
ground for massaging fantasy. | |
There is nothing like living in an intimate group to get a humbling | |
and multifaceted reflection of oneself. | |
None of us had gardened before, let alone tasted fresh produce direct | |
from the ground. Pagan religions and fertility goddesses were | |
starting to make sense. Eating a carrot, pulled fresh and warm from | |
the ground, was a ritual as meaningful as a first communion or a bar | |
mitzvah. We crossed a threshold, changed, and committed ourselves to | |
our new truth. Back to nature was one of the things that worked as | |
advertised. | |
But where were the men? What did those guys do all day? The answer | |
was dope [cannabis]. | |
These were the keepers of the counterculture, the nurturers of its | |
mainstay. I took care of the vegetables. They took care of the | |
drugs. It was a bumper year. | |
# Chapter 8 | |
We wanted to be self-sufficient. Protein was always the challenge. | |
Meat and eggs came from animals with hearts that beat and eyes that | |
could see. They were alive, just like us, although we were starting | |
to feel that even lettuces had an aura. | |
Like any traditional family, eating together anchored us as a group, | |
the dining room our communal nexus. Ours was a "live and let live" | |
life. There was no room at the table for the uptight. | |
# Chapter 9 | |
Fairchild's choice was risky. Midwives, even those with more | |
training, were illegal... and if complications arose, there was no | |
backup from the medical system. | |
# Chapter 10 | |
As the green of Oregon replaced the darkness of New Haven, i healed. | |
Peace and love, the hippy mantra, sounded trite, but i thrived under | |
its mantle. We were living a life that matched my temperament, | |
harmony instead of combat. I also refused to take any drugs. | |
# Chapter 12 | |
When the stars aligned and our stench arose, the time was deemed | |
propitious for a group cleanse [in a sweat lodge]. We bantered back | |
ad forth, checking each other out through the haze of steam and | |
sweat, until after enough baths, we no longer saw when we looked. We | |
were all family. We knew each other well. | |
# Chapter 13 | |
Everything slowed down. The technology demanded it. Kerosene | |
lanterns were our only light... In February, darkness fell at 5:00 | |
and it landed with a thud, forcing us inside, restricted to small | |
pools of glowing light that pulled us toward each other. To get | |
along in such tight quarters you needed to be mellow. Dope | |
[cannabis] was a necessity. [They smoked the bounty they had grown | |
at Greenleaf. Even the author used it.] | |
# Chapter 15 | |
Those we lost through attrition were replaced by new arrivals. All | |
you had to do was show up. No Bedouin in the Empty Quarter could | |
have been more hospitable to brethren traveling the desert sands of | |
the straight world. | |
# Chapter 16 | |
[Hak abruptly decides to leave and move in with Kathy @Footbridge | |
without consulting Margaret ahead of time. He walked out for good | |
and did not look back.] | |
# Chapter 17 | |
This land and these people were my present and future, my community | |
and home. I belonged. What could be more powerful? I 'remarried' | |
before the bed had even cooled, transferring my loyalty and faith to | |
a new kind of union, my group. | |
[Margaret built a cabin using driftwood, hand tools, and lumber | |
scavenged from abandoned buildings. It took over a year.] | |
# Chapter 21 | |
[Dumpster diving and foraging] were not enough. We needed a garden. | |
[Kathy threw Hak out and he returned to Floras Creek.] | |
# Chapter 22 | |
We were always hungry and that lone box of Wheat Thins sitting right | |
in the center of the table, already open, its wrinkled wax lining | |
folded in on itself, looked mighty inviting. Carol, Clint, Stuart, | |
Rocky, and i, along with whoever had joined us on the truck, would | |
stand around making small talk. Our attention was not focused, | |
however, on the words coming out of our mouths, but on what we hoped | |
to put in our mouths. That golden yellow Nabisco box began to glow | |
as the spiritual nexus of the room, and clearly when you are hungry | |
your spiritual functioning is not on its highest plane. The | |
conversation may have continued, ... but the real dialogue was within | |
ourselves. | |
# Chapter 26 | |
Without media we were isolated from the events of the day. While we | |
debated the fate of chickens, struggled to understand community, and | |
learned to live with less, the rest of the world carried on... Huge | |
parts of the culture were lost to us as we worked to build our own | |
world. | |
This was bitter fruit, as the feminists of the times proclaimed us | |
equals; women were just as hard and tough as men, we just needed to | |
claim the territory... In an effort to break the shackles of gender, | |
we were exhorted by our sisters to throw the baby out with the | |
bathwater, to devalue the nurturing inwardness of womanhood and | |
embrace the very traits of our oppressors... | |
author: Grundstein, Margaret | |
detail: https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/naked-in-woods | |
LOC: HQ799.7 .G78 | |
tags: biography,book,counterculture,non-fiction,oregon | |
title: Naked In The Woods | |
# Tags | |
biography | |
book | |
counterculture | |
non-fiction | |
oregon |