The Turkey Totem

 

     American history has not been kind to the hippies, the megamedia having portrayed them as druggies, welfare abusers, anarchists and freeloaders. Oh, sure, some folks got a little too far into sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Many of them did turn on, tune in, and drop out, but they were also early proponents of vegetarianism, free medical clinics, food co-ops, organic gardening and, above all, peace. A casual cruise down the aisles of a modern box store with its vegan, non-gmo, ovo-lacto-gluten-free options and racks of tie-dyed tees illustrate the legacy of a group of folks who tried to establish an alternative way of living. I was, and perhaps still am, a part of that movement. 

      In the late 1960’s, Bill Wheeler deeded his northern California ranch to God, maintaining that ownership of the earth was not in alignment with a healthy planet. He also invited anyone, everyone, to come and live for free on the forested 300 acres above Bodega Bay in Sonoma County. Neither of these notions sat well with county regulators and enforcers. How, for instance, were they supposed to collect property taxes from the Supreme Being? What sections of the building code governed tents, tipis, homes made of pallets, and domes? Several dozen refugees from the Haight Ashbury moved out of San Francisco and relocated in what became known as Wheeler’s Ranch. 

      Meanwhile, fifty-some miles south of there, twenty of us were producing the Whole Earth Catalog, a compendium of information that won the National Book Award in 1972 and has been described variously as “the precursor to the internet,” “the back-to-the-land Bible,” and “Burning Man’s Daddy.” We all worked for an identical wage. The cook and janitor got the same hourly rate as the editor, manager, mail clerks and bookkeeper. That egalitarian system worked well and should be repeated elsewhere. No one pulled rank on anyone. We worked and ate together. 

      Bill and I became acquainted when he visited our bookstore in Menlo Park. He was an artist who painted outdoors, from nature. The inheritance that allowed him to buy the land came from his father’s side, something to do with sewing machine parts as I remember. On one of his visits, he invited me, my mate, and our young daughter to come and celebrate Thanksgiving with the folks who lived on Wheeler’s Ranch. 

    It was dumping rain on that Thursday morning in late November when we drove north. Our vehicle was a seriously butch Ma Bell crew-carrying crummy, a four-wheel drive early-sixties green Dodge power wagon that a fellow worker said should have a boxing glove that sprang out of the radiator. The road into the center of the ranch was rough, muddy, and unmaintained but I locked in the hubs and by noon we had skidded our way to the communal house, where we were met by a scraggly fellow in a soaked Mexican poncho who walked around the truck twice then asked how did I ever come to possess a rig like that? I explained to him that I had something called a job that gave me fun tickets and I traded some of them for the vehicle. 

      Inside the house were Bill and an assortment of long-haired young people dressed in styles ranging from long flowing skirts and Army surplus jackets to little or nothing. Clothing was optional on the ranch, so several folks and most of the toddlers opted to be naked and wet. It was quiet and peaceful in the building, with folks working together to prepare a feast, until the front door bumped open and a feral teenager announced loudly that Alicia’s house, down in the gully, was in danger of being swept away by rising waters and could we all come help move her stuff to higher ground? The kid in the poncho pointed at me. I nodded. 

     We spent the afternoon as a hippie search and rescue service, making maybe ten voyages with my truck into the depths of the forest to help folks evacuate their camps along creek bottoms that were nice cool locations during the summer but were a tad risky during heavy, extended, rains. In most cases there were no roads, only paths, but there was enough human power ahead of us to clear the downfall and rocks so, truckload by truckload, we were able to relocate to higher ground the sparce belongings of several families who were honestly appreciative of our efforts.

     I was a slimy mess by the time the church bell pealed across the land to signal the Thanksgiving meal. Before the first bites were taken, there was a Quaker Grace where we all held hands for what seemed an eternity of silence. The repast included a mass of tofu sculped into the shape of a turkey, (which made me wonder if eating the totem wasn’t almost as sinful as eating the bird,) plenty of variations on a theme of brown rice, bread and home-churned butter, several types of foraged greens, homebrewed sour wine, and better carrot cake than I’ve eaten since. 

     In 1973, the by-the-book forces of Sonoma County closed the one road into Wheeler’s Ranch, and brought heavy equipment onto Bill’s property, where they dozed down all the structures except his house. By that time, I was living high in the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho and was snowed 32 miles away from the nearest pizza joint for six to eight months at a time. There I learned the absolute pleasure of not using money as a standard of achievement. Have a peaceful and loving Thanksgiving.