Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the CountercultureIn the late 1960s, new age communes began springing up in the American Southwest with names like Drop City, New Buffalo, Lama Foundation, Morning Star, Reality Construction Company, and the Hog Farm. In the summer of 1969, Roberta Price, a recent college graduate, secured a grant to visit these communities and photograph them. When she and her lover David arrived at Libre in the Huerfano Valley of southern Colorado, they were so taken with what they found that they wanted to participate instead of observe. The following spring they married, dropped out of graduate school in upstate New York, packed their belongings into a 1947 Chrysler Windsor Coupe, and moved to Libre, leaving family and academia behind. Huerfano is Price's captivating memoir of the seven years she spent in the Huerfano ("Orphan") Valley when it was a petrie dish of countercultural experiments. She and David joined with fellow baby boomers in learning to mix cement, strip logs, weave rugs, tan leather, grow marijuana, build houses, fix cars, give birth, and make cheese, beer, and furniture as well as poetry, art, music, and love. They built a house around a boulder high on a ridge overlooking the valley and made ends meet by growing their own food, selling homemade goods, and hiring themselves out as day laborers. Over time their collective ranks swelled to more than three hundred, only to diminish again as, for many participants, the dream of a life of unbridled possibility gradually yielded to the hard realities of a life of voluntary poverty. Price tells her story with a clear, distinctive voice, documenting her experiences with photos as well as words. Placing her story in the larger context of the times, she describes her participation in the antiwar movement, the advent of the women's movement, and her encounters with such icons as Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Abbie Hoffman, Stewart Brand, Allen Ginsburg, and Baba Ram Dass. At once comic, poignant, and above all honest, Huerfano recaptures the sense of affirmation and experimentation that fueled the counterculture without lapsing into nostalgic sentimentality on the one hand or cynicism on the other. |
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Contents
Prologue November 2003 | 1 |
Shop Around April 1 1970 | 5 |
May Day May 7 1970 | 13 |
The Wedding Gang May 23 1970 | 19 |
Searching June 1970 | 31 |
Libre June 1969 | 39 |
The Way West June 2 1970 | 52 |
Libre Again June 4 1970 | 57 |
Brotherly Love June 15 1972 | 201 |
Woodstock Revisited August 10 1972 | 206 |
Julep May 1973 | 213 |
The Peach Run August 12 1973 | 219 |
Mr Wagleys Peaches August 18 1973 | 225 |
Homecoming August 1973 | 230 |
Cousin Carlene September 1973 | 234 |
The Red Rocks October 1973 | 241 |
Come Together June 5 1970 | 63 |
You Can Be in My Dream If I Can Be in Yours June 5 1970 | 72 |
IO Up on the Ridge June 24 1970 | 85 |
Water Cool Water July 4 1970 | 96 |
The Time Capsule August 5 1970 IOI 14 Visitors September 2 1970 | 107 |
Heart Failure September 15 1970 | 112 |
The Libra Birthday Party October 8 1970 | 119 |
School Days October 12 1970 | 125 |
Pearl Harbor Day December 7 1970 | 132 |
The Physical January 11 1971 | 139 |
Sinbad February 1971 | 145 |
Miami March 15 1971 | 152 |
Here Comes the Sun April 1 1971 | 159 |
The Nature of Time May 1 1971 | 164 |
Lia May 15 1971 | 169 |
Change in Seasons August 15 1971 | 174 |
Gathering Together November 1971 | 179 |
Consciousness Raising April 1 1972 | 185 |
Easter April 8 1972 | 195 |
Horse Dreams December 24 1973 | 246 |
Biting the Bullet June 1974 | 252 |
Tricky Dick August 8 1974 | 260 |
Rufus September 1974 | 266 |
Me and Bobby McGee NovemberDecember 1974 | 272 |
Nick February 14 1975 | 278 |
Christine March 1975 | 283 |
The Bionic Dog April 1975 | 287 |
The Roundup September 1975 | 294 |
Aunt Mabel and the Owl August 1976 | 300 |
Donuts September 1976 | 306 |
More Big Birds October 1976 | 311 |
The Deerskin and the Dobie Pad June 1977 | 320 |
The King Is Dead August 1977 | 324 |
Beatniks in the Huerfano August 1977 | 328 |
Ram Dass and Holy Faith September 1977 | 340 |
Postlogue November 2004 | 346 |
Authors Note and Acknowledgments 353 | |