A.L.I.C.
Association of Lesbian Intentional
Communities
Who We Are
LANDED
by
Bethroot Gwynn
We
sometimes joke about being dinosaurs. Or we ruminate about the Shakers, and
wonder if we too are a “utopian” community that will eventually die out for
lack of heirs. We are lesbians who went back to the land around 30 years ago,
and – despite our relative invisibility to those who chronicle recent feminist
history – some of us are still here. Still splitting firewood. Still putting
seeds in the ground, growing fruits and vegetables. Still pausing in the middle
of chores to marvel at the tumble of white clouds in a blue sky, or to stare
respectfully into big dragonfly eyes – all green and gold she is, stretched
out alongside green gold rhododendron leaves.
We
still sing together, many of us. Still help each other build houses, or work on
structures we created that by now need repair. Still gather for potlucks,
concerts, readings, rituals. Still look around the circle at mostly
white-skinned women. Still quarrel in our twosomes, threesomes, land groups.
Still ruffle each other’s feathers with insensitive remarks that stir class
differences.
Still.
The
night is so Still. The quiet so profound – I can hear the occasional crisp
leaf land in the brush, hear a sweet pea pod snap open. Bugs fiddle a distant
chorus of legs. If I listen long enough, a deer will crunch crunch through dry
forest; an owl will hoo hoo. Night sky is so available, arching deep dark over
trees, ridges, creatures, me. Lavish with stars, clouds of light float a milky
way. There is a song we sing, we lesbians:
“There
is a sacred one inside All the stars and all the
galaxies Run through Her hands like
beads.”1
I
moved to the woods to live in sacred space. At the time, I was part of a social
movement, lesbians creating women’s land. The connections were so clear:
loving women, loving the Earth. Living close to the Mother, learning from Her
natural processes, tending Her body hands-on. We would go deep with Nature, with
each other – inventing a new sub-culture away from the patriarchal mainstream.
“I, quietly, by the thousands/ Step into a shrine of my own making/ I, and the
multitudes of women who have slipped silently away from the man’s
ceremonies.”2What would we become, what would we discover, creating our own world in
the lap of the Goddess?
Well,
we did not discover utopia. Disappointments, conflicts, poverty, isolation,
backlash pressured our fledgling communities, dwindled our numbers. Land-based
living is hard work, and Mother Nature – for all Her generosity – is a
rigorous teacher. She can insist, no matter what I have planned for a given day,
that the long road be ditched during a pouring rain, that the long waterline be
repaired after an animal’s bite-through. She is a tough lover. Her wasps
sting, her bears sometimes claim the apples, her rabbits munch on vegetables,
her snowfall downs trees. I bow to what I cannot control.
And,
on the other hand of discovery, what an amazement it is to control so much. To
be responsible for the water system that supplies my house, to make the fires
that keep it warm, to have made the house – with the help of many women – in
the first place. There is no Authority here, other than the mighty elemental
powers, other than lesbian ingenuity.
Journal entry, 1996: Only two of us,
and the 55-gallon drum full of kerosene weighs over 400 pounds. We rolled it off
the back of the truck, easing it down slowly onto some old tires. But now it is
lying on the ground, and we must get it vertical. We cannot lift it up even one
inch. Two hefty men have arrived to deliver firewood and are unloading it out of
sight nearby, They could make quick work of this kerosene drum uplift if we
asked them to. Instead, we think. We roll the drum onto the end of a 2x4, then
stack another 2x4, roll the drum – one by one, drum roll by drum roll, a stack
of 2x4s eventually supports the drum and lifts it high enough so that when we
– she 57, I 55 – do finally give it our brawn, it tips easily into place. 20
years on this land, feat after feat of wise woman brain muscle at work.
The challenges of country life
hone our relationships with one another toward resilience, forbearance, over the
long haul. We are committed to the land; She is the ground for our connections,
and She holds us steadfastly, whatever the variable weather of our
partnerships/friendships/loverships. Some of us have close-in land companions.
Some of us choose more distance. Meadow and forest give us room to breathe on
our own – as well, give us wonders to share together. “Science lesson!” my
land partner will call to me, or I to her, pointing out some astonishing quirk
of the natural world.
Over these decades, living up close with the waxing and waning, the light
turning dark turning light, the seed becoming flower becoming fruit becoming
seed, we land lesbians have become women who dig and decorate a grave. Who place
the body of our sister into the fiery furnace. Who bury beloved ashes in a
garden plot, or scatter precious ashes on the boundaries of the land. We are
blessed to be stewards of these lands where we can give women final honor, final
rest. And I have no doubt that the Mother of all mysteries participates with us.
Once, it happened this way:
“We
ached and cried, rejoiced for the gift of this pure life. There were no shortages of
miracle: hardened hearts among us
softened,
number synchrony framed the day.
And then She Herself showed up at ceremony,
Goddess on Her belly,Snakewoman
actual, six feet long and swollen with Her meal
gliding through green grass toward our assembly
creeping underneath the circular platform
bisecting the circle
as is Her wont – to cut through.”3
We make ceremony, and more. Lesbian creativity has flourished among us,
inspired by the quiet, the beauty, the adventure of pioneering women’s space
away from the densities of urban life. From these hills have come paintings,
poems, essays, pottery, drawings, photographs, fiction, memoir, plays,
magazines, books, songs. Women have journeyed to these hills for workshops on
country skills, meditation, massage, lesbian sexuality, Tai Chi, Personal
Theater, sacred dance. Women come to lesbian land for spiritual sustenance, for
community rituals and personal retreats. They are nourished by an exquisite
sense of safety in women-only surrounds, in the sanctuary Nature offers. Many
women honor the sheer existence of women’s lands as crucial for themselves,
for the planet, whether or not they personally ever spend time on the lands. Our
cultural impact – the fruit of our work -- has reached wide in the lesbian
world and belies our small population.
Small, and aging. Puzzled about posterity. In our heydays – the 1970s
and 80s, the early 90s – there were many more women wending their way up our
gravelly roads.
A
few intrepid young women have found us and joined our extended clan. A few young
feminist scholars have studied us. But these days, lesbian land seems to be a
well-kept secret. Many young dykes are astonished to learn that women’s lands
exist, and are sometimes hardly able to fathom the concept, attached as they are
to queer self-definition, more self-aware as sexually deviant than
woman-identified. Lesbian lands did have some measure of notoriety in the
heydays. We have been lampooned as dogmatic, as humorless fanatics, as earth
muffins and bliss bunnies. Struggles among country women doing the difficult
work of building community have received more press than our warmhearted
circles, our celebrative songs, our luscious gardens. Not to mention – Yea,
let us mention, let us proclaim – the green trees, the dust, the moss, the
waving grasses, the rain clouds, the silence that enfold us.
I write from the hills of
Southern Oregon, which shelter over a dozen women-serving lands. Lesbian land
communities exist elsewhere as well: in Arkansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, Maine,
Ohio, Vermont, and other parts of the US; in Australia, New Zealand, Britain.
The connections are so clear: loving women, loving the Earth.4
(Endnotes)
1
Circle Song, Sufi origins. 2
from “Temple Poem” by Bethroot Gwynn, 1982/2003. Excerpted in WeMoon ’05.
3 from “She Took Chris, Then
Julie” by Bethroot Gwynn, 1998.Excerpted
in WeMoon ’03.
4For
information about lesbian lands, see Shewolf’s Directory of Wimmin’s
Lands (POB 1515, Melrose, FL 32666); MAIZE, Country Lesbian Magazine
(maize@wiseheart.com); Association of Lesbian Intentional
Communities (ALICinfo@juno.com); barbarad30@yahoo.com(So. Oregon lesbian lands); Oregon Women’s
Land Trust, POB 1692, Roseburg, OR 97470;Tee
Corinne, The Little Houses on Women’s Lands, Pearlchild, 2002; Hawk
Madrone, Weedingat Dawn: A Lesbian
Country Life, Harrington Park Press, 2000; LaVerne Gagehabib and Barbara
Summerhawk, Circles of Power: Shifting Dynamics in a Lesbian-Centered
Community, New Victoria Press, 2000; Pelican Lee, OWL Farm Stories,
POB 304, Ribera NM, 87560, 2002; offourbacks LesbianLand Articles,
March/April and May/June, 2003.
A
version of this article appears in Sinister Wisdom, #63, “Lesbians and
Nature” and in WomanSource Rising Newsletter, Volume 2 Issue 1.
© 2010 ALIC