From: seaverw@columbia.dsu.edu (W. A. Seaver)
Subject: Haven, Part The First
Organization: Dakota State University
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 01:59:53 GMT

                              _Haven_
                           Part The First

    Summer wore her hair slightly shorter now, still uncombed, red 
strands parasailing out on all sides. She still had the torn olive- 
green army jacket with its purple "Jesus Saves! by using double 
coupons and shopping wisely" button on the lapel, and a stained 
"Dead Kennedys: Nazi Punks Fuck Off" T-shirt beneath. She had 
replaced the two hoop rings through the side of her left nostril 
with small ruby and sapphire studs. The only other discernable 
difference was the switch from black combat boots to brown leather 
hiking boots. Standing there on the trail in the woods, one foot 
resting on the trunk of a fallen tree and hands on her hips, Summer 
looked like a guerilla soldier about to take on a third-world army.
    "Hey, girl," she said. "How's the road treated you?"
    "It has," I replied, and leaned over the fallen tree to hug her.
    She ran her fingers through my thick black hair. "Hair! You've 
got hair!"
    "Yeah, well, I got tired of shaving around the braids every 
morning."
    She took my hand and led me down the trail. "We've got almost 
two dozen people living at The Haven now. I never _dreamed_ it would 
catch on so fast, and we're only the third or fourth Haven in the 
country. It was _easy_! The Society set us up with the land, and the 
people just _came_."
    I met several of the people before long. Joanne: a 34 year old 
black woman who was a photographer for the Minneapolis _Tribune_. 
Rod, a crew-cutted architect from Ft Scott, Kansas. Jim, who dropped 
out of grad school a year before achieving his PhD in chemistry to 
become a member of the family. Jeannie: a 27 year old sociologist 
and mother of two small girls. Sharon, whose path of self-discovery, 
begun when she walked out on her husband, led here.

    The Haven was constructed by hand, with Rod's construction 
expertise, and following a design laid out by Jeannie. She arranged 
the individual living quarters in a square, with the communal areas- 
-the dining room and the commons room--placed in the center, an area 
they called Center Square. "This way," she cheerfully pointed out, 
"everyone is practically forced to be together at least a couple 
times a day."
    Their Spiritual Guide (he did not like the label "minister" and 
refused to be called a spiritual "advisor") was a big guy named 
Mark1. (Evidently another Mark was also resident). He had been sent 
from Haven #1 in Oregon to help this Haven find its way.
    "The Gaia Society gives two big boosts to new Havens," he told 
me. "First, it secures an appropriately nature-ish plot of land. 
Second, they send out a Spiritual Guide like myself to, you know, 
get 'em nosed in the right direction."
    He had a long, thick beard, and kept his hair pulled back into a 
ponytail that reached to his shoulderblades. He wore a T-shirt with 
an image of a wolf snarling out at me. His jeans weren't quite worn 
through, and his hiking boots were covered with dried mud and 
leaves. The unlikeliest spiritual person I'd seen.
    "Really, I don't do much. Officiate the occasional marriage. 
Bury the dead--though I haven't had to do that yet. Since our 
'spiritural ecology' teaches reverence for the Earth as a whole, we 
don't have church or weekly sermons as such. Mostly, I'm here for 
folks to come talk to."
    Mark1 took me to see The Spot, the most important of their 
meditation areas.
    "The word 'meditation' turns a lot of folks off," he said as we 
walked down a path different than the one I came in on. "But it's 
the best word, in my eyes. Because we come, and sit, and become 
_entranced_ by what's around us. Gaia is not just what's around us, 
it's a _part_ of us. And since Gaia hasn't gotten personified--so 
far--there's no need for any church. But some places are more 
special than others. The Spot is one."
    We came to a clearing dominated by a granite cliff. Two large 
boulders sat at the base of this wall, and from between them, a 
spring gushed out a narrow opening a foot or so below ground level. 
It formed a crystal-clear 50-yard-wide pool before continuing as a 
small stream through the woods. A few benches made of notched-out 
logs sat at the edge of the pool. The trail continued around the 
pool, and we followed it behind some trees and back into the open, 
standing on one of the large boulders. What I hadn't been able to 
see from a distance was the long, flat stone laid across the 
boulders for a bridge. Mark1 brushed some leaves away and sat down 
on the rock.
    "Folks come up here and watch the water coming out for a couple 
hours at a time. It's actually very hypnotic. And you can't see it 
from here, but from the other boulder you can look through a notch 
in the hills and see for almost twenty miles."
    "This is where your water comes from?"
    "_Our_ water, yes. A hydroelectric generator is down there, too. 
You can't see it because half it's underwater, half's underground on 
the other bank. We were extra special to conceal it so's not to ruin 
the looks. Same contraption pumps water back to The Haven."

    Summer sat crosslegged on her matress-on-plywood-on-cinderblocks 
bed and lit a cigarette.
    "Okay," she said to me. "Why'd you come here?"
    "You invited me."
    "You wouldn't come halfway cross the country just to visit. I 
know how you think, Candi. I can't believe you even responded to my 
letters."
    "Summer, I'd never kiss you off after three years on the road 
together. I'm not that big a bitch."
    "But you are a loner. And you'd have every right to be pissed 
off at me. So what's the deal, you showing up where you know you've 
gotta relate with all these folks?"
    She got me. You can't fool many people who've shared every 
minute of three years of your life. "Travis found me."
    "Oh _shit_. In KC?" I nodded. "You didn't let him live after you 
left, did you?"
    That made me laugh through the coming tears. "For some reason, 
yeah. Not without splitting his forehead open with an ashtray, 
though."
    "Way to go, girl!" She high-fived me. "So you made it here."
    "I didn't feel safe anywhere else. Only, I don't know what to do 
now that I'm here."
    "Now, love, you relax."

    The Haven had two vehicles before I added my '79 Mustang to the 
herd: a green '76 Ford pickup, and a gold '86 Toyota 4x4. The 
morning after my arrival, Sharon and I drove the Toy the ten miles 
to Ridgeline over a twisting gravel road pitted by chuckholes half a 
foot deep. The back of the truck was loaded with paper sacks filled 
with corn, tomatoes and cucumbers. The sides of the sacks made rough 
scratching noises against one another as the chuckholes swayed the 
truck from side to side. My hand was wrapped around the "oh shit 
handle" while I was thrown first toward the left ditch then toward 
the right ditch. Sharon did an excellent job fighting the wheel. I 
got used to her talking to me without moving her eyes from the road.
    "This trip once a week wouldn't be worth it," she said, "if we 
weren't able to trade our extra garden produce for meat and milk and 
other things we can't supply for ourselves."
    "They don't have enough vegetables of their own?"
    "Ridgeline's soil doesn't grow well. Don't know why. I mean, 
ours is obviously okay, but ten miles down they haven't grown weeds 
for the past couple years. Can't complain. Doesn't hurt The Haven's 
economy."
    What made Ridgeline a town was its post office. It occupied the 
far south twelve feet of a long building that used to also contain 
the general store. What I could see through the fogged but unbroken 
windows of the store, though, were walls of empty shelves, and a 
dust-covered cash register that looked a hundred years old. Three 
tiny kids bustled each other at the public drinking fountain outside 
the post office door, trying to reach the spigot just over their 
heads.
    Few of the streets were paved. (As we passed by the softball 
field, we saw a teenage kid and a friend trying to unstick a jacked- 
up Chevy SS from the middle of the road). Main Street--all two 
blocks of it--was the only one wide enough for cars to park on.
    The Fayette Grocery store was the last building on Main Street. 
We pulled up and began carrying armloads of sacks inside. The floor 
was bare wood; it made hollow creaking noises that echoed off the 
dairy case at the rear of the store. The ceiling was fifteen or 
twenty feet high, with old-fashioned molding and ceiling fans that 
twirled slowly through the humidity. A fragile old woman sat on a 
wooden stool behind the counter. Sharon set her bags on the counter.
    "Mrs Fayette. Where's Myron?"
    Florence Fayette looked at Sharon with heavy-lidded eyes. "He 
passed on two nights ago. The cancer finally took him."
    "Florence, I'm so sorry."
    "Thank you, dear. But I had expected it. It's gotten a lot of us 
lately. I guess the older Ridgeline gets, the more susceptible we 
become."
    Before we left town, I stopped in the post office to hastily 
fill out and mail a postcard to Darci in Kansas City:
                      I'm OK now. More later.
                                  Love, Candi.
    I asked the postmistress, a short, round woman with gleaming 
black holes for eyes, if the mail ever got delayed because of 
problems with the road.
    "Oh, no. We're right on the bay. The Big Bay De Noc. Every 
morning, Paul Seitz from Escanaba comes in his motor boat [That's 
how she said it, two words] and goes around to Stonington 'n' 
Fairport 'n' Fayette 'n' Garden 'n' Ridgeline here and picks up the 
mail and takes it back to Escanaba. It's the only job he's got, 
because it takes all day, but I tell you I wouldn't trade him for 
it! Out there on the lake all day, but you know I guess some folks 
need their solitude. Where you from?"
    "Kansas City--mostly."
    "Oh, well, a big-city folk like you prob'ly doesn't care much 
for a place like Ridgeline, eh? Not much happening. 'Nother kid from 
the city--Escanaba, I think he was from--got himself stuck in the 
mud out here by the softball diamond just this morning. He come in, 
ask if we've got a pay phone so he can call a tow truck. Told him 
weren't no pay phone in Ridgeline, but I called Elmer Forrest and he 
come and pulled the kid out. Mighty grateful, that kid was. Don't 
think he'll stray too far off the pavement anymore."
    This was a woman who, obviously, took her job for the 
opportunity to talk to everyone in the community more than anything 
else. Sharon told me on the ride back that her name was Louise 
Courtisane, and that she would indeed talk your ear off about any 
subject you let her slip into.
    Ridgeline had introduced itself dubiously.

    I spent the first couple nights with Summer, but I had to find a 
different place to sleep when she and Jim doubled up. Jim offered 
his room, but I've never felt good about sleeping in someone else's 
bed by myself. So I untied my ratty sleeping bag from the backpack I 
had arrived with, and, as I had so many nights on the road with 
Summer, found a comfortable place beneath the stars.

    I was woken by a tap on my shoulder sometime after four. Rod was 
looking down at me; he smiled, and that made his eyes wrinkle. He 
pointed to the sky behind me. I rolled over onto my back and saw 
that the stars I had falled asleep under had been blotted out by a 
steel-grey sweep of clouds. Not far behind the trees, lightning sent 
a static-blue glow across the horizon.
    "You'll get wet in a moment if you stay out here."
    "S'pose so."
    "C'mon. Let's find a corner you can nest in."
    I folded my sleeping bag under one arm and let him lead me 
inside. His room was similar to the others: simple single-matress 
bed flush against one wall, recessed desk and shelves in the other, 
large curtained window looking into the forest. Hung on his walls, 
however, were pictures of houses, with names like Fallingwater, 
Taliesin West, Miller House, and Usonian Automatic printed beneath 
them.
    Rod noticed me scanning them. "A marvelous designer, Frank Lloyd 
Wright." Rod had thrown his jacket onto the chair and was sitting 
crosslegged on the bed in a long-sleeve T-shirt and cutoffs. 
"They're so beautiful on the outside, but the insides are awful. 
Completely inefficient. Dreary. I could never live in one. But nice 
from the outside."
    I looked at him and shrugged. He sat there and looked at me with 
bright eyes that in no way suggested the early hour.
    "What were you doing up?" I asked.
    "Oh, that's just my sleep pattern. Eight hours up, four hours 
down. I find it much more rythmically compatible for my body than 
sixteen up, eight down. I don't think we were ever meant to follow 
such a rigorous schedule. People come home from work, already having 
been up about ten hours, and they spend the rest of the evening all 
grouchy and irritable because they're so tired. Why not give 
themselves the rest they need? Go to sleep when you get tired, for 
heaven's sake! Don't wait another six hours! That, I think, is a 
major factor in the social disintegration going on out there. 
Jeannie agrees with me. She's been trying it herself, and says she 
feels just _great_ since she started!"
    "Is that part of your plan for 'one-world harmony'?"
    "We aren't trying to _coerce_ anyone to change their sleep 
habits, if that's what you mean. Nothing that big. Subtle things, 
like avoiding surnames, and designing The Haven so everyone has to 
interact with the others."
    "Oh yeah. I like that last part. But you guys have a big problem 
with that design. I'm surprised you of all people didn't catch it."
    "What's that?"
    "You can't add on. I know this place has only been around a 
couple years, and it's still small, but what happens when a hundred 
people are living here? There simply isn't space for that many."
    "Oh, well, this is only the incubator. Part The First. The idea 
is to eventually find a small town on the verge of closing shop, 
move in, take over, and rename it Gaia. It will become the working 
version of The Haven, while this Haven will remain for the newcomers 
to retrain their supressed psyches before moving into Gaia. Reduce 
the culture shock."
    "Ambitious. I'm impressed."
    "Mm. Perhaps _too_ ambitious. Haven #1's wanted to do that for 
years, but they can't find a suitable place. Gaia may turn out to be 
a pipe dream, but the Gaia Society and The Havens have come along 
splendidly!"
    Rod's enthusiam and optimism toward The Haven sparked me more 
than Mark1's philosophy or even Summer's societal rebellion. For the 
first time, I believed that this _could happen_. That it could work, 
and that it could be right. And as the morning sun broke through the 
picket fence of trees on The Haven's east perimeter, I forgot that I 
was tired.

<C> 1992 W.A. Seaver