[Continuing from previous posts]
Summer, 1968: My children and I had spent several months in the LA area. Todd was five-and-a-half now, still wild, bright, and inquisitive. Gentle was ten months old, a beautiful and mellow baby. We were on the road – just the three of us and Morning Glory, our heavenly blue van, now painted to look like a telephone truck– heading for a piece of “open land.”
At this point I was dedicated to group living. It was obvious that people needed to get together and learn to share and look out for each other, and I really wanted to raise my children in a situation where that was happening, a situation where the implications of our Oneness were being lived on a daily basis. I believed it would be good for Todd and Gentle to grow up in an environment of very high consciousness. To me that was way more important that providing them with material goodies and the competitive, fear-based, dog-eat-dog, brain-washed consciousness of square America. But the concept of “open land” was new to me.
It made immediate sense—land that belonged to no one and to everyone – land where anyone who wanted to could go and live—for free and to be free—a material manifestation of the spiritual truth that no one can really own a piece of the Earth – that we all have to learn to share it, to live on it together, in peace and harmony.
Josh and Ellie, part of our Haight Street extended family, had sent directions to Wheeler’s Ranch and had told me that everything we needed would be there, thus reinforcing another of my spiritual beliefs: if your heart is pure and you are trying to live your life for the good of the All, your needs will be covered.
The entrance to Wheeler’s was via an access road, about a mile long, through an adjacent piece of property owned by Mr. Kelly. I remember feeling a flood of relief upon passing through Wheeler’s gate, knowing that I was on open land – free land – a place where I had as much right to be as anyone else did. It was an exhilarating feeling just knowing that I was on land dedicated to such a high principle.
The land was originally owned by Bill Wheeler, who had deeded it to “God” and proclaimed it “open land” following the example of his friend Lou Gottlieb, bass player for the Limeliters and patron saint of Morningstar Ranch, a piece of open land a few miles away, in Graton. Josh and Ellie had lived at Morningstar for a while, until the scene was hassled by local authorities for zoning violations, Lou was arrested, the county came in before dawn one morning and bulldozed all the little hippie shelters, and everyone who lived there had to find another home. I believe it was at that point that Bill Wheeler opened his land to Morningstar refugees and others. Bill and his wife Gay lived in Bill’s art studio, the only close-to-traditional structure on the land.
The kids and I found Josh and Ellie in their tent in a grove of young evergreens. They took us to a larger army tent someone had vacated that morning, leaving it for whoever needed it next. That was us. Welcome Home, Sylvia, Todd and Gentle!
It was a good-sized army tent – maybe 12’ by 16’ – and it was pitched at the top of a gently sloping meadow. We moved in, unpacking the few belongings we had. There was, of course, no furniture—we sat and slept on the ground. And for a while we didn’t have a stove, so we ate with Josh and Ellie in their tent. Later we inherited a sheet-metal wood stove. We didn’t need it for heat—it was summer—but I figured out how to cook many meals on it. It wasn’t the material accommodations that made Wheeler’s Ranch a special place—it was the people who were there, and the freedom, and the tolerance of others promoted by living the ideals of open-land philosophy.
When we arrived at Wheelers, most of the people there were beautiful flower children, infused with Spirit, exuding love and inner peace. I don’t remember all the names, but a few names and individuals do remain in my memory.
The one I think of most often was a single mom named Carol and her baby daughter, Morningstar. They lived in a beautiful, simple, natural structure, which Carol had built herself, but the thing I remember most about Carol was her generosity. She received food stamps for herself and the baby, and she used them to buy food for several families at Wheeler’s who had no other means of getting it. We would all go shopping together to a little natural foods store in Petaluma, and Carol would say to us, “Just pick out what you need, and I’ll pay for it.” What a saint! With all of us eating mostly brown rice, beans, and alfalfa sprouts, Carol’s food stamps fed many.
One of the people who had moved to Wheeler’s from Morningstar was Alicia Bay Laurel, a very creative young woman, who was working on a notebook of earthy living that later became a published book on this emerging, simple, natural way of life.
And there was Jason, who had the widest eyes and purest gaze I had ever seen.,He lived in a tree house and made beautiful music on his twelve-string guitar. I liked Jason a lot. He looked totally mind-blown all the time, and talked so slowly but with such a high vibe that just looking into his eyes and listening to him was like dropping about 300 mics.
Errol and Sarah, an interracial couple and their kids, also lived at Wheeler’s. And O.B. and Donna. And Mystery, one of the few black hippies around in those days, always grinning mischievously and usually living up to the mischief his grin announced.
Most of all, I remember the freedom, the freedom, the freedom! At last I could be my total self and would be accepted or at least tolerated by everyone else there because they wanted to be free to be their total selves, too. We all knew that the freedom you give is the freedom you get, so we all learned to tolerate each other. For the first time in my life I was free to be exactly who I was and to do exactly what I wanted to do—within, of course, the context of being a single mother of two. And for quite a while all I really wanted to do was to be able to let Todd run free and to hold Gentle. And that’s what they both wanted, too.
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