Peter Coyote
Chapter 18: Full Bloom
Excerpt from Sleeping Where I FallOn my return I moved Sam and Ariel out of the overcrowded Olema ranch house into a small, abandoned outbuilding, a tiny horse barn about ten by ten feet square, with an old Dutch door and feed stalls that had to be removed. We tar-papered it against the winter, insulating the windows with plastic and the rough wood floors with old carpets. I put in a wood-burning stove and built a loft for sleeping. Though the shed was tiny, it sufficed for the three of us and our two dogs. Eeja was roaming farther and farther afield, drawn by coyotes yapping on the distant ridge. One day, she simply did not return.
It was a low-rent shanty with wooden battens nailed across the black tar-paper skin outside, but it was warm and dry. The old wood glowed in the kerosene lamplight, and it was lovely to lie there and listen to the dull comforting murmur of rain spattering on the slate roof. The stage was set, the play was cast, and if Sam and I were not exactly blissful together, we were not unhappy and intermittently in love--about par for most relationships, I suspect.
Meanwhile the Gypsy Truckers had moved in. I think Vinnie ("Chick-a-dee, Chick-a-daa") Rinaldi met them at the Orange Julius stand in San Anselmo. They were a dashing troupe of bandidos, mustachioed, long hair tied back with bandannas, with conchos, intricately stamped buttons of silver, running up the seams of the leather pants. The women wore long skirts over their boots and scarves around their heads; dozens of bracelets made their arms tinkle and ring. They had beautifully crafted flatbed trucks with ornate wooden houses built on the frames sporting nifty gingerbread trim, giving them the ornate jewel-box complexity of fine fairy story illustrations. Vinnie told them about Olema, and they pulled into the big corral en masse and circled their wagons. They needed a place to put up for the winter, to ready their vehicles and gather supplies before moving north. After exploratory consultations and some meals, herb, and music, we agreed that they could stay.
Olema at this point (the autumn of 1969) was in full flower, jammed to the rafters with divergent souls, intentions, needs, visions, and aspirations, all feeding like aphids on its nourishing stream. Does a flower intuit that when its bloom is at peak, it is preparing to die?
I was still the nominal "head man" by virtue of having been the first to colonize the place and perhaps because I had the overreaching vision of how Olema dovetailed with the rest of the Free Family; however, my authority was strictly based on persuasion and personal regard. People came and went at Olema and were accepted or rejected according to mysterious consensus. It was commonly agreed that Olema was "free turf," that one could do and be whatever one chose to be, an anarchic social experiment designed to discover alternative modes of living and working together based on personal authenticity rather than economics.
My daily routine in the morning was simple: slip on my coveralls and amble out of the cabin, fire up my Coleman camp stove, and make a pot of coffee. More often that not, I might pad down to the main house and see if anyone else had done it before me. There was usually a can of Top cigarette tobacco on the kitchen table, and it was nice to sit in the weak light, roll a smoke, and contemplate what comedies the day might produce while my coffee steamed beside me on the porch stoop.
Babies would wake, cooing and gurgling. Mothers, steamy from sleep and smelling of talc and breast milk, shuffled into the kitchen on maternal call. Usually someone had made bread, and there might be a pot of jam or honey nearby to smear on it.
Little by little others woke and threaded their way to the kitchen through the prior evening's abandoned guitars, clothing, and accessories, and the intricate ballet of assessing one another's morning moods began. Talk was initially minimal. People gravitated toward the coffee, condensed milk, sugar, and tobacco, and pursued their somnolent wake-up rituals. Before long the thick silence in the house would be dispersed by buzzing energy: children bumping into tables and rolling in the dust, mothers chatting on the stoop, elbows on bent knees, soft curves draped in faded skirts and hair caught in bandannas, bangle bracelets and earrings jingling, all glad for any hint of sun to drive off the morning fog.
Discussion centered on the needs of the day: laundry, flour, gaskets, fuel pump, welding rod, weeding, gathering mussels at Tomales Bay. Runs to town were consolidated, baby-sitters designated, and the parceling out of always-insufficient money for gas and supplies was usually negotiated with ironic goodwill:
From the men: Well, if we don't have money to fix the truck how will we get to the bulk food store?"
You could feel the invisible chords of communication among the women, who had no need to look at one another to agree. Someone might look down at the ground or laugh into her palm before responding, "Fine. Fix the truck...and while you're at it, fix dinner too, because there's no food."
These ripostes oscillated back and forth until temporary equilibrium was achieved. There was generally not too much anxiety because, despite lack of money, we had all the time in the world. What we had lost in material surplus we more than made up for with the luxury of unstructured, free time.
By the second cup of coffee, cigarette at the halfway mark, a musical instrument usually appeared. Jed Sherman was a handsome, mustachioed, longhaired Gypsy Trucker with a laconic good humor; he and I were the two dominant guitar players. Jeff (of Jeff and Carla) was an up-and-comer, but the best musician at Olema was a wiry, goateed young man with an extremely sardonic manner and eccentric personal style named Freeman Lockwood, professionally known as Steamin' Freeman.
Freeman played violin and spent almost every waking hour practicing jigs and reels from a thick fake book of traditional Irish music. He would play six to seven hours a day, every day. He and I commandeered an abandoned room next to the chicken shed and built bunk beds for visiting musicians to use after late jam sessions. Before he died of an overdose, Michael Bloomingfield would come from the city to play our cracked old upright piano all night. Olema was his hideout from the high-pressure rock-and-roll life that interfered with his joyful music and enthusiasm; on one occasion, harmonica player Paul Butterfield joined him. But excellent as these musicians were, equally skilled anonymous players drifted in off the road, and the standard was elevated and demanding.
Music was one of the social arts, and we took musical skill and etiquette seriously. Good players would travel from commune to commune, or house to house, to play and learn and teach new songs. Skill was highly appreciated, but show-offs and stage hogs were cold-shouldered until they understood that the most valued talent was the ability to create inclusive ensembles. There was space for both the individual and the group, but all had to work cooperatively.
When people returned home after a trip, they brought gossip, adventurous tales, presents, new goods, staples, and enough energy to generate stupendous parties. The men gathered wood and built a fire or set up a barbecue if there was meat. Depending on the scale of the event, we might build a sweat lodge, drag out the home brew and slice up the hash brownies.
Skirts rustled, metal bowls clanged, flour dust hazed the air, and the house was permeated by an incense of lentils and cardamom, marinating meat, and rising dough. Sam was clearly a leader among the women there. She was imposing, and her entrance could dominate a room, but her self-confidence oscillated between impervious and absent. She had a grand style and witchy powers. Though, like most of us, she was picking her way through the rubble of her own psyche, she could, especially to the younger girls, appear to be a goddess, fully formed and worthy of emulation.
It was Sam who taught the Olema women to tan the deer hides we retrieved in numbers from the Point Reyes garbage dump during hunting season; to make an oatmeal-thick mash from wood ashes and water so that the hair could be rubbed off; to pickle the skin in sulfuric acid and water or rub it with brains, then break it to softness over a fence post or over the back of an ax jammed into a stump. Though the ultimate utility of such skills might have been marginal, they contributed to our sense of independence from the larger culture and supported our intentions to be in continuity with indigenous people who centuries earlier had lived where we were living. Such skills also enabled us to create trade goods and currency out of found objects, personal kills, and time. We could create wealth by redefining it in a game that was not stacked against us.
Lew Welch was a frequent visitor to Olema. A tall, freckled, sad-eyed Irishman whose face was often suffused with childish wonder and delight, Lew was already famous as a Beat poet. He lived sporadically and stormily with a thick, powerful Slavic woman called Magda; when she would tire of his drunken escapades, he would move out of their Marin City pad and up to Olema. He loved jazz and Magda's two children and was proud of tutoring their musical abilities. He introduced me to Magda's oldest, Huey, when Huey was ten years old. Lew beamed with delight as the child scatted tricky jazz riffs Lew had taught him. He might well have been proud. Magda's Huey became Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News and honors Lew's memory to this day by maintaining his stepfather's bardic traditions and catholic curiosities.
I was pleased to have Lew at the ranch because I felt his presence conferred on us a legitimate descent from the Beats. I was extremely proud that Lew had dedicated a poem called "Olema Satori" to me.
One day he was sitting on the floor of the Olema living room, cradling his ever-present gallon jug of Cribari red wine in his lap. He was deep in his cups. The room was pulsing with music and dense with marijuana smoke. Tall, fulsome Carla, the world's most voluptuous seventeen-year-old mother, was utterly abandoned to sinuous dancing, naked from the waist up, and glistening with sweat. Lew was watching with undisguised lust. He turned to me, grinning crookedly, raised one finger, and said very slowly and very clearly, "The...worst...Persian....voluptuary...could...not...imagine...our...most...ordinary day." Having managed this, he pitched over, unconscious.
There was no hint in Lew's joy that day that not long afterward he would leave his wallet and a note in Gary Snyder's kitchen and walk into the Sierra foothills with his rifle to commit suicide. If he hid his private griefs in life, he remained consistent in death. To this day, his body has never been found.
Lew was fascinated with Snyder lore. Grinning and sitting cross-legged, the softness of his moist eyes contrasting with his chiseled Irish face, he would recount story after story about Gary in a manner that was at times incredulous, at times awestruck, and at other times tinged with a note of competitiveness. It was easy to see that Gary exerted a powerful hold on this singularly intelligent and talented poet, but it was not until sometime after Lew arranged an introduction to Gary that I understood the power of that attraction.
It's embarrassing to remember my first impression as I watched Gary's pristine Volkswagen camper pick its careful way over the rutted road to our ranch house. "How could Gary Snyder be driving a new camper?" I thought. "So bourgeois!" It came to a stop under the willow tree at the edge of the yard, Lew hopped out with his customary manic enthusiasm, and I ambled over, lord of the manor. Salutations were exchanged, and Gary threw open the side door and invited me inside. Before I had climbed on board, he had already opened some peanut butter and a box of crackers.
He was wearing an old straw hat that shaded his eyes, and I remember him cocking his head to one side to look at me. His look was so clearly appraising, so without social camouflage as to be startling. The visit was uneventful. We ate crackers and talked. Gary was not overweening, and he made interesting conversation--in the parlance of the time, he was "together." His body was muscular and lithe. His eyes crinkled pleasantly when he smiled. His voice was cultivated, and his speech was very precise and peppered with geological terms like schist, upthrusts, and substrate.
I was a little crestfallen by this initial encounter. He had not congratulated me for carrying the banner of Beat liberation struggles onto new battlefields, nor acknowledged me as a peer, nor questioned me in any way about my revolutionary lifestyle and politics. All he had done was look me over as if asking himself, "What's this guy about?" He did not find it necessary to define himself in relationship to me at all! I had shared some peanut butter and crackers and a pleasant time with him, and that was that. After he had driven off, little remained in my memory except that initial penetrating visual query. It made me squirm mentally and I did not know why.
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