Mountain Grove, Part Three

Mountain Grove Community, Part 3 Richard Nichols 4.19.11

Money was tight at Mountain Grove. Most of us needed to find some kind of work outside the community. We didn't need much, because we lived nearly rent free and had basic food - a vegetable garden, rice, and beans. If we wanted something else we had to buy it. Heidi and I were living together in a tiny little cabin, with just barely enough room for a bed, but we were warm and cozy, and the main house was just a few steps away.

Heidi got a very unusual job, for those times and in that region. An art class in Grants Pass, the nearest big town of about 20,000 residents, decided to do a nude study, but they were afraid the conservative community would come down on the side of indecent exposure. Heidi and the teacher went to the police chief, and cleared it with him. It helped that his wife was in the class. Another time, Heidi came into a little money, and after talking to someone we'd met about the ease of growing nursery stock, we bought 5000 plants and put them in the ground, with the intention of transferring them to pots later and selling to nurseries. The community was all for it, until they actually had to help do the work, then we had our first big whine in the community. Somehow city kids just weren't into it. We finally sold the stock at very little profit, and some of the trees are still growing out in the field.

I worked for the only commercial organic vegetable garden in the Grants Pass area. Chris was a quiet, hard-working guy, eking a living on 5 acres, with very little help. I mostly weeded, and ate strawberries when he wasn't looking. I made a few dollars an hour and worked several days a week for most of one summer. I also got a job with the town of Glendale, a mill town a few miles from Mountain Grove, with a population of about 400. I was the Assistant Maintenance Supervisor. The Head of Maintenance was the only other employee in the department, and I assisted him, thus, the assistant. We kept the water works (really just a pond up the hill with a funky chlorine treatment) and the sewer treatment facility in working order. But the plant released a good part of the sewage into the creek untreated, being a very old-fashioned system. We repaired streets, water lines and anything else needing work. 

We saved money where we could. We were told by the local sheriff that a pile of gravel by the highway was free to take, so we filled up truckloads to use on the leach fields we were building. Several weeks later Norman and I were arrested for gravel theft and spent several hours in jail before being bailed out. People from the county road department had observed us taking gravel, and instead of telling us not to, they called the sheriff. The county DA decided to take us to court, convict and jail us, but we had something that would defeat that. The sheriff who gave us the OK, came to court and testified in our favor. The judge called a halt to the proceeding and ask us to pay for the gravel. 

I also worked in the timber industry. I was on a tree planting crew for several weeks, but the conditions were deplorable. The Foreman was a slave driving, demeaning idiot, and the pace of planting was brutal. Slogging up and down steep clear cut slopes in rain, and even snow, was not for me. I also worked on a logging "show" for all of two days. The trees in a burn area had been cut and I was on the "choker setter" crew that draped one inch cable around 5 or 6 foot diameter trees  criss crossed in all directions on a very steep slope. A big pulley then pulled the logs up to a landing where they were loaded on a truck. The job was the most difficult, dirty and dangerous thing I ever did, and we had to drive two hours each way on dirt roads to get there. The next job was in the plywood factory feeding ply into a dryer. It was tedious work that I hated and they finally "demoted" me to cleanup man, which was liberating. It gave me the run of the factory on a jitney. Moving scraps of ply to a grinder and sweeping seemed like a vacation after being stuck feeding the dryer.

The community met every week, but the meetings were often full of angst and anger as we tried to work out exactly what we were supposed to accomplish, which was difficult to identify. Everyone was seeking something, but it seemed that no one was really very satisfied. David Young, the founder and Director, had a hard time communicating what we were supposed to do to the new age crowd, and his authority was constantly challenged. We struggled to bond and find a new way to relate not based on mainstream norms. Sharon started to writer intuitively and soon she was writing messages to the group that seemed to be from a guiding spirit. She and David started working together, seeking the guidance that would lead us out of the stuck place the community was in. Heidi and I were planning on getting married, and the message about that was that our ceremony would be the start of an enlightened period. After several months of this kind of guidance, a psychic was told about these efforts, and informed us that what we were getting was from malevolent entities.

While the messages came to a halt, the marriage plans went ahead and the whole community got involved. We were to have a new age wedding. Ruth wrote a song for us, Heidi made a shirt for me, and a dress for herself. Margo sang the song, and David presided. Our parents were invited to come to the March wedding. We used the four elements, of earth, water, fire, and air to demonstrate our commitment. The weather was cold and both Heidi and I wore long-johns under our clothes. The plum tree we planted was run over by a tractor months later. 

Right after the wedding I went into a several months long depression for reasons I never understood. I sat in a chair in our cabin and took long walks, and refused to talk to anyone. It was difficult for Heidi and everyone else. Finding a way out took time, but finally I started working on the garden. I was in charge of the garden for several years and it was one of the successes. Organic gardening and healthy veggies brought me back from depression.

In our last year at Mountain Grove (1973) Members of Heidi's family had taken EST, or Erhard Seminar Training, in San Francisco. They suggested we take the course. Over a two weekend, 60 hour training, we got the boot-camp version of enlightenment, and upon returning to Mountain Grove, ended our four year experiment in alternative living, and moved to Oakland to open a new chapter. We realized, I think, that we were not going to change society by being communal, but could only change ourselves.

I never regretted my time at Mountain Grove. Heidi, Margo and Brian, and Sharon (now Ann) are still my cherished and close friends.