So sometime in about 19::cough::65 some folks found a huge chunk of land - 200 acres - which we bought for about $10k. It had neither electricity nor water, but did have a big cabin. We made that into a communal kitchen and music room. We built our own yurts scattered over the acreage and eventually built ourselves a barn, meditation teepee and all the hippee fixin's. We hung out together in the cabin, cooked, made music and occasionally had commune-wide meetings. Our motto was: Dawes Hill will be what it is. This thwarted a lot of political and utopian types. We just wanted to live our hippy lives, complete with herbal assistance, skinny dipping, and shared experiences.
We learned a lot from the very old Finnish farmers sharing the hill with us - in fact, we had a lot more in common with them that with city stoners. Most of us had grown up in the country, so farm chores were familiar to us, and neither idealized nor shirked. From time to time someone would join or leave; being rather remote (10 miles up a dirt road) we didn't get too many random visitors which later became the downfall of many communes. Oddly enough, we did end up on a "see the Hippy Commune" bus tour from New Jersey! We got busloads two and three times a day in the summer.
I made 18 loaves of bread and 20 quarts of ketchup every day; others wove, harvested honey, or made pies. These we sold to the tourists and in town, to buy things like flour, chainsaw, fencing for our goats, oil for our lamps and so forth. Even all these years later I have the Aladdin lamps I bought there, though I've long since sold my chainsaw. There were a few children, and most people were in stable relationships; much to my early disappointment and later relief, there wasn't any "free love" going around. It's hard to put into words the rich sense of family and trust we had for each other, and in many cases still have. Nearly everyone from those times still lives in the country, albeit many have moved on. You can still buy Dawes Hill honey in the local markets, and there are still people working the land as they did these 40 years ago.
We swam, grew inwardly and outwardly, learned to be on our own, to be with others, and to just live without pretension. It was the best family I've ever had, and a true refuge from the darkness, addictions, and delusions of the 60's. It wasn't all pretty-one of the women was gang-raped by sheriffs while hitchhiking, another lost her brother to LSD and a bridge_but it wasn't all drama either. The biggest events were the simple evenings of endless blues and a little home-grown ganja, eating our own completely home grown pizza and watching the stars shine in the deep night, far from the city glare. This the best heritage of those years, and I hope that some of you find your way to these shores.
We learned a lot from the very old Finnish farmers sharing the hill with us - in fact, we had a lot more in common with them that with city stoners. Most of us had grown up in the country, so farm chores were familiar to us, and neither idealized nor shirked. From time to time someone would join or leave; being rather remote (10 miles up a dirt road) we didn't get too many random visitors which later became the downfall of many communes. Oddly enough, we did end up on a "see the Hippy Commune" bus tour from New Jersey! We got busloads two and three times a day in the summer.
I made 18 loaves of bread and 20 quarts of ketchup every day; others wove, harvested honey, or made pies. These we sold to the tourists and in town, to buy things like flour, chainsaw, fencing for our goats, oil for our lamps and so forth. Even all these years later I have the Aladdin lamps I bought there, though I've long since sold my chainsaw. There were a few children, and most people were in stable relationships; much to my early disappointment and later relief, there wasn't any "free love" going around. It's hard to put into words the rich sense of family and trust we had for each other, and in many cases still have. Nearly everyone from those times still lives in the country, albeit many have moved on. You can still buy Dawes Hill honey in the local markets, and there are still people working the land as they did these 40 years ago.
We swam, grew inwardly and outwardly, learned to be on our own, to be with others, and to just live without pretension. It was the best family I've ever had, and a true refuge from the darkness, addictions, and delusions of the 60's. It wasn't all pretty-one of the women was gang-raped by sheriffs while hitchhiking, another lost her brother to LSD and a bridge_but it wasn't all drama either. The biggest events were the simple evenings of endless blues and a little home-grown ganja, eating our own completely home grown pizza and watching the stars shine in the deep night, far from the city glare. This the best heritage of those years, and I hope that some of you find your way to these shores.
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PS There's a theory that the Finnish have alien DNA.