A spirit pervaded those 600 acres. Freedom!

Some mornings as I awoke from sleep and before I actually opened my eyes I would still be thinking I was on my prison bunk, hopeless and lost—and then the thought would jump into my mind that I was free and it was not a dream. I would doubt for yet another moment—and then the fragrance of the woods would waft fully into my nostrils and I would know it was TRUE that I was FREE and my eyes would open with a bang and I would break into a wide grin and stretch and jump out of bed with a zest only a child could appreciate. The monstrous prison that had eaten so much of my life was no longer devouring me. I had escaped. They had wanted to keep me locked in that cell, they had planned it, manipulated it—but I had WON—I had forced them to let me out because I was right and they were wrong and they’d had to admit it and let me go. My mind had set me free. If it hadn’t been for those letters I had composed and sent all over the country I wouldn’t have been able to swing my escape from their clutches. And it had worked. I had won. I had escaped. I was free. And there were birds singing, and my campfire still had embers glowing. I would make delicious coffee. My heart leaped in my chest! I loved Earth People’s Park!

We had all escaped from Babylon, in one way or another. That’s one thing we all had in common. We all awoke with smiles on our faces. We knew we were the luckiest hippies alive to have found EPP, a miraculous place where we were free to grow without compromising ourselves to the conditional circumstances that plagued our cousins across America. We were truly free.

We could walk the entire expanse of this six-hundred acres totally nude if we wanted and no one would care a hoot; no one would hinder us or treat us differently—and maybe someone might even join us. On hot summer days clothing was generally discarded by most residents.

Now there’s a sure sign of rare freedom.

***

That’s exactly what I was doing. I was walking totally nude down the main road that wound through Earth People’s Park. I crossed the little stream and approached Wally and Marie’s yellow bus and said a few words of hello before continuing with my walk. Beyond their bus the deep hard-packed ruts of the primitive road wound north and I knew I would have to stop soon because otherwise I would encounter the park boundaries where I could be observed by the people who lived on the farm adjacent to the land. Someone was walking towards me, returning from a trip to the store, obviously a woman. The fact could be observed from afar because she had removed her blouse and her melon sized breasts swung firmly and freely and gaily. I stood and waited. I had never seen her before in my life but WOW! She was a sight to see. Her grin was as wide as mine and as she grew nearer and I knew she was coming directly up to me. She gathered into my arms and we hugged with that rare passion that only barenaked hippies on drugs ever know. Her huge breasts directly contrasted her tiny waist and the elastic of her loose skirt revealed she had on no underwear. She was shoeless, too. Our hug became a fire. Minutes passed.

A long hot soft wet kiss erupted the volcanoes in our loins and I picked her up and carried her away from the road across the blueberries and lay her down in a patch of ten thousand yellow flowers and we came together in a feeding frenzy of love: wet, sticky, hot, wild, fast. She whispered:

“—Please don’t cum inside me—I don’t want to get pregnant... Let me drink you...”

…and I slipped out hurriedly and her warm full mouth swooped down just in time like a hot desert wind and she consumed me with unabashed desire.

Her name was Yancy and she was nineteen years old. As for my dream of finding a permanent lady friend I was a week late because she had just met someone she liked a lot only a week before and they had arrived together the previous night and he was waiting for her back at their camp. What a feeling! To find someone so special and to lose her all in such a short space of time; I lay in the grass like a limp dishrag as she gathered up her things and danced away down the road. So after that aside from laying around briefly a couple times in my teepee we didn’t see much of one another. Then her relationship with her partner deepened and I no longer saw her at all. Eventually the two of them had a baby on the land.

Memories are a fantastic treasure; they are more precious than emeralds or gold. I wouldn’t trade my memory of that smoldering morning in the flowers with a girl named Yancy for any amount of jewels.

A heart is a campfire beneath the stars; a campfire is the heart of a nomad. In the silence of the night the crackling flames fill one’s melancholy mind with exciting rhythms and the dancing flames hypnotize and spin dreams... The warm blankets await day’s final surcease while the flames licked my wounds and burned up my nightmares.

I had one friend beside me at my campfire who never failed me in those days; one friend who was always there waiting, forgiving; one friend who loved my company above all else in life. His name was Rajah. He was a large yellow tomcat. He wasn’t mine. When I asked who he belonged to I was told Rajah belonged to himself; he was his own cat. So it was a matter of two friends who enjoyed each other’s company, and kept each other warm, and provided each other amusement and who both would sit for hours staring into a campfire inside a plastic teepee beneath a heaven vast beyond imagination.

I also had a favorite book that I turned to often: The “Rubaiyat” by Omar Khayyam. All through prison the book was under my pillow. I had put all the quatrains to music on my guitar, mainly with alternating Em7th and A chords. Although the words were originally written almost a thousand years ago I always feel like they speak of our hearts in these times; especially the hearts of the silver-people on the shoreline of our unique culture; at least I apply them sentimentally in that way. Verses from the Rubaiyat are etched deeply into my heart.

The Rubaiyat lay beside my bed always within reach; the verses helped me choose my paths and understand my changes. The stanzas echoed and whispered to me; promised roses and thorns, encouraged me to have a little wine and let each day care for itself. Everyone needs a grand philosophy.

***

Before I’d arrived there had been a couple of rather remarkable stand-offs of law enforcement officials. Once when patrol cars entered the land the officers had been surrounded by bearded hippies, all armed. The officers had turned around and not returned. It was among the oldest of traditional values for Vermont people to respect the sovereignty of man on his own property. In other states any such ideas might be used by authorities for shitpaper but not in Vermont. That’s why the cops preferred to turn around I think, not merely because they were outnumbered by armed madmen who suddenly appeared in the cliffs above them on two sides. But whatever the reason, the park didn’t fear being busted very much.

There was one other rather humorous incident worth relating. An immigration officer drove his government vehicle onto the land. He was removed from his car at gunpoint, ordered to take off his shoes and walk off the land. His vehicle was tipped over and set on fire. He didn’t return either.

Tom brought me over a bag of seeds one morning. He told me they were some of the best seeds he’d ever had. He laid them in my hand and told me to get out there and learn how to grow myself some of the best medicine the world has ever known. I thanked him and immediately proceeded to do just that.

I cleared a little land, about 25 feet square, far enough from my teepee so that in case of a raid I could claim it had nothing to do with me. They all assured me I needn’t worry about that but I took my precautions anyway.

I got expert instructions from all the other planters. I loosened up the dirt with a shovel and a hoe and I forked in a bunch of horse manure from Tom’s horses and enriched the soil; then I planted my seeds. In no time at all I was trimming off surplus leaves and drying them over my campfire in a frying pan. I can still smell that lush green aroma. I didn’t have to bum pot off Tom anymore. In fact, less fortunate newly-arrived brothers and sisters were coming to me for a hand-out. Imagine their surprise when I just showed them the location of my garden and told them to help themselves, just to be careful not to strip the plants. We sure wanted them to get real bushy! God grew it. We just harvested it.

I never sold any myself. I liked the sacred aspect of this sort of thing, the brother and sister share-the-earth philosophy. I always feared that anyone who really got heavily into selling our sacraments was contributing to the distinct possibility that everything we held dear might someday become superficial and empty and maybe even forgotten. It’s too bad those fears came true. Brothers and sisters who remember what we once had have a lot of aching to do now that it’s gone.

But when it’s all said and done, how the brothers, and, sisters got the little money that came into their hands which allowed them their meager lifestyles shouldn’t be and is not any great concern of mine. That would be unfair of me. After all, unlike most of them. I had a small income so I had no need of selling herb to get the simple things in life.

I ached when I watched Boston Bobby and Denny Bertelson and a couple of the other brothers come home dog-tired after a hard day of helping a local farmer with his haying. A dollar fifty an hour was slave wages for twelve hours of back-breaking labor under the blazing sun. But they got up the next day and did it again. They needed the money that bad. That they usually ended up spending it on wine is beside the point. Wine is a cheap medicine; a small happiness. Life wasn’t always easy.

But I didn’t have to do that, thank God! I sent for some more of my money and I went out looking for a motorcycle. I realized nothing would make me feel quite so good as riding a big motorcycle through the New England countryside. I didn’t have enough money to get one though. I had two hundred dollars. The bike I found cost five hundred. So I arranged a loan.

Miriam and Ruth were two spinster sisters who lived together with their bachelor brother in a large hundred year old house right on the border of Vermont and Quebec. They had a store on the bottom floor where they sold an assortment of food products and hardware. I went there regularly to purchase whatever I needed in the way of groceries. They even had fresh produce and frozen chickens, and all kinds of French-Canadian stuff because people came to them from either side of the border, the tiny town of Stanhope on the Quebec side. Norton, Vermont on the other. Best of all, they let us put things on accounts and pay for them at the end of the month. They even let people go longer without complaint—much longer. Maybe it was a Christian philosphy, I don’t know for sure just why they were so trusting—but they were. Some of the people on the land had let the amount they owed mount astronomically. More than one owed over two-hundred dollars. These gentle storekeepers were real kind. They might remind someone how huge his bill was already but all he’d have to say was that he was hungry and had nothing to eat and they would let him charge a little more. All the Park people got food stamps but much of that toy money was turned into hard cash for wine thanks to poor local families with big appetites—at two dollar stamps per greenback.

Ruth and Miriam liked the way I always paid my bill on time. I cashed a couple large postal money orders from my mother in their store too, so they knew I was not without resources. When I asked Ruth and Miriam if they would co-sign for me to get some transportation they agreed. You couldn’t meet more trusting folk. My payments were $38 dollars per month. No sweat.

The bike I bought was a ten year old 650 Triumph. It was fast and it was amazing. If you love big motorcycles you know what I mean. If a man was dying he might come back to life just long enough for one more ride. There’s nothing like the thump-thump-thump sound of a large motorcycle under you tooling leisurely down country roads. Riding my Triumph was almost as good as good sex. Notice I said almost...

And there is something to the fact that owning a large motorcycle adds a certain percentage to your score card when you go out looking for those moves. In fact you couldn’t do much better even if you knew how to do multiple backflips and had three gold cards in your wallet. There’s nothing quite like a mojo-psyche. Yeah. As I putted along Heaven’s highway towards home I thought I heard sister-angels singing to the rhythm of the rumbling cylinders:

“—Oh, dream a sweet dream... You sugar-whoopy Mojo-man...”

Life was that sweet.

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