by Peter Coyote
I was frozen by the ambiguity of the situation. Had I been insulted or not? Had he just double-trumped me? Confusion replaced my anger; I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to accept the surface reality and tried to retrieve my dignity. I shook my head and stood silently watching the bikes move away, spitting and barking.
Before he left, Flash looked at me long and hard, and in his expression I read the challenge to shit or get off the pot: ride with the wolves as a wolf, or get lost. My choice had already been made, and I watched them leave without regrets. Except for an occasional chance encounter, I never saw the Angels again.
19
approaching terminal velocity
pochteca—Nahuatl word referring to a mysterious band of pilgrims who wandered the Mexican empire in search of the land of the Sun
In April of 1970 we were evicted from Olema. A new cowboy had leased the pastures and didn’t want to share them with thirty hippies. We cleaned the house and grounds down to the last cigarette butt and bottle cap and left the Olema ranch as meticulous as an altar, as an expression of appreciation to it.
We paid every outstanding bill in the town of Point Reyes Station, even those falsely charged to our name by transient guests. The citizens of the town understood and appreciated the gesture. While we were definitely “outsiders” to the local people, they had liked us. We had been honest in our dealings with them and had certainly supplied them with ample entertainment and gossip. Tom Quinn, the brother of the new lessee of the land, was a commercial artist. He made an elegant wooden sign with a coyote footprint on it. Under the footprint he wrote “. . . and company have gone.” As we drove out for the last time, I wrote the word on after the “gone.” Six months later I returned and took the sign itself. I still have it.
Sam and I were “off” again, despite an intervention by the Hell’s Angels. Hairy Henry and Moose had picked me up one day and drove me to get Sam, and then they refused to let us out of the car until we promised to get back together. I have no idea why it was important to them, but we agreed to do it—and as soon as we were let off, we resumed our separate ways. Sam went to New Mexico to see her beloved friend Cass, ex of our mutual friend, poet Jim Koller.
Sam, in her own words, was “way crazy.” Koller gave her a vision to take two horses and go to Big Mountain at Four Corners in the Southwest. I agreed to help her and sold my motorcycle and gave the money to Fosmo to go to New Mexico and get her horses, but he spent it en route, according to Sam, on drugs, trying to enlarge the original stash.
In Colorado, she traveled with Ben Eagle and Chipita, friends from a New York wing of the Free Family. Ben and Chipita had been living on horseback, wintering in the Rockies in a tiny canvas wikiup, surviving by foraging and hunting. They moved Sam and Ariel into their camp for a while but the weather was too severe for the baby. Sam left in her pink VW van and drove to the Red Rockers commune. She set up camp there in a little canvas-covered lean-to, determined to conquer her devils or die trying.
Back in California things were grittier and rougher, too. We were homeless in a colder time. The struggle to keep an extended family functioning with only minimal resources was exhausting and draining. We were getting tired. A change of scenery was called for, and this apparently insignificant impulse produced the Free Family Caravan.
The idea was to travel to far-flung locales and use our neutrality as newcomers to create meetings, détentes, and political alliances among people who should know one another but did not. It was apparent that the counterculture was growing; every state had pockets of people living as we did, creating relationships and new communities within their regions. Each of us in the Free Family had a friend somewhere else, so it seemed organic and evolutionary to begin weaving these places together, expanding the base of our economy and spreading the cultural word.
Travel was so necessary to our community (with distant houses in Black Bear, Olema, Oakland, and San Francisco) that the idea of a caravan evolved out of our normal life. The initial plan was to celebrate the summer solstice at Libré, the Colorado commune where Fosmo and I had been so coolly treated on our Southwestern journey to Hopi land. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but judging from the panicked responses to our queries, I am certain that it was not Libré’s.
Prior to the caravan’s departure, I took a road trip north to Black Bear as a shakedown cruise for my truck. Rereading a journal sharpens my memories of how serendipitous, comical, and turbulent life on the road could be. After so many years, the journal’s rediscovery is like opening a sealed time capsule.
COYOTE’S JOURNAL
SUN IN GEMINI—1971
After months of labor “Dr. Knucklefunky” is reincarnated as the Meat and Bone Wagon: ’49 Chevy one-ton, new brakes, rebuilt steering, suspension, engine, wiring. Everything touched, looked at, rebuilt, or replaced. Wooden sides added to the bed, metal strapping made into bows supporting a canvas cover; welding tanks chained to the running board. Phyllis, Natural Suzanne, and her twins, Taj and Mahal, head out with Josephine and me on Saturday, 22 May, to Lost River, Salmon Creek, Trinidad, and Black Bear to gather wild herbs and medicines to carry to Colorado for summer solstice celebration at Libré. Truck loaded with bulk honey, raisins, milk, flour, cheese for the family at Trinidad.
At Little Robert’s, we see maps of the Siskiyou lumber cuts threatening Black Bear and learn about the Indian resistance. Stopped at Forest Knolls [the Red House] and worked on the exhaust, rerouting it to save the lives of Suzanne and the children riding in back.
North of Ukiah on 101, run into J. P. [Pickens, with a now-healthy Maryanne and kids], Bergs [Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft], Albion, and Chris convoying south from Black Bear. J. P. has a new 1948 Chevy two-and-a-half-ton we nickname the Circus Wagon. Stop and picnic. Pull out and repair J. P.’s gas tank. Berg planning to winter in the East. Reach Lost River around midnight, miss the turn to David and Jane’s [Simpson and Lapiner, former Mime Troupers], camp in a meadow.
Sunday
David has finished a new wing on his house, all reclaimed wood. Goats, chickens, horses, machinery, new corral. We walk through the mutilated forest: crushed trunks, trees lying around like discarded condoms. A chain saw buzzes up the hill somewhere. The reason hippies are allowed to live on this land is precisely because it has been ruined. We are the second crop.
. . . David shows me his plans for a shower/sauna bath-truck. It’s amazing. Hot water heaters mounted over a fireplace of old tire rims. Laugh at the notion of the huge thing lumbering through strange towns, filled with naked people. What a brilliant idea: to appear at backwoods homes with hot showers.
Monday
. . . Pick sacks of chamomile and lemon balm, leave for Salmon Creek. Stop at Forest of Arden and pick wondrous mint. At Salmon Creek, Gristle and Carol [Gypsy Truckers] are there. Gristle still looking like Crazed Dr. Sivana from the Captain Marvel Comics, kinky hair, wild eyes. He’s torched the roof off his ’49 Ford school bus and wedged a Chevy V-8 into the engine compartment. It barks like a wolf when it starts. I weld some linkage for him with my torches.
Natural Suzanne is down in the dumps, self-conscious about being dependent because of her twins. Her body is probably complaining from all the work, and perhaps my sense of urgency is pressing her.
Drive on to Trinidad house, modern tract home in the middle of a subdivision. You can tell which place is ours from a mile away, looks like a red-ant heap. [The Trinidad house population, as best as I can remember, consisted of Freeman and Ivory House and Jim and Sue and their five kids: Danny, Luna, Dave, Jonny, and Mad Anthony. Some Free Bakery people lived there as well.] The Free Fishing Boat is finally in the water.
Tuesday
Up at 5:00 A.M. to fish—me, Owl [Pickens], and Freeman. Take a rotten aluminum dory out to the thirteen-foot wood skiff, which looks lovely, restored and repainted. Few fumbling minutes attaching the umbilical cord from the engine to the fuel tank and we’re off, to sea in a rowboat! We pass the Head, into open water. Gray sky. A dolphin, the
curve of his back like a fall of hair. Birds appear out of the swell and thrum like sine waves across the mind of the sky. High and holy out here. Seals look us over. Beside Flat Iron Rock, I hook something heavy that runs all my line out and then rips the hook loose. Rebait and hook something even heavier that snaps sixty-pound test line like a strand of spit. We all look at each other. Good God, it’s the OCEAN! There are things down there bigger than men!
Cap’n Freeman notices that the fog has come in. Hard not to notice because we can’t see beyond the prow of the boat. He starts the motor and we improvise a direction home, arguing among ourselves about where the edge of the continent is. We pass a rock almost obscured by sea lions and their harem. They trumpet at us, and I holler back exuberantly. The rock appears to explode as the sea lions scream and throw themselves and their ladies off the rocks. We grip the gunwales of the boat, terrified that they are intending to capsize us.
The fog lifts a moment and reveals that we are dead on course for China. Owl, prudent eleven-year-old, fastens on a life preserver. . . .
The kids make dinner while the adults rap about problems. Everyone wants to fish, no one wants to tend to the house. Freeman admits that the boat brings in no money or food yet, so it is “fun” and everyone wants a share of that, regardless of the fact that some people are seriously studying fishing. He reminds everyone of the necessity of food gathering as a focus. Plans are made to gather mussels tomorrow and fix a dome for the children [to sleep and play in] to relieve the strain on the house.
Quiet night. My loveliest sisters here: Natural Suzanne, Phyllis (whom I lean against, writing); Nichole is singing “My Cherokee” a cappella, sweet and soft.
Wednesday
Something has changed in the atmosphere of the house, and everyone awakens happy as clams. Dave (who escaped from San Quentin and lived with us almost a year before getting drunk one night and returning to his hometown to brag about being the only living escapee) builds five bunk beds today. The children had cleaned the house for us before we woke. Windows are being washed, floors scrubbed, the house being made love to, turned into a home. I’ve seen this cycle before. Beginning with houses too small for the size of our group needs, people live in them unconsciously, minds elsewhere, thinking of moving out. The space becomes cluttered and unloved, problematical, ugly. Then the inevitable flash occurs: this is it! This is not a rehearsal for life, this is my life, and people assume responsibility, banish the filth, and make it a home. . . .
I feel outside the main flow of things, so work with the kids today. I like their natural inclination to deal openly with real work: shooting out ideas and suggestions, using what works and dropping the rest. They imitate as faithfully as mirrors. Makes me reflect seriously on what am I actually teaching them—explicitly and, more important, implicitly.
. . . Natural Suzanne feeling better today. Things a bit awkward among the three of us. We are not lovers this trip: some other relationship is being developed, but we don’t know precisely what yet. Phyllis—holy, magical, beautiful woman who sometimes forgets to view herself from the same charitable perspective she uses for the rest of Creation. Nichole here, body and spirit apparently dedicated to random sexual encounters, moves in my life like a warm summer rainstorm, satisfying and nourishing. Natch’l Suzanne getting it together for the road. The trip has shaken her out of her set a bit. Truck travel is hard for everyone, but for a real princess, with twins, it’s grueling. She bounces back dark, foxy, and mischievous. My good fortune at knowing these women overwhelms me. The fact that they love me is a constant challenge to deserve them.
Thursday
Sheriff comes. Someone pissed outside again, and a neighbor, who just happened to be watching, called the heat. One-eyed Orville drops in. He is the patriarch of the straight community—fisherman, crafty, mean, politic old man. Warns us to respect our neighbors. The sheriff even tried to tell us that the babies shouldn’t be naked but couldn’t pull it off with the requisite seriousness.
John, Dave, and Charlie return with two fish. A better day than yesterday. Charlie caught both of them so there was a long discussion about making him captain when he turns twelve.
Discussed an idea called Planetedge, a nonprofit corporate form we could learn to handle as a tool without necessarily identifying with the corporation. Might be the family’s economic base—an office and depot in Arcata, clearinghouse for the caravan, and a central information depot.
Friday: Sun in Gemini, Moon in Cancer
Early morning plans stretch out to noon departure for Black Bear. San Quentin Dave’s final words, said to me personally: “Don’t hurt anybody.” They puzzle me for hours. He was up for murder.
We take Nichole and Vicky to 101 so they can hitch south, then drive down 299 over the Coast Range, fogs and firs, convoluted hill road, to Willow Creek. Two outlaw bikers putt past, Misfits from Eureka, dark, wild-looking men. They regard us coldly as they pass, and I get a shiver at how dark and pitiless the road can be.
After Wetchipec and Forks of Salmon, we’re stopped on the road by a twinkling old Indian man named Les Bennet in a green pickup. Clear skin, bright eyes, copper bracelets on each wrist. He laughs softly, talks easily, scoping us out. It occurs to me that he is guardian of the road. Spots the elk-tooth necklace I am wearing and asks ingenuously, playing with my head, “Don’t it make you sleepy?”
We drive on, engine overheating, convinced we’re on the wrong road, until we crest the summit and begin rolling down into Black Bear. Everyone’s on the knoll. The ki-yi-yi’s and ululations start as soon as they recognize Josephine, dancing in ecstatic circles on her back legs. They all look illuminated and happy. We make camp for Suzanne, who is exhausted, and I cross the creek to see Richard and Elsa [Marley] where we celebrate our annual Yellow (Nembutals) shoot, surrounded by the sound of the rushing creek and the rustling leaf-breeze music.
Saturday
Leveled ground with John Cedar and Richard, set up tent in the woods at the far end of the meadow, whose five acres is being terraced by hand. Looks like China: rushing water, green shoots of plants, the turned earth, berry-brown bodies, naked, bent, working rough-handled shovels and hoes. Fir trees, high hills, everything flexing like the bodies.
Michael Tierra lays out herbs he’s collected for the caravan: omolé [native name for soap root, a great shampoo and fish poison], wormwood, verbena, vervain, wild onion, sweet cicely.
Bonfire meeting this night to discuss the caravan. I try to interest people in my notion of Planetedge, but they’re “edgy” about anything that would engage us with the bureaucracy. [A nonprofit entity would have to be registered legally.] This precipitates a long discussion about revolution. I am cranky with their recalcitrance and macho posing, insist that armed revolution is a mental pet, not reflected in the daily strategies of the community. It is a mythic superstructure lending an edge of danger and self-importance to activities that are revolutionary enough in their own right.
In the midst of this discussion I learn of Lew Welch’s suicide. It grieves me deeply. I remember how he considered himself a failure and yet how much support and encouragement he gave me [and so many others] when I really needed it. His death puts all our bullshit into perspective. We have many good words and prayers for him.
Sunday, Second Week
Elsa gives me a large black book covered with the hide of the bear Efrem shot. It is being filled with recipes, herb cures, and information about the five years at Black Bear to hopefully educate and inspire others. The entire ranch has participated in its creation, and I am moved and proud of the effort that these overburdened friends have made to participate with [the Caravan]. They have given me the charge to be their eyes and ears.
Monday
Natural Suzanne tells me she wants to leave. She’s unhappy and wants to go home. She tells me I’ve been a bummer, no help to her, and full of bad vibes.
Go for a long walk with Smilin’ Mike and Tierra to collect herbs and roots. Have a long talk about t
he difficulty of maintaining relationships with many different people; with the comings and goings, closures and intimacies have to be perennially redefined or they evaporate. I say that it makes me feel good to know that everyone else is . . . (pause, searching for the word) and Tierra laughs and says, “Suffering.”
Tuesday
The cow is dead. Someone chained it on a hill and it slipped and strangled itself while we were off picking herbs. Danny and I turn it into ribs, steaks, chops, hamburger for a meadow lunch. Whole kitchen buzzing. Everyone singing my song, “The power of sweet, sweet music.” Finger-popping and taking care of business. Zoe [who buried the bear skull to save it for us] is half naked, improvising a beautiful ballet to [Michael] Tierra’s Bela Lugosi wake-up piano. Wonderful dark Italian passions in his music, the piano straining to express his anger, confusion, funky shuffle, delight, running together, interpenetrating, and breaking out of each other like the rivulets and streams beside the house. I get a very graphic image of fucking Zoe on top of the huge mound of raw, red cow meat piled high in front of me. Taste and delicacy prevail, however.
Wednesday, Second Week
Suzanne announces that she’s having a great time and in no hurry to leave. Our departure has been put off three times now and is becoming something of a joke. Each day we tarry adds something to our swelling larder, which now includes more than two hundred pounds of acorns, small tomato plants, more roots and herbs, and several new passengers.
Thursday
Owl and I work all day welding a rack to secure my three-drawer tool chest on the running board. I teach him how to use the cutting torch, and he works beside me, steady as a grown man. . . . At one point, he disappears and just as I’m beginning to grumble to myself about kids, he returns with two hamburgers. I promote him on the spot from Punkus Minimus to Punkus Maximus, and he’s proud of his new nickname.