Stranded in Oregon, Part 1: Crash Land Into An Anarcho-Communist Commune

When we arrived in Oregon, we were stranded from the start.  We were left behind the grocery store in a small town, as per the instructions of our contact here. We sent our ride share mate off, not sure what was to come for us from this point.  This is easily one of the craziest things we had ever done, just having traveled cross country with a stranger, while on the run, only to be left alone with all of our stuff behind a grocery store.  We were now at the mercy of friends of our contact, who hadn't inspired much confidence in is thus far, considering she wouldn't answer her phone when we needed her most. 

So there we were, standing behind a tiny grocery store in a tiny town.  It was the type of town that smelled like sawdust from logging, which was the industry that kept it going. We were told by our contact last night that we could camp in this very area.  Being there, it made a tiny bit more sense as to why she was able to do so considering there was a little wooded area next to a stream along the back of the property.  We looked around and determined that while you could camp there, you may not be immune to police bugging you which was the last thing we wanted.  It took just about the rest of the money we had, but the night in the hotel seemed worth it.  

Usnea, the amazing lichen I've mentioned in two articles now, after the following paragraph.

It was raining, all to add to the atmosphere of the day.  It was early fall in Oregon, and they were experiencing much higher temperatures for the time of year than I was used to. From my understanding, what they were experiencing was normal.  Detroit was expecting snow when we left, so to come to a place where all the leaves were still green and temperatures were relatively okay was a bit shocking to us.  I spent some time observing the plants.  There were many conifer trees like I expected.  Something I didn't expect was for the maple leaves to be absolutely giant. Everything was damp and green and vivid, it was almost picturesque. There was a white fuzzy thing growing all over, which I later found to be the well known lichen usnea. 

We decided to pull out our smaller dab piece to do a few dabs by the creek.  There was an area relatively out of sight that we could sit in and smoke.  While we recognized the fact that we were in a legal state for cannabis, we were still cautious as we weren't looking for any trouble from police, regardless of the legal situation in Oregon.  We were stressed, tired and waiting for a ride that might not come, it was time to calm our nerves. So we did our dabs and talked about what was to come. 

After we packed up the dabs, we paced around for awhile waiting.  I used the restroom in the grocery store, which was barely larger than a big convenience store in total size.  Within a few minutes of me coming back out a truck pulled in the parking lot, driving to the back of the store where we were standing.  We spoke to each other and established that we were the people he was here to get.  After loading our things in the back of his truck, we continued to his house.  

We talked on the way of our plans in Oregon and about his friendship with our contact.  He was like a viking in appearance, which is a good way to describe him.  He had on a flannel jacket and a baseball cap.  We drove past the lumber mill, which employed most of the people in the town.  He rambled on and eventually we slowed down in front of a very Oregon looking house, which he pulled into the driveway of.  There were several RV's in the driveway, and a tent in the back yard.  The dogs of the property, Jackson and Bobo(this is Rebel's sister, her name is a bit too unique to share, and I'm not trying to link specific people to this story, for their protection) came running out to greet the truck. 

We started to load our things inside and I ran into pretty much the whole family along the way.  The woman of the house, the owner that is, asked me what my name was.  Knowing that this is a hippy household cool with any name you give them I paused for a second to thing and told her Lily. I could have picked anything and it probably would have worked.  There was a guy on the property that actually went by the name of Crash, for example. 

I immediately met her daughter in law, the mother of twins I had mentioned in my previous post about my last acid trip.  She was a young average looking woman with two babies in her arms.  There were kids running around, one with dreadlocks.  Apparently they had just moved into the house themselves only a few days before our arrival, which led to the house being absolutely stuffed with unpacked boxes.  We put our things in a spot in the living room to keep dry until we had a chance to put our tent up.  

After setting down our things, we returned to the porch where the man that picked us up was, I'll just call him R. We asked him if he wanted to dab and he said sure.  I got the bong ready and brought it back out.  He made a comment along the lines of "You'd better keep that private unless you want it to disappear." He seemed to be referring to the many hippies that seemed to be occupying the house.  He directed us to what was at that time his bedroom, with what was evidently his son.  

We did our dabs and made introductions.  He introduced himself as a medical cannabis farmer, in the process of moving his farm to this new location.  He talked of previous struggles this season of having to move his crop, which resulted in the lowest yield of his career.  We were told by our contact that we could tell these people, specifically the woman of the household, what we were dealing with and not have to worry.  She said they would do nothing but help us. 

So we told them we were on the run, headed eventually to Mexico.  We said we came here because our contact told us there was good paying work.  When we finished, AV told us that he had his trimming needs covered, considering the low amount he grew this season.  He said he had some friends that might need help, but he'd have to contact them.  He advised that we contact our contact here, who I'll just call Hippy from here on out.  Considering she had told us we were going to stay here to work here, we were a bit worried at her ability to actually help us with this.

He explained that there were currently people staying on the property to trim, some in tents some in RVs.  The larger RV housed an elderly man, who depended on these people who were not his family for just about everything.  The woman with the twin and her husband were not residents, just visiting with the babies.  The kids were of the man and the woman, and there was evidently another son around somewhere.  It immediately struck us that we may have moved into a communist situation, with no food or money of our own.

As time went on, it was clear that while we had some things in common with these people, we weren't like them.  We are anarcho-capitalists who were stranded at what was essentially an anarcho-communist commune in the hills of Southern Oregon.  We had no money, no transportation and were being forced to depend on someone that so far, hadn't really done much good other than convince us to move across the country for nothing.  This difference in philosophy made our experience at that property interesting.  We learned a lot though, and not all of our experiences there were bad.  It was an interesting life experience that reminded us what we already knew, we are not into communism. 

Note: The images used in this post are off of Google, as I don't have many pictures of Oregon. The first one is just an image of the area on Oregon we ended up in. The other is of Usnea, a lichen worth looking into.