 My name is Diana Kugel and I grew up in Georgia, kind of in the country in Georgia, and I moved to the Applegate in the 60s, moved to Oregon as a part of the Sweep West, the hippie movement. And why is history important? We all need to know what happened before so that we can know how to proceed in the future. And I have lived on the same piece of land for more than 40 years up in the mountains above the Applegate. I did commentaries on Jefferson Public Radio about living on that land for about 20, 25 or more years. And I lived in a little house that I built myself without electricity. So I lived for almost 40 years without electricity. And it was quite an adventure living there. And it was way up in the mountains in a remote spot. I like to say I was closer to my neighbors in nature than to my human neighbors, which was true. When I first moved up there I didn't have a car so I was hitchhiking wherever I went. And for years people would say, I remember you, didn't you used to hitchhike with the big green backpack? And I didn't have a car, I didn't have any electricity. So obviously I didn't have all the conveniences of kitchen equipment and entertainment and electric lights and those kinds of things. So I had kerosene lamps, I heated by wood. First winter I was up there, there was about three feet of snow. I didn't snow like that until this past winter when I had the same amount again this year. Now I live in a house that has electricity, but it's on the same piece of land. And so I'm living in a place where I've lived for more than 40 years. And that's real significant to me because I think our roots are important. I said one time I'm at a Japanese girl at a party here in the Applegate and she asked me how I came to Oregon and I said it was a part of the hippie movement and she said, what is hippie? And I thought, oh not everybody knows, but yeah it was the back to the land movement, was the part of the hippie movement that I related to. A lot of getting back to what we thought would be self-sufficiency, it wasn't but we tried living in the mountains and being close to nature. Those things were more important to me than the political part of the hippie movement, although it was all based on the same thing. There was a big emphasis on communal living, so I lived in community before I moved to the Applegate. I lived in a community in the Santa Cruz Mountains. So this idea of living communally and learning to love each other was important. Eating well, eating organically, those things were very important. It was interesting that the hippie movement was kind of an underground thing so that people became aware of communes all over the west coast. And the commune that I was in in California was started by my partner and me and then friends of his came to join and then friends of theirs came to join and there were about 12 of us who lived there for two years. But lots of people came in and out and back and forth and I just, last weekend went to this site of another commune that I lived in, South of Ashland called Hocola. And a very remote place at a higher altitude so there was lots of snow and same idea that a lot of people lived there who wanted to live communally with each other, keep the garden. We didn't have much money, but it was such a significant place to me personally because I had just come out of the mental institution and was at rock bottom in my own life. There was, I read somewhere that schizophrenia is a shattering of the personality and I felt like my personality had been entirely shattered. So going back to this commune where these people, when I went there, I said, I know what communal living is like and I can't do it now. I'm not strong enough in myself. I can't pull my weight. And they said, it's all right. You'll do it when you can. Just stay here and take care of yourself first and it was two years of complete healing and I don't know many places that would allow that kind of thing and you know, at its best the hippie movement did that. These people who said do what you can and when you can you can do more. It's complete healing. It was wonderful. Tell me about moving to, was it the Colstein Valley then that you moved to? The Colstein Valley, I had been living with a group of people and I went crazy and was in Napa State Hospital for about four or five months diagnosed with schizophrenia. Was this in California? I made my way to California in disguise. Because I have lots of friends and I ended up in hospitals under Reagan and that was not a good time. It was not a good time. No. So did you have any children? I had one. Okay, so you brought a child to the Colstein Valley? He stayed with his dad most of the time. So after I got out of the hospital, I was taken to a woman who said, another friend took me to a woman and said she needs a home and Sasha said, I have a TP on my land, she can live in the TP. So that was Hocola in the Colstein Valley and so I lived there with that group of people and my son was mostly with his father until I got myself back on my feet and was sure of myself again and but he would come and stay with me for a couple of weeks at a time or something like that. So how many people lived on the commune? It's always an interesting question because it varied according to what day it was. There were probably at Hocola seven or eight permanent members and I was one of those for two years but at any time there might be a dozen or 15 people there staying for several days or people came and they left and they came and they left. So how did you support yourself? Did you grow your own food? We had a wonderful garden and we were vegetarian so we could feed ourselves a great deal from the garden. There was a restaurant in Ashland called Mums, a famous restaurant that was run by five guys and one of them lived at Hocola so Hocola members would go down and help out at the restaurant every so often and then one fall we decided we needed to make some money and so we would go to Lake Chelan in Washington and pick apples but somebody had to stay and take care of the land so I said I would stay and this was a huge thing for me because it was very remote just enormous forests and fields and hills and nobody else for miles around and for me to stay there by myself after having been through the schizophrenic episodes took a great deal of courage can I do this and so it was after that that I knew I was because I did do it and I took care of the land while they were making money and after that I knew that I was on my feet again and could take care of myself and my son. So the land was healing it sounds like? I see that land as healing definitely. The land, the people, the people let me live there without, I told them I couldn't pull my own weight and they said that's alright you'll do what you can when you can do more you'll do more so that so it was a wonderful wonderful place for me to find myself again and I think hippie communes at their best fulfilled that kind of function. So how did the people, your neighbors treat you? We had no neighbors. None at all. This was very remote place and when I went back last weekend I saw how remote it is even though there are people on the road now there are other houses but it is still remote and and being on the place of Hocola and looking around and you see nothing but hills and then you see the freeway way in the distance I remember one time at the when I was living at Hocola I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard oh oh and I thought who would be owing in the middle of the night and then I realized I was hearing the freeway. So there was that ever presence and that reminder that it was remote part of you know feeling how remote we were I said well that's that is so far away from what we are and what we're doing and there was a commune down the road called Rainbow Star that turned into the Tibetan Buddhist and and I think it was founded after Hocola and it was way down the other end of the road that was all that was in this area in the Applegate there were four or five communes. Can you tell us about those? Well there was Motobini which had you know the usual dozen people in it and it kept going the longest of any of the commune and and people still live on the land and the people are still friends and so that was a very successful commune. There was Trillium and I taught at Trillium school the alternative school at Trillium commune and that was different kind of commune it was kind of more strict they had rules they were trying to do deliberate things whereas Motobini and communes like that were much more loose you know we just live together and we have dinners together and there was a commune close to where I'm living now called Laser Farm and I used to live before I moved to the land where I'm living now I lived in a barn that we turned into a house and I used to walk over the ridge down to Laser Farm on the other side so from Williams into the Thompson Creek Valley and then I'd stay there for a few days and walk back and sometimes I'd ride the horse over there and so there was a lot of a lot of interaction among people in the communes there was lots of fun we knew each other Eastside House was another commune it was the most laid-back commune they had no let's see the only rules were no dogs in the kitchen and no I don't know no dogs in the kitchen I remember that one so it depended the communes each other on personalities so to speak and I look back at those communes now and I know which ones I would would have enjoyed being a member of and which ones I would not have wanted to be a member of it varied was it generally about 12 people generally about a dozen I have heard a number of people you know you say how many people were in the commune and they say what I just said while there were so many people coming and going generally eight to 12 I think it's probably the number that most communes would stay at most of the time that's a good question I think more than a dozen a dozen there's even a lot of people to deal with that's a lot of personalities to try to mesh and on the other hand when you have 12 or 13 14 people together you know there's wonderful gatherings in the evenings and there's always music and and you have lots of people to help with the meals and that kind of thing if it's fewer than eight six or eight there's a whole lot of work to be done and you begin to feel like the burden of the work is is heavy so I I think maybe there's a balance between six and twelve or something like that so did all of those communes in the Applegate work the land they all work the land I think that was a commonality in communes that it was a back to the land movement and yeah to a greater or lesser extent I know Molto Benny grew their own hay and they grew their wine for their grapes for their wine and they were much closer to self-sufficiency than most of the communes that certainly more than the ones I lived at one of my favorite memories from the commune in California where I lived for two years was that I was baking bread and another woman in the commune named Janet was also baking bread and so we baked a lot of bread but we were not growing our vegetables very well it was very dry and we weren't good farmers so one day we took our bread in baskets and put cloths over them and we're in our hippie gear with our beads and our long skirts and and we went down to the valley and started knocking on the doors of the farmhouses and saying we bake bread but you like to trade bread for vegetables and they just loved it they just thought that was the best thing so we did that I guess until the commune fell apart we were trading bread for vegetables um you know your your acid insight and so mine came when I did I think it was my first acid trip with my boyfriend my partner and um and he went off tripping somewhere and I'm like you know just real and everything is exaggerated on acid yeah and then all of a sudden I thought boy you can make yourself miserable if you want to and just immediately I said okay I don't want to be miserable and so but that was a good insight you know that's that's wisdom yeah that's something you can take away after the drug trip and say you know you can make yourself miserable if you want to but you don't have to be miserable right so there are acid insights if you remember them it depends on acid is that things become brighter and and everything whether it's the colors of the movement or um you know you look at the clouds and everything that's got life to and I think there's something about that that that really does enhance our understanding of what we see and the words that we look at the clouds now and know well it looks pretty static but I know now how much movement there is up there and wow these colors now I'm more aware of colors when I look otherwise but I will add that my personal experience is that acid is a very dangerous drug and for borderline psychic cases it's very dangerous marijuana is very dangerous I would never ever do any drugs again because because of my experience and but not everybody is like that many people can handle it but when I hear when I hear people talking about how good drugs are I can say yes they are but you have to be very careful who you give it to and who's taking it because it can also be very dangerous things and and the music in the evenings and um sharing the meals together that was always um always important to that communal feeling and I think those I think those communes that lasted for a few years in Philippa I think were really good for us as a society and and what we learned collectively by going through that period I think they were important even if they didn't last I think one of the principles of the communes was a kind of integrated living so that your work your spirituality and your and and your recreation it was all a part of the same thing and it wasn't we were trying to get rid of that kind of separation so um yeah there was a great deal of talk about spirituality and there were some people who were very um felt very strongly that the drugs were uh means to um a higher spiritual life um so yeah nudity um why well because we were free you know we we felt like clothes were in encumberment and especially if it's hot so um I remember at the the commune in California where I lived um I was burning brush with another woman it was a really hot day and we were burning burning brush down in the orchard until we took off our shirts and we're I think just our shirts and we're burning brush and that was the day that the police came to raid the commune because it was rumored that we were uh had out of um uh black um and we had guns and black people and you know we did it one member was black and so and we had no guns um but anyway the police came and they raided us and so everybody else was up in the main building but they came down to the orchard and to get the two of us who were down there without our shirts I think that was the time that they said do you have any identification and I said well not on me nothing came with that raid by the way they saw that we were peaceful loving hippies you know for me personally in my own life I don't think I was I mean I've lived by myself for 40 years up in the mountains in a remote spot and why didn't I go back to a community well I communal living isn't my best way of being so I think that as older people I think it's a great idea but there would be the same kind of um difficulties with each other and personality conflicts and um that there were when we were younger so I probably won't I intend to be in my house until I die thank you