No place like home: Living in a commune means sacrifices and special experiences for teen

Unshaven legs. Chicken-fried tofu. Strange body piercings. These are considered normal in my home.

I live in an 88-acre hippie commune. For those of you with raised eyebrows, that's not its official title. It's actually called Lost Valley Educational Center and it's an intentional community-conference center near Dexter.

Twenty other people live with me (although not in the same building). We eat lunch and dinner together, we have meetings together and we're like an extended family. True, a rather strange family, but a tight-knit one just the same.

We also have "visiting hippies" who come to intern and apprentice. They come to learn about community life and agriculture.

I've lived here for six years and it is truly a unique experience. During the summer I can swim in the creek, play in the meadow, go on hikes in the forest or just curl up in a hammock outside my home. During the winter I can go to the lodge and sit around the fireplace and talk to everyone with a big mug of peppermint tea.

I wasn't always satisfied about living here. Before we moved here my parents were in the Navy and we lived in military housing. The move up to rainy Oregon from mild California was a big change. But for the first few months, everything was so exciting and new. It thrilled me to live in a rustic old cabin and have to walk outside to a shared bathroom and eat dinner with a couple of dozen others.

But it got old real quick. Sharing my room with my brother and sister was a pain. Walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night was annoying. Eating healthy was also bugging me. I mean, who ever heard of Mock Chicken Noodle soup or Almost Better Than Sex cake (which was actually pretty good, but that's beside the point).

I almost adjusted to the new way of life, but I'm the only teen-ager here as well. Trying to be normal was hard enough without kids from school telling me how weird it was that I lived there.

Kids don't tease me as much anymore, but I still am sometimes self-conscious about the people I live with. The people who live here love having a teen-ager live near them. They try to treat me special in some ways. They ask me about school and what I do in my spare time. They talk about me and the other kids at the meetings. I also do a once-a-week cook shift so I can interact with the adults around me.

Recently, I moved into a more modern home within Lost Valley. It actually has a bathroom! My old house was only a "temporary house." It had no bathroom and we had to install heat ourselves. There was no kitchen, but my dad built one in around a lone sink. This new house is part of a fourplex. Our section was designed to be two apartments, the upstairs and the downstairs, meaning we have two bathrooms and a kitchen and a kitchenette.

For the first time in two years, I actually have my own room. The old house had one bedroom and a loft, but we built on an additional bedroom. This was my room for a year, but then my parents decided that the only boy should get his own room. My little sister moved in with me, and it's wonderful! I never appreciated privacy until now.

When I grow up, I probably will move away from Lost Valley. I like community, but permaculture and agriculture just really aren't for me. Maybe I'll find a community that has a different basis for living. Or maybe I'll just start my own! The whole community atmosphere is comforting and nuturing. I really love it.

I also know my life will never be "normal," but - especially with our new house - it's getting an inch closer to what society thinks is "normal." As my mom puts it, "Everyone else thinks they're not `normal,' but at least you know you're not."

Cami White is a freshman at Pleasant Hill High. She can be reached at 20Below@guardnet.com.

Someday the 60's will die, and all these grateful brain-deaders with them. At which point our youth will finally stand a chance to be raised half-way normal.
What a horrible legacy that continues to inflict damage 40 years later......

The only contact I have with a commune was years ago when I stopped at 'Alpha-bits,' a storefront/restaurant the Alpha Farm in Mapleton runs. The creep serving me made it plain he thought I was attractive and wanted to get to know me.

Gack!

I am male and that ain't my thing. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough, and never stopped again.

I couldn't take the crap of a commune in any case. I believe in two words many commune rats hate; "NO!" and "MINE!"

Communes are so 40 years ago. The only difference is libs have cheese-cloth memories of their heydays, it was the last time they did anything interesting and want to inflict them upon their spawn. They are not a right-of-passage just a stupid time-warp.
Let them eat lentils!
Woodstock III, a case in point. (it's freaking over!!!!)
"You can't go home again, but you can live in your parent's basement."

"You can't go home again, but you can live in your parent's basement."

LOL! Tomas Wolfe who wrote 'Look Homeward Angel' that dealt with home as a place in time as well as space would agree with you. One thing fueling communes is they are part of the underground economy which is huge here.

There are barter currencies, cannabis and drugs being swapped for goods and services, Identity theft booty liquidation, fifty cent on the dollar food stamp sales, classes on how to look crazy enough to con SSI out of the system, etc etc.

Some of those people are fugitives and communes are an underground resort for them. Naturally my observations have extrapolation to them, but I've seen and learned enough to put enough pieces together to know they have to have certain social elements in place to survive.

We also have a huge number of Rainbow Family members locally, and they are quite into the same mindset and social group as commune members.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.