The Eden Express (7 page)

While we were looking for land around Powell River we met Steve and Sandy. Two minutes after we said hello I loved them.

It seemed so right. I was getting off on the rightness of how I felt as much as on them. Why can’t people feel like this toward each other more often? Two minutes ago we were strangers, now we’re all warm and happy.

Steve and Sandy had just taken off from all the things we had taken off from. Just about our age. Looking for all the things we were looking for. They had a Chevy van instead of our Volks and a Malamute husky instead of Zeke. Steve played guitar instead of sax.

They were physically attractive more or less in the same way we were. Not dazzling, but no major improvements needed or wished for. They walked a lot like us, with the same loosenesses and tightnesses. Steve was athletic the way I was athletic, not a superjock but a respectable addition to any pickup game—football, softball, soccer—with no real preference. We probably would have split sets in tennis.

They seemed to have a pretty good man-woman thing. People who believed all the stuff we believed and were trying to make the man-woman
thing work too were a pretty rare commodity. “See, Virge, we’re not the only weirdos.”

Sure, loving Steve and Sandy was narcissistic. A lot of positive feedback about what we were doing and thinking. Why not? Today Steve and Sandy, tomorrow Trooper Suchadolski. I knew that everyone was my brother and even felt it from time to time. Even with Steve and Sandy it wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago. How could I ever get to Trooper Suchadolski without a few warmups with guys like Steve and Sandy?

A lot of the people into “alternative culture” had a hangover of bitterness about the things they had fled. They had been snubbed one way or another. They couldn’t play football, the cheerleaders wouldn’t go out with them, they couldn’t get decent jobs. They were looked on as ugly or failures. Mostly unfairly, mostly for petty reasons. The America they were fleeing didn’t seem to think they were worth much. So they were doing a very sensible thing, building a culture where their very real virtues and attributes had a chance, where they wouldn’t be just so much shit.

The bitterness left its mark. There was the nagging doubt: If the America they were fleeing had opened up her arms to them a little more, would they be out in the woods believing in all the things they believed in?

It went both ways. Those whom America had been nice to, who hadn’t been very shat upon, felt guilty about it. “What’s wrong with me that such a twisted no-goodnik thing liked me?”

Steve and Sandy were golden. They could have made it. Physically attractive, top of their class. America would have gone out of her way to make them feel welcome. But here they were out in the boonies of B.C. in a battered Chevy looking for land to build an alternative of some sort.

They were golden no more. Cops dying for a chance to bust them, customs officials hassling them, America praying that they would
come to a bad end: “The blacks, the misshapen, the dummies, the graceless, I can understand. But you I loved. You were my hope. I would have given you anything. Told you my secrets, shared my wealth. But now you couldn’t drink my spit if you were thirsty.”

Golden no more. What did it? Dope? The war? The long hair? Steve and Sandy had a few horror stories to tell around the fire but they were all recent. Timing is important. If it had been much earlier they would have had scars; much later and it wouldn’t have happened at all.

Steve and Sandy were scouting the Powell River area for a home for their Buffalo tribe. That was part of why they were there. They were also there to get away from the tribe for a few days and think about things. Steve asked very gently about the possibility of the tribe’s coming to our place. We said we felt a little weird about saying yes to a whole tribe. It would most likely swallow us. If he and Sandy wanted to join us that would be great. But a whole tribe? If we had a tribe of comparable size maybe we could work something out. Good hippies though we were, it seemed a bit heavy. A whole tribe?

Steve had reservations about the tribe himself, so he didn’t push it much. He said he and Sandy were about to split off anyway. Just thought he should ask. They invited us to come spend a few days with the tribe while we were waiting for Simon. Swifty and Bo headed back to California.

The tribe was impressive. Twenty-some-odd people, five dogs, three recently acquired goats, three Chevy vans, two VW bugs, three huge tepees, $3600 cash (going fast), and miscellaneous in search of a home. For now a liberal Simon Fraser professor was letting them use some land he was holding as an investment right near the main road. So here was this bucolic frontier scene playing in stereo with a six-lane highway.

The Buffalo tribe had been born that spring at a party where they all took MDA and predictably fell in love with each other. They liked loving each other so much that they all vowed to not let it stop when
the drug wore off. So they formed a tribe, dropped out of school, pooled their belongings, and headed for British Columbia. It’s got to be the longest MDA trip on record.

After a few very pleasant days looking at what might be a preview of what lay ahead for us, Simon was due so we split. The day after Virge and I left, four of the tribe got busted with a pound of dope. That pretty much killed it. The Buffalo tribe scattered to the winds. Another courageous hippie venture bites the dust.

McKenzie called to tell us that the owner had accepted our “offer to purchase,” which was what the hundred bucks and those papers I had signed were all about. All we had to do was come up with $11,900 in the next forty days.

Simon took longer than expected to show. He doesn’t move terribly quickly. I didn’t know that then. Steady like rock but not terribly quick. I didn’t really know anything about Simon then.

 

SIMON. Swarthmore Class of ’69, just like me. I have a feeling he majored in either English or sociology. It doesn’t really matter. Except for engineering, there was really only one major at Swarthmore, which was Swarthmore. Even some of the engineers were really Swarthmore majors. All the Swarthmore people in this book were Swarthmore majors.

Swarthmore’s small. Everyone is supposed to know everyone. I knew who Simon was. I knew his name and we had some friends in common. But if anyone had asked me about Simon before the Powell River venture I couldn’t have said much.

I think our first conversation of any length was at Swarthmore, just before Virginia and I headed West. Simon was heading West too. He was fed up with teaching junior high school in Philly and said he was interested in the land thing. I talked a bit about why I thought B.C. was a good place to look. He said it sounded good, maybe he’d head up that way after California. He said he might be interested in buying
in if I found anything. I told him I’d keep it in mind. I didn’t take him any more or any less seriously than any of the hundred or so other people with whom I had had virtually the same conversation.

Two and a half months after that conversation, I had found land, spectacularly beautiful land, land tailormade for our needs. I had tried to get hold of some of the other people who had expressed interest, but Simon’s phone number in California was the first that worked. He was enthusiastic, and if I didn’t have any overwhelming positive feelings about him I didn’t have any negative ones either.

 

I’m subject to occasional theological nightmares.

The one that leaves me in a cold sweat every time is, I arrive at the pearly gates and the first thing I’m asked is where I went to college.

Swarthmore people tend to form enclaves. They are often unable to live with, talk to, or sleep with someone who isn’t a Swarthmore person.

All non-Swarthmore people in B.C. seemed to assume that all the Swarthmore people there had been very close buddies at Swarthmore. It wasn’t true. It was especially untrue in my case.

I wasn’t thinking about my dread of spending my life in a Swarthmore enclave then. I wasn’t thinking about much except how happy I was that I had found land. Simon was a Swarthmore person but one more Swarthmore person does not necessarily a Swarthmore enclave make.

 

Simon finally arrived with Ted, another Swarthmorian. Simon seemed very eager, so we all headed up to Powell River immediately.

I was feeling a little jerky and clumsy about things. What was agreed to between Simon and me? Was he committed to buying in or just shopping? Was I committed to letting him buy in if he wanted to? Shouldn’t we sit down and talk a few things over? What did he want the farm to be?
How did we know we were compatible? There were substantial sums of money involved, not to mention all the spiritual and emotional stuff.

Maybe it was just another situation in which I was being klutzy and dense. What bad could happen? But how did he know I wasn’t into some super-weird trip, that I wasn’t some sort of Charlie Manson? I couldn’t imagine any evil lurking in that Brillo-wreathed head with his usually smiling cherub face peeking through. It was a completely honest, unforced smile but I think it gave a lot of people the wrong idea. Simon could be mad as hell, but unless you noticed that he was trying very hard not to smile, it was hard to tell.

Is this how it’s done? Somehow I thought it would be different! There we were making the heaviest decisions of our lives, and from the way we acted we might as well have been co-chairmen of the decoration committee for the junior prom.

Problem number one: How do we get up there? We hung around the Powell Lake Marina half hoping someone would offer to take us up. But we were going to have a boat eventually anyway, so why not now? We went boat shopping.

There was a notice on the laundromat bulletin board: “Two plywood boats—ready for fiberglassing—for sale.” Marcel was the guy who had built them, a nice guy about forty-five or so with sad eyes. He hadn’t found what he was looking for in Powell River. He was selling these boats he had made and heading back to New Brunswick.

The bigger one, about thirteen feet, was just right. Marcel said he’d help us with the fiberglassing and take the boat down to the lake for us. The next day was sunny and dry, a good day for fiberglassing. He had some blue fiberglass coloring around, so we added that to the resin and fiberglassed the boat blue. There wasn’t a lot of blue coloring so the boat came out sort of an eerie blue, almost transparent in some places and opaque in others. We put her in Marcel’s truck and followed it to the lake.

Hippies love to name things. Everyone likes to name boats. Watching our boat in the truck in front of us, we tried to come up with a name. “Blue Marcel” was perfect. The old gold-painted outboard motor that was thrown into the deal became “Moldy Goldy.”

Moldy Goldy, who had shown some reluctance to be an engine back at Marcel’s place, lost all ambition in that direction once she was placed in the lake on the back of Blue Marcel.

So now we had a boat but still no way to get up to the farm. Everyone tried to coax Moldy into pushing the boat. New spark plug. New gaskets for the carburetor. But all to no avail.

While we were trying to get Moldy interested in her old line of work we asked around about other outboards. Dick was a pilot for the charter pontoon plane outfit that flew out of the marina, mostly taking loggers to camp and back. He had an old racing Merc 25. No neutral, no reverse, just point it and go; racing prop and the whole bit. Sold. It was the perfect addition to our shoestring transportation corps. The racing Merc became simply “Dick.” That was perfect too. I was naming up a storm.

Dick was an interesting engine. The throttle was open. We were running along fine at what we thought was top speed. But Dick, after sitting around for a while, was just warming up. We started going faster and faster. About halfway up the lake we had to run at half-throttle for fear Dick would tear the boat apart going too fast. Dick was fast. Dick wasn’t all that dependable but that comes later.

It was getting dark as we docked. After considerable crashing around in the brush we managed to find the trail. The trail wasn’t very well cleared, but one way or another we managed to make it up to the farm. Just enough fading light for a quick look around the place, then a full moon and aurora borealis. It seemed like a good omen even though the two phenomena were in competition. Two kinds of light. Simon seemed dumbfounded by the farm’s beauty.

We spent several days up there, exploring and setting up a rudimentary kitchen. A beachhead.

Back down to Vancouver to figure out how one turned stocks into cash, get a chain saw, other tools and supplies, and the rest of our stuff.

Ted went back to California on his way back to New York and law school and all that. Virginia, Simon, Zeke, and I headed back up to Powell River with the two loaded cars.

Simon toyed around some with the idea of getting Ted to stay. How could he go back there to all that shit? I remember being slightly jealous and/or admiring. How could anyone take New York or law school, let alone the two of them together? Why wasn’t Ted incredibly depressed by the prospect? I mean, what hope was there in that? What joy? What adventure?

 

One thing I noticed about Simon was that he was a very different sort of man from me. Not better or worse but different. He was the sort of guy the football team used to make fun of or just ignore. His fogginess, his athletic ineptitude, was something I liked. I saw so much of my own athletic carriage, my coordination and quickness, as a fraud. It was an image I had sought and aspired to in a very conscious way for very superficial reasons.

Being shrewd and quick seemed like bad things, part of the typical American syndrome that had landed the world in such shitty shape. I hoped that being around such a noncompetitive man as Simon might help me drop some of that shit in myself. He was well over six feet and quite strong. He just didn’t seem it.