My First Trip To Black Bear

(Warning: This is a Great Place but Don’t Come Here to Live.)

The first trip into Black Bear Ranch required a nine-hour drive into deep mountains and increasingly wild country. Little did I know that life would get even more wild. Simply getting there became dangerous. My first encounter with a logging truck came in a cloud of dust and screeching breaks, a roaring river 200 feet below on one side and a solid wall of granite on the other. Both drivers skidded in 4 inches of dust, stopping within several feet of each other. Back then, the road was unpaved, had no safety rails, and no sign warning that only those experienced in dangerous mountain driving should attempt it.

My faulty memory recalls my girlfriend and me on the way to visit her college roommate from Bennington, a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Carol and Alan showed up on our doorstep on Bernal Hill in San Francisco with her pregnant and the two of them homeless. Although I had long hair, smoked weed, and was an ardent supporter of the counterculture, I’d never met anyone like Alan. A New Yorker, Alan came from a family of rabbis, was tall and thin with long black hair hanging past his shoulders and a bushy beard covering his face. He wore a scruffy army fatigue jacket, blue jeans, army surplus boots, and carried a bag filled with a notebook for his poetry, nunchakus, and a loaded 45-caliber pistol.

His girlfriend Carol looked like a gypsy world traveler from another era, short with flowing hair, a long skirt, a ready smile, and several layers of clothing, the innermost a see-through blouse. The two of them crashed on our living room floor for several weeks, while my girlfriend and I went off to the telephone company to work, me as an apprentice lineman and she as an operator. After closing a Students for a Democratic Society office in Terence Hallinan’s basement near San Francisco City Hall and organizing a Bay-wide protest against an International Bankers Conference at the Fairmont Hotel, we had just gotten jobs. As a Bay Area Revolutionary Union member on the Central Committee with Marv Trager, Bruce Franklin, and Bob Avakian, my politics were devoted to convincing working people to join a new Communist Party.

Alan was radically opposed to my politics, and we spent hours arguing with each other. He introduced me to the New York Motherfuckers, anarchists who gained my admiration for dumping garbage at Lincoln Center to show the wealthy how poor people lived when the mayor refused to settle a garbage strike. He espoused the teachings of Murray Bookchin, his friend, and mentor, on breaking the country into democratic, autonomous regions rather than artificial lines on a map. His emphasis on ecology was my first warning of how important global warming would become in our lives.

After I got off work, I came home to sit around the kitchen table, smoke weed, and argue with Alan about changing society. Both Carol and Alan were fascinating company with quick wits and thoughtful conversation. Handsome and unusual, they stood out in any crowd. For Alan, the revolution was occurring here and now in the streets. Leaders spontaneously arose from Black and Brown communities and the dregs of society; drug users, street people, the unemployed, and young people. We had to create a new lifestyle and build a self-sustaining counterculture to survive. Alan introduced me to many new ideas, but fate cut his visit short.

Coming home from work one day, I found Alan sitting on the toilet fully clothed while my naked girlfriend took a bath, the two of them deep in conversation. I was furious. I was already protecting our relationship from the guy in the couple we lived with, who wanted us to drop acid and have sex together. Here I was going to work every day while Alan and Carol lounged around the house, ate my food, and now he was making moves on my girlfriend. “Time for you to leave,” I said.

They moved to Hannah Street, an Oakland communal house rented by Kenoli and shared by those who worked at Jelly Roll Press that printed radical posters, and the Oakland Free Bakery that baked bread and handed it out for free on the streets. Alan understood my feelings, and we visited them at the house before they left for a remote wilderness commune in Northern California. A few weeks later, a letter arrived from Carol, who was about to have her baby; we should come and visit. When the weather warmed in the spring, we loaded the car and left.

After the first near-miss with the logging truck, I drove cautiously. The scenery into the Ranch was magnificent, a wild river rushing against boulders the size of small houses, high mountains with their tops covered in snow, and trees up to 4-feet in diameter swathed in green. The air smelled crisp and clean, but without air conditioning, we sweated profusely and tried to breathe through the thick dust.

At the top of a mountain pass, we found a small sign to Black Bear and took a narrow road consisting of sharp S-curves ending at a house straight out of the Gold Rush. A two-story barn of the same vintage stood beside a small rushing creek, a garden stretched beside the house, and several vehicles in various stages of repair littered the road. Inhabitants who hadn’t seen a barber or clean clothes in years sauntered out to welcome us and help unload the boxes of fresh fruit and produce we brought.

Later, Alan proudly showed off a pole-framed, plywood-covered sleeping platform where Carol would give birth. A campfire in the middle of an ample bare space served as their living room, while a few wooden boxes served as a kitchen. Alan said the structure would decay into the earth when he was gone, reinforcing the laws of nature: decay and rebirth. A clothesline held clean white sheets that the sun would sterilize for the upcoming birth.

In the next few days, I helped Willie and Carol clear a spot to erect a circular hut, worked in the garden beside naked women, chopped firewood, and washed dishes after overhearing someone say, “If you don’t like dirty dishes, wash them.” There were no leaders, and no one told me what to do. As a visitor, I quickly realized my role was to help with maintenance. I still had time for long solitary walks in the woods, daily plunges in the ice-cold creek, and long conversations as everyone was willing to stop whatever they were doing and sit down to talk. I met Anthony, a guy from Sweden who was building a log cabin next to the garden; Gail, a young mother who worked in the garden; Glenn, a young grad student who was building an A-frame in the upper meadow; and Creek, a blond Adonis from New York who shared a fantasy of moving across the mountains and living off the land.

Evening meals were a highlight, with thirty to forty people crowding into the main house to fill bowls with rice and beans, wild greens, and the produce we brought. A gaggle of joyous children ran underfoot in their own world. Several guys played guitars while others created a rhythm on drums, and a dark-complected guy in a black slouch hat played the piano. Chatter rose in a cloud, and when I stepped out into the yard, the glow of kerosene lamps cast a romantic glaze over the scene.

I felt part of the group, accepted, and picked up conversations left off from the day before without a break. Everyone was open and accepting and talked of various projects—for a methane digester, new buildings, organic gardens, and travel to sister communes across California in a far-flung network of support. In a banquet of conversation, I moved from one person to the next, each requiring my full attention, and emotional commitment, and a willingness to reveal my innermost hopes and dreams. Sleeping outside in the fresh air, bathing in the mountain stream, eating healthy food, and sharing ideas with articulate people fed my ideal that people could live together in harmony. The future stretched in front of us to form an unlimited horizon of possibility.

I became friendly with Johnny Teepee, a black-haired chap who played the drums and talked of roaming the country in a camper. Because he had high hopes of attracting Star, one of the single women, I gave him my last joint to share with her. All too soon, our vacation from work neared an end, and he enthusiastically urged me to move to the Ranch. He wasn’t the only one. Several others also insisted my girlfriend and I move here; we shared many interests and fit in so well.

The day before leaving, I met with a delegation of several guys in the main house. After 50 years, it’s difficult for me to recall who spoke to me, but I do remember that Redwood and Martin, possibly Efrem and Malcolm, were in the group. They knew I was favorably impressed with the Ranch and told me, “Everyone who comes here wants to live here. Resist the urge. Gather a group of friends, find some land, and build your own commune.”

The words stung—you can’t move here, there are already too many people. Go someplace else. I listened, thoroughly confused. So many people invited me, and now I’m told I’m not welcome. I didn’t argue. As they hovered around me, I felt small, ganged up on, intimidated. Then I looked at each of them in turn. In the background, the living room was hot, a few flies buzzed around, and as they pressed in on me, I looked closer.

Each of these guys was wearing worn-out blue jeans. The first place jeans wear out is in the knees. The second is the crotch. As I mulled over what to say, I realized that each man’s cock and balls were hanging out of his jeans. Here we were engaged in a serious discussion, and I suddenly wanted to laugh. “Hey dudes, your balls are hanging out!”

Shortly after the talk, my girlfriend and I packed up and drove back to the city, talking excitingly about the people we met and our plans. Going back to work proved less exciting. My work as a telephone lineman involved knocking on doors around the city to retrieve disconnected phones. The solid blue-collar guys I worked with talked of baseball and vacations and warned me to slow down and take it easy when I returned with more phones than anyone else. I dared not bring up politics, let alone civil rights or the war in Vietnam. My girlfriend’s supervisor warned her against talking too much, and our lives crept slowly across the loud, noisy city, going nowhere.

As summer approached, we decided to take the invitation, ignore the warning, and move to the Ranch. Too many people had asked us both to move in for us to take the notice seriously. We decided to get rid of our possessions and move, but what would we need to survive in the wilderness? I roamed the downtown area with a credit card in hand to stock up on survival supplies but found few useful items. Finally, we loaded the car with produce and our meager possessions and began the long drive back to Black Bear Ranch.