Naked in the Woods
Margaret Grundstein
I was poised for success. New Haven, New York, Washington, Boston: those were my coordinates. Forty years ago, armed with my Yale degree in Urban Planning, I was set to save the world, and rack up some hefty fees in the process. Instead I dropped out, heading west with my Indonesian husband, ten friends, and an ageless quest for utopia. It was 1970.Our covered wagon was a Chevy van, our first homestead a peaceful farm an hour outside Eugene, Oregon. After a year we moved even farther out, dropping off the grid to one-hundred-sixty acres of raw coastal mountainside leaving heat, plumbing, phones, electricity, media and the outside world behind. We bathed, ate, dreamed, and grew together. It lasted five years, and has fed me for a lifetime. This is my story.
* * * *
My husband: five feet two, brown skinned, Harvard smart, and always in charge. I loved a confident man with a little daring. Who was top dog? My guy! Hakim. The farm was his idea. He was right. We moved in February. By June we were eating organic greens fresh from our garden. Life was lush. Our soil was very fertile, and so was Fairchild. She was a gentle new addition to our tribe, who, like her long skirts and ample breasts, flowed with whatever was happening, another drifter along the hippie trail. By summer she was pregnant. The working assumption, by everyone including Guy, a charming Texan architect, was that the child was his. It didn’t matter. We welcomed this baby that would make us complete as a family.
Fairchild’s pregnancy went easily. In retrospect her prenatal care was appalling. She had none. Then, around her eighth month she found a midwife with limited experience and an affordable fee. Fairchild trusted as she always did, unfazed that midwives were illegal, in or out of a hospital. We were unconcerned. Birth was a natural process. Having the baby at home, then planting the afterbirth deep under the roots of our massive cherry tree, bound us to the juicy primordial ooze of womanhood. Or so I thought. In truth I was ignorant, able to drift with Fairchild because it wasn’t my body and it wasn’t my baby.
The birth was fast and uncomplicated. I photographed it. At first I was squeamish about looking between the spread legs of another woman. Then, aware that this delivery was both political statement and timeless miracle, I hefted my camera, focused my lens and shot everything from the first antiseptic wash to the sweet, sweet suckling at the end.
We gave Fairchild the downstairs bedroom off the dining room. Shine, our first homegrown infant, thrived. Shine’s mother did not. Fairchild started to loose energy and within a week she developed a fever which stayed around 102, sometimes spiking higher. We had come full circle. Wasn’t this what women used to die from? Hakim called an impromptu gathering around the dining table. I sat across from him and listened intently as he laid out his strategy, jumping to the core of our dilemma.
“We can’t call a doctor. The delivery was illegal.”
“What are we going to do?” Rocky asked nervously. He was seventeen with puppy eyes and a thick New Jersey accent, part of a random group of seekers, traveling west in an old school bus. His mother had died three years before and nothing had gone well for him since. We offered a new start.
Hakim’s face relaxed into certainty. “We have to break the fever,” he said, moving into the plan. “First we need to get the bedroom hot and wrap her body in blankets. Janet, fill every pot in the house with water and bring it to a full boil.” He was on a roll. “Then, pour the hot water into bowls and place them around her room. I want as much steam as we can get. We have to raise her body temperature.” Hak led the charge; us against the Man, we can do it ourselves. He stood up, stepped over the bench, and entered Fairchild’s room. I followed Janet, Guy’s actual girlfriend, into the kitchen, ready to help in any way I could, secretly thrilled by Hak’s willingness to walk where most men feared to tread. Surely this meant he would be a wonderful father and supportive husband when we decided to have our own child, our own little east meets west baby.
The downstairs bedroom with Fairchild and Shine became the focus of our attention; Hakim the dramatic center, the rest of us concerned witnesses. Although there was nothing to see but the closed bedroom door we could feel, hidden behind it, the heaviness of fear and illness. Only Hakim and people he designated were allowed to enter. I wasn’t one of them. From time to time, Hak, sweating, with his sleeves rolled up, would open the door a crack and indicate, in a low but intense voice his need for hot water, clean towels or extra blankets. Guy, the presumptive father, was with him along with Janet. They shuttled from the inner sanctum to our waiting faces, fetching what was needed, receiving what was requested. Together they worked for hours, sometimes supporting Fairchild as she moved, weak and passive, from her bed to a hot soak in the tub. Outside the sky darkened. Inside we continued our vigil. What was going on? When the door opened, I saw a painting, a still life, lit by candles, diffused by steam, its edges receding into shadow. A mattress sat on the floor in the center of the room, on top, the mounded form of a body; no face, no person, just a shrouded form, still and quiet. Hakim, barefoot, squatted in the corner of the room stirring herbs into a bowl between his feet.
I hovered outside the closed door like everyone else, each of us tense and concerned. What if Fairchild died? For that matter, what about us, could we get arrested? And the baby, Shine, who would take care of her? Questions multiplied and seditious doubts formed, accumulating like forbidden sin. Hak seemed in charge but he looked apprehensive. Did he really know what he was doing? Shouldn’t we call someone? Inside myself I heard a voice say, “Screw Hakim. This woman needs a doctor!” But I didn’t speak up. Too many egos, all of them male, were at work creating an ethic I felt I couldn’t question, and didn't want to question. Hours passed, it was almost midnight. Hak finally came out of Fairchild’s room, exhausted and spent. A few of us were still at the table. “The fever has broken,” he announced, as much to himself as to the rest of us. “She’s going to be fine.” There was a great feeling of relief. We believed and trusted. Why, because our self appointed shaman, my husband, said so. Evidently that was enough, at least for everyone else. Guilt seeped in. What kind of a wife was I?
We were lucky. I knew that. We had all played with fate. This time Fairchild recovered but I was sure Hak would challenge us to trust and jump again. Would I follow? Of course! Hadn't we had peeled off old ways like soiled clothes? Didn't we awaken each day to dress afresh, inside and out, in the raiment of our new glory? I pushed doubt aside. This was home, my old life far behind.
For years, under buzzing fluorescent fixtures, I parsed good literature, explored the sages, and sought answers through assigned readings. Now I lived inside the text. I was the story. Peace and love, the hippie mantra, sounded trite, but I thrived under its mantle, each day spent working together, building a dream.
Dinner was our unifying ritual. We were like cattle at dusk, randomly gathering from all corners of the field, no call or reminder needed as we lit the kerosene lanterns and sat down to eat. We had deliberately moved out of the present and back to a simpler time. None of us women wore make up or stylish clothes; our hair, loose and free, was our only adornment. The men mirrored us with manes that fell to their shoulders and beards that bushed out several inches from their faces, leaving cheeks, eyes and lips as islands in a hirsute sea. All of us looked like illustrations from The Little House on the Prairie, glowing in the warm light of good health and camaraderie. We were every Saturday Evening Post cover, every Hallmark card sentiment, and every myth of the American frontier, just fuzzier around the edges and funkier in our wearing of the diadem. This was a life that matched my temperament, harmony instead of combat. How could the world not love us? We were their dream come true.
Several weeks after Shine’s birth I caught a ride to town to develop my film. Don, who inspired our westward migration, grew up in Eugene. His parents, the Whites, were always gracious and Mr. White, a high school principal, generously let me use his darkroom. This time the Whites were gone for a few days, leaving me alone to do my work and water their plants. Rocky, who had driven me into Eugene, stopped by on the second day before heading home. We sat in the breakfast nook of the White’s neatly appointed kitchen.
“I picked up a hitchhiker on the way here. She’s really nice. I’m bringing her back to the farm.”
“Where is she now?” I asked, looking out towards our battered truck.
“She needed to pick up a few things,” he replied with a slightly proprietary air. “She has a tiny baby, a little girl.”
“Another baby! That will be wonderful. How long will she be staying?”
“Who knows?” he said, putting his empty mug in the sink, smiling. “But I’d better get going. I told her I’d meet up with her in an hour.”
Rocky left and I returned to the darkroom, my thoughts centered on the baby. People came and people went, but an infant; that was exciting. Maybe she’d still be there when I got back.
The next morning, I brought in the Daily Oregonian from the front porch and tossed it on the White’s kitchen table. It landed headline up. My eyes caught the bold dark print: BABYSITTER KIDNAPS INFANT. Knowledge hit like a vision, complete and sure. Anxiously I scanned the article. All the details matched. A young couple had hired a girl to watch their infant and she had disappeared with the baby. I turned on the television. Every channel was interrupting their regular bulletins with announcements by the distraught parents begging for their three-month-old little girl. We didn’t have TV or newspapers at the farm. No one there would know we were harboring a kidnapper. Full of adrenaline, I called home. Clint picked up.
“You’ve got a kidnapper,” I blurted out, too excited for niceties. “Rocky gave her a ride. That’s not her baby. It’s all over the news. Everything matches. I’m sure it’s the same girl.”
Clint, an ex naval pilot, was unruffled. He confirmed the hitchhiker was there and said he would check out the situation. I felt relieved, confident the authorities would be notified and the tiny baby returned to her parents. After a bit I rang the farm again.
“What did she say when you told her about the baby?” I asked Clint, who had once again picked up my call.
“Well,” he drawled, “we’re still working on it.”
“You mean nothing’s been done?” I barked into the phone. “No one has confronted her?”
Clint explained there was a lot of discussion going on about the right course of action.
“The right course of action,” I sputtered, feeling Hakim’s influence. I could just hear him. “Don’t call the pigs. We can handle it. She’ll give us the baby.” This was turning into every bad Western we suckled on as children, mixed in with a big scoop of hippie hubris. We don’t need no sheriff, this is our land. Out here on the frontier we take care of things ourselves, just like we did with Fairchild.
I had a different perspective standing in the White’s middle-class kitchen, miles from our cut-off little utopia. The newspaper sat in front of me and the TV blared desperate appeals and news updates. I saw the grieving young couple and heard their sobbing pleas. This was a crime. I hung up the phone, shaken. Someone needed to call the police. Would Hakim be furious? Would everyone at the farm hate me? I hesitated, and then reached for the phone.
“Hello, I need to speak with a person about the missing baby and the girl that took her. I think I know where you can find them.” The officer on the other end was attentive as I gave him my story. I hung up and quickly dialed again.
“Clint, I’ve called the police. They’re on their way. They should be there in about forty minutes.” I wanted everyone at the farm to have a heads up. I was no fool. They needed to hide the dope.
“Okay,” Clint said without shock or recrimination. “Thanks. We’ll take care of things.” What a relief. His response seemed like an affirmation of my decision. Of course it was. This was the right thing to do.
At the farm, negotiations between Hakim and the girl were in progress when the police arrived. In spite of his best efforts, she denied kidnapping the baby and refused to give it up. When the police got there it became a moot point. They took the baby and arrested the girl, leaving an officer to wrap things up. Roggie, who had dropped out of Yale to join us, described the scene to me when I got home.
He, along with Hak, Clint, Guy and Don, stood in a semicircle opposite the clean cut young cop. It was a face off. The cop asked questions. Hakim gave terse answers. Trying to be patient, the cop explained that the police were there to help. No response. It was an awkward alliance for both sides.
“Actually,” Roggie told me, “we were quite rude. I felt very bad for him. I’m the son of a cop, Margaret, and knowing it from the other side made me uncomfortable.”
Back in Eugene, as I waited for a ride home, I started to doubt. Fear seeped in. I found myself hoping someone besides my husband would pick me up. Could I stand up to Hakim? Was I really right? I hated facing the blade of his sharp mind when he argued doctrine. He never doubted himself. That was it. Right there is where our frisson happened, where we pressed on each other and the electricity buzzed. It wasn’t in bed, but in power and control. I fought it and sought it, blind to the fact that other, and better dances were possible. It must have been true for Hak as well; after all, what feeds the passion of a crusader more than the resistance of the unbeliever and the thrill of prevailing? This time was different. I had finally challenged him. We had moved off our center.
In the midst of my worry a vehicle pulled into the driveway. I looked out the window. It was Hakim, stone faced, waiting. I gathered up my things, locked the White’s front door and we headed back, stuck in the truck together, just the two of us.
“You never call the pigs! Never! Do you understand that?” Hak jabbed the air with his finger as he drove, emphasizing each angry point. “We do it! Ourselves!”
I started the ride sitting up, silent, staring forward through the cracked windshield. As he continued, I moved as far away as I could in the cab until I was pressed up against the door. Then I tucked myself in and folded over, laying my head on the seat in the space between us. I shut my eyes and tried to tune Hakim out. All I wanted was to disappear. Please stop, I begged in my mind. I can’t stand this. Please, please, just stop.
I was a failure in this noble new cause, clearly not up to the task of change. How could I have called the police? Yet no matter how inadequate I felt, how much he bludgeoned me with moral imperative, I knew, deep inside, where that baby belonged. She needed to be safely in the arms of her parents. Now! That was the only truth.
Even with this knowledge, I continued to berate myself, vacillating under his barrage. Clearly, my heritage, five thousand years of perfecting Jewish guilt, was not wasted on me. I kept up a steady rhythm in my head, an echo of the litany for Yom Kippur where congregants mournfully tap their chest chanting an alphabetic list of their transgressions, atoning in the hope of forgiveness. There I sat, hunched over, silently drowning in my failures. No I am not adventurous. Yes I get anxious. No I am never radical enough. It was one self-flagellation after another, until I got it. Oh yes, I got it! At least I won’t have to carry within me, for the rest of my life, the endless unbearable weight of assisting a tragedy. I knew I had done the right thing and I knew, with equal certainty, that Hakim was never, ever going to back me up on this. I would have to do it for myself. Aaaamen.
For a few months Hak initiated visits to the kidnapper in the mental institution where she was incarcerated. He wanted to be supportive of the young woman. The visits also served another purpose, a silent stand, low key but enduring, for Hakim’s belief that he could have solved everything if he had just been given enough time.
I never went, nor did I feel any sympathy, for Hakim or the girl.
* * * *
My husband: five feet two, brown skinned, Harvard smart, and always in charge. I loved a confident man with a little daring. Who was top dog? My guy! Hakim. The farm was his idea. He was right. We moved in February. By June we were eating organic greens fresh from our garden. Life was lush. Our soil was very fertile, and so was Fairchild. She was a gentle new addition to our tribe, who, like her long skirts and ample breasts, flowed with whatever was happening, another drifter along the hippie trail. By summer she was pregnant. The working assumption, by everyone including Guy, a charming Texan architect, was that the child was his. It didn’t matter. We welcomed this baby that would make us complete as a family.
Fairchild’s pregnancy went easily. In retrospect her prenatal care was appalling. She had none. Then, around her eighth month she found a midwife with limited experience and an affordable fee. Fairchild trusted as she always did, unfazed that midwives were illegal, in or out of a hospital. We were unconcerned. Birth was a natural process. Having the baby at home, then planting the afterbirth deep under the roots of our massive cherry tree, bound us to the juicy primordial ooze of womanhood. Or so I thought. In truth I was ignorant, able to drift with Fairchild because it wasn’t my body and it wasn’t my baby.
The birth was fast and uncomplicated. I photographed it. At first I was squeamish about looking between the spread legs of another woman. Then, aware that this delivery was both political statement and timeless miracle, I hefted my camera, focused my lens and shot everything from the first antiseptic wash to the sweet, sweet suckling at the end.
We gave Fairchild the downstairs bedroom off the dining room. Shine, our first homegrown infant, thrived. Shine’s mother did not. Fairchild started to loose energy and within a week she developed a fever which stayed around 102, sometimes spiking higher. We had come full circle. Wasn’t this what women used to die from? Hakim called an impromptu gathering around the dining table. I sat across from him and listened intently as he laid out his strategy, jumping to the core of our dilemma.
“We can’t call a doctor. The delivery was illegal.”
“What are we going to do?” Rocky asked nervously. He was seventeen with puppy eyes and a thick New Jersey accent, part of a random group of seekers, traveling west in an old school bus. His mother had died three years before and nothing had gone well for him since. We offered a new start.
Hakim’s face relaxed into certainty. “We have to break the fever,” he said, moving into the plan. “First we need to get the bedroom hot and wrap her body in blankets. Janet, fill every pot in the house with water and bring it to a full boil.” He was on a roll. “Then, pour the hot water into bowls and place them around her room. I want as much steam as we can get. We have to raise her body temperature.” Hak led the charge; us against the Man, we can do it ourselves. He stood up, stepped over the bench, and entered Fairchild’s room. I followed Janet, Guy’s actual girlfriend, into the kitchen, ready to help in any way I could, secretly thrilled by Hak’s willingness to walk where most men feared to tread. Surely this meant he would be a wonderful father and supportive husband when we decided to have our own child, our own little east meets west baby.
The downstairs bedroom with Fairchild and Shine became the focus of our attention; Hakim the dramatic center, the rest of us concerned witnesses. Although there was nothing to see but the closed bedroom door we could feel, hidden behind it, the heaviness of fear and illness. Only Hakim and people he designated were allowed to enter. I wasn’t one of them. From time to time, Hak, sweating, with his sleeves rolled up, would open the door a crack and indicate, in a low but intense voice his need for hot water, clean towels or extra blankets. Guy, the presumptive father, was with him along with Janet. They shuttled from the inner sanctum to our waiting faces, fetching what was needed, receiving what was requested. Together they worked for hours, sometimes supporting Fairchild as she moved, weak and passive, from her bed to a hot soak in the tub. Outside the sky darkened. Inside we continued our vigil. What was going on? When the door opened, I saw a painting, a still life, lit by candles, diffused by steam, its edges receding into shadow. A mattress sat on the floor in the center of the room, on top, the mounded form of a body; no face, no person, just a shrouded form, still and quiet. Hakim, barefoot, squatted in the corner of the room stirring herbs into a bowl between his feet.
I hovered outside the closed door like everyone else, each of us tense and concerned. What if Fairchild died? For that matter, what about us, could we get arrested? And the baby, Shine, who would take care of her? Questions multiplied and seditious doubts formed, accumulating like forbidden sin. Hak seemed in charge but he looked apprehensive. Did he really know what he was doing? Shouldn’t we call someone? Inside myself I heard a voice say, “Screw Hakim. This woman needs a doctor!” But I didn’t speak up. Too many egos, all of them male, were at work creating an ethic I felt I couldn’t question, and didn't want to question. Hours passed, it was almost midnight. Hak finally came out of Fairchild’s room, exhausted and spent. A few of us were still at the table. “The fever has broken,” he announced, as much to himself as to the rest of us. “She’s going to be fine.” There was a great feeling of relief. We believed and trusted. Why, because our self appointed shaman, my husband, said so. Evidently that was enough, at least for everyone else. Guilt seeped in. What kind of a wife was I?
We were lucky. I knew that. We had all played with fate. This time Fairchild recovered but I was sure Hak would challenge us to trust and jump again. Would I follow? Of course! Hadn't we had peeled off old ways like soiled clothes? Didn't we awaken each day to dress afresh, inside and out, in the raiment of our new glory? I pushed doubt aside. This was home, my old life far behind.
For years, under buzzing fluorescent fixtures, I parsed good literature, explored the sages, and sought answers through assigned readings. Now I lived inside the text. I was the story. Peace and love, the hippie mantra, sounded trite, but I thrived under its mantle, each day spent working together, building a dream.
Dinner was our unifying ritual. We were like cattle at dusk, randomly gathering from all corners of the field, no call or reminder needed as we lit the kerosene lanterns and sat down to eat. We had deliberately moved out of the present and back to a simpler time. None of us women wore make up or stylish clothes; our hair, loose and free, was our only adornment. The men mirrored us with manes that fell to their shoulders and beards that bushed out several inches from their faces, leaving cheeks, eyes and lips as islands in a hirsute sea. All of us looked like illustrations from The Little House on the Prairie, glowing in the warm light of good health and camaraderie. We were every Saturday Evening Post cover, every Hallmark card sentiment, and every myth of the American frontier, just fuzzier around the edges and funkier in our wearing of the diadem. This was a life that matched my temperament, harmony instead of combat. How could the world not love us? We were their dream come true.
Several weeks after Shine’s birth I caught a ride to town to develop my film. Don, who inspired our westward migration, grew up in Eugene. His parents, the Whites, were always gracious and Mr. White, a high school principal, generously let me use his darkroom. This time the Whites were gone for a few days, leaving me alone to do my work and water their plants. Rocky, who had driven me into Eugene, stopped by on the second day before heading home. We sat in the breakfast nook of the White’s neatly appointed kitchen.
“I picked up a hitchhiker on the way here. She’s really nice. I’m bringing her back to the farm.”
“Where is she now?” I asked, looking out towards our battered truck.
“She needed to pick up a few things,” he replied with a slightly proprietary air. “She has a tiny baby, a little girl.”
“Another baby! That will be wonderful. How long will she be staying?”
“Who knows?” he said, putting his empty mug in the sink, smiling. “But I’d better get going. I told her I’d meet up with her in an hour.”
Rocky left and I returned to the darkroom, my thoughts centered on the baby. People came and people went, but an infant; that was exciting. Maybe she’d still be there when I got back.
The next morning, I brought in the Daily Oregonian from the front porch and tossed it on the White’s kitchen table. It landed headline up. My eyes caught the bold dark print: BABYSITTER KIDNAPS INFANT. Knowledge hit like a vision, complete and sure. Anxiously I scanned the article. All the details matched. A young couple had hired a girl to watch their infant and she had disappeared with the baby. I turned on the television. Every channel was interrupting their regular bulletins with announcements by the distraught parents begging for their three-month-old little girl. We didn’t have TV or newspapers at the farm. No one there would know we were harboring a kidnapper. Full of adrenaline, I called home. Clint picked up.
“You’ve got a kidnapper,” I blurted out, too excited for niceties. “Rocky gave her a ride. That’s not her baby. It’s all over the news. Everything matches. I’m sure it’s the same girl.”
Clint, an ex naval pilot, was unruffled. He confirmed the hitchhiker was there and said he would check out the situation. I felt relieved, confident the authorities would be notified and the tiny baby returned to her parents. After a bit I rang the farm again.
“What did she say when you told her about the baby?” I asked Clint, who had once again picked up my call.
“Well,” he drawled, “we’re still working on it.”
“You mean nothing’s been done?” I barked into the phone. “No one has confronted her?”
Clint explained there was a lot of discussion going on about the right course of action.
“The right course of action,” I sputtered, feeling Hakim’s influence. I could just hear him. “Don’t call the pigs. We can handle it. She’ll give us the baby.” This was turning into every bad Western we suckled on as children, mixed in with a big scoop of hippie hubris. We don’t need no sheriff, this is our land. Out here on the frontier we take care of things ourselves, just like we did with Fairchild.
I had a different perspective standing in the White’s middle-class kitchen, miles from our cut-off little utopia. The newspaper sat in front of me and the TV blared desperate appeals and news updates. I saw the grieving young couple and heard their sobbing pleas. This was a crime. I hung up the phone, shaken. Someone needed to call the police. Would Hakim be furious? Would everyone at the farm hate me? I hesitated, and then reached for the phone.
“Hello, I need to speak with a person about the missing baby and the girl that took her. I think I know where you can find them.” The officer on the other end was attentive as I gave him my story. I hung up and quickly dialed again.
“Clint, I’ve called the police. They’re on their way. They should be there in about forty minutes.” I wanted everyone at the farm to have a heads up. I was no fool. They needed to hide the dope.
“Okay,” Clint said without shock or recrimination. “Thanks. We’ll take care of things.” What a relief. His response seemed like an affirmation of my decision. Of course it was. This was the right thing to do.
At the farm, negotiations between Hakim and the girl were in progress when the police arrived. In spite of his best efforts, she denied kidnapping the baby and refused to give it up. When the police got there it became a moot point. They took the baby and arrested the girl, leaving an officer to wrap things up. Roggie, who had dropped out of Yale to join us, described the scene to me when I got home.
He, along with Hak, Clint, Guy and Don, stood in a semicircle opposite the clean cut young cop. It was a face off. The cop asked questions. Hakim gave terse answers. Trying to be patient, the cop explained that the police were there to help. No response. It was an awkward alliance for both sides.
“Actually,” Roggie told me, “we were quite rude. I felt very bad for him. I’m the son of a cop, Margaret, and knowing it from the other side made me uncomfortable.”
Back in Eugene, as I waited for a ride home, I started to doubt. Fear seeped in. I found myself hoping someone besides my husband would pick me up. Could I stand up to Hakim? Was I really right? I hated facing the blade of his sharp mind when he argued doctrine. He never doubted himself. That was it. Right there is where our frisson happened, where we pressed on each other and the electricity buzzed. It wasn’t in bed, but in power and control. I fought it and sought it, blind to the fact that other, and better dances were possible. It must have been true for Hak as well; after all, what feeds the passion of a crusader more than the resistance of the unbeliever and the thrill of prevailing? This time was different. I had finally challenged him. We had moved off our center.
In the midst of my worry a vehicle pulled into the driveway. I looked out the window. It was Hakim, stone faced, waiting. I gathered up my things, locked the White’s front door and we headed back, stuck in the truck together, just the two of us.
“You never call the pigs! Never! Do you understand that?” Hak jabbed the air with his finger as he drove, emphasizing each angry point. “We do it! Ourselves!”
I started the ride sitting up, silent, staring forward through the cracked windshield. As he continued, I moved as far away as I could in the cab until I was pressed up against the door. Then I tucked myself in and folded over, laying my head on the seat in the space between us. I shut my eyes and tried to tune Hakim out. All I wanted was to disappear. Please stop, I begged in my mind. I can’t stand this. Please, please, just stop.
I was a failure in this noble new cause, clearly not up to the task of change. How could I have called the police? Yet no matter how inadequate I felt, how much he bludgeoned me with moral imperative, I knew, deep inside, where that baby belonged. She needed to be safely in the arms of her parents. Now! That was the only truth.
Even with this knowledge, I continued to berate myself, vacillating under his barrage. Clearly, my heritage, five thousand years of perfecting Jewish guilt, was not wasted on me. I kept up a steady rhythm in my head, an echo of the litany for Yom Kippur where congregants mournfully tap their chest chanting an alphabetic list of their transgressions, atoning in the hope of forgiveness. There I sat, hunched over, silently drowning in my failures. No I am not adventurous. Yes I get anxious. No I am never radical enough. It was one self-flagellation after another, until I got it. Oh yes, I got it! At least I won’t have to carry within me, for the rest of my life, the endless unbearable weight of assisting a tragedy. I knew I had done the right thing and I knew, with equal certainty, that Hakim was never, ever going to back me up on this. I would have to do it for myself. Aaaamen.
For a few months Hak initiated visits to the kidnapper in the mental institution where she was incarcerated. He wanted to be supportive of the young woman. The visits also served another purpose, a silent stand, low key but enduring, for Hakim’s belief that he could have solved everything if he had just been given enough time.
I never went, nor did I feel any sympathy, for Hakim or the girl.
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Working notes
We descended like feral animals, pawing through the dumpster for food, scavengers with Yale degrees, far from our anointed futures. It was 1970. I had dropped out with my husband to live in a treehouse in Oregon, along with ten friends and an ever changing mix of strangers. No jobs, no money, no clothes, nothing but 160 acres of primal forest, a hand pump, and each other until land ownership tore us apart.
In “Naked in the Woods – My Unexpected Years in a Hippie Commune,” I chronicle my shift from reluctant hippie to committed utopian, against the story of our loss of innocence. Persuaded by the insistent rhetoric of my husband, a community organizer, I abandoned career and cachet for dirt and dreams. Once there he left me, seduced by the siren call of freer love. Now I had to choose. Was I still committed to utopia and most importantly, could I make it as a single woman in man’s country? Yes, was my answer as I put my overachieving shoulder to the task of building a cabin; hand-sawing driftwood for the foundation, ripping boards from abandoned shacks for siding. This was home, or so I thought.
As a group, we were all egos and no leader. Brotherhood frayed when food became scarce. We vied for eggs and grabbed bones off each others’ plates, hungry for shreds of leftover meat. These were small skirmishes, ones we could absorb. Land was a bigger problem. Who owned it, one of us or all of us? Money and our futures were at stake. We were not as far out as we thought.
I wrote Naked in the Woods because I thought it was time for my generation to tell our tales. My story chronicles a radical era and is, by default, told from a woman's point of view; mine, a feminist both then and now. In writing my book, invariably comparisons arose between then and now, heightening my awareness of the advances made by and for women over the last forty years. What also became clear were the unresolved questions of feminism, including who are we as women and what is equality? In 1970, I felt I needed to be more like a man, trying to discard my womanhood because it felt tainted. As feminists we valued what was masculine. Talk about ingesting the values of the oppressor. Now, many years later, I have gloried in the gift of pregnancy, suckled and succored two children, treasured my nurturing nature, and fought for internal strength. I thrill at being able to test myself in the world and celebrate the equality I have with men, even as I know and joyously honor that in many ways we are different. Over time perspectives evolve. Change happens. This I expected.
What I didn't expect was that the more I shared my tale of dropping out, at readings, in interviews and with friends, the less radical it felt to me. Had I become inured to the drama as I told and retold our adventure or was it that I had become more and more sure that what we did was not radical but reasonable? We had been raised to be good; to share, to see beyond race and income, and to make the world a better place. Every childhood story, parental exhortation, and moral parable set the mold; virtue and the search for it brought meaning to life. Naked in the Woods explores how I was willing to risk what looked like a pretty rosy traditional future for the chance to live from my better self, to experience the peace of love without sacrificing the thrill of adventure. Yes, the times were radical. The crust of old ways could no longer hold. Change erupted, spewing forth, messy, full of conflict and confusion.
But radical does not always mean an extreme departure from convention. Another definition is that which rises from a root source, connected to the fundamental. Radical can be the innate, the base. Maybe, we embodied both definitions, extreme in dropping out but acting on a fundamental aspect of ourselves as human. As always, meaning is subjective to the eyes of the beholder, a philosophy that once in itself was considered radical.
In “Naked in the Woods – My Unexpected Years in a Hippie Commune,” I chronicle my shift from reluctant hippie to committed utopian, against the story of our loss of innocence. Persuaded by the insistent rhetoric of my husband, a community organizer, I abandoned career and cachet for dirt and dreams. Once there he left me, seduced by the siren call of freer love. Now I had to choose. Was I still committed to utopia and most importantly, could I make it as a single woman in man’s country? Yes, was my answer as I put my overachieving shoulder to the task of building a cabin; hand-sawing driftwood for the foundation, ripping boards from abandoned shacks for siding. This was home, or so I thought.
As a group, we were all egos and no leader. Brotherhood frayed when food became scarce. We vied for eggs and grabbed bones off each others’ plates, hungry for shreds of leftover meat. These were small skirmishes, ones we could absorb. Land was a bigger problem. Who owned it, one of us or all of us? Money and our futures were at stake. We were not as far out as we thought.
I wrote Naked in the Woods because I thought it was time for my generation to tell our tales. My story chronicles a radical era and is, by default, told from a woman's point of view; mine, a feminist both then and now. In writing my book, invariably comparisons arose between then and now, heightening my awareness of the advances made by and for women over the last forty years. What also became clear were the unresolved questions of feminism, including who are we as women and what is equality? In 1970, I felt I needed to be more like a man, trying to discard my womanhood because it felt tainted. As feminists we valued what was masculine. Talk about ingesting the values of the oppressor. Now, many years later, I have gloried in the gift of pregnancy, suckled and succored two children, treasured my nurturing nature, and fought for internal strength. I thrill at being able to test myself in the world and celebrate the equality I have with men, even as I know and joyously honor that in many ways we are different. Over time perspectives evolve. Change happens. This I expected.
What I didn't expect was that the more I shared my tale of dropping out, at readings, in interviews and with friends, the less radical it felt to me. Had I become inured to the drama as I told and retold our adventure or was it that I had become more and more sure that what we did was not radical but reasonable? We had been raised to be good; to share, to see beyond race and income, and to make the world a better place. Every childhood story, parental exhortation, and moral parable set the mold; virtue and the search for it brought meaning to life. Naked in the Woods explores how I was willing to risk what looked like a pretty rosy traditional future for the chance to live from my better self, to experience the peace of love without sacrificing the thrill of adventure. Yes, the times were radical. The crust of old ways could no longer hold. Change erupted, spewing forth, messy, full of conflict and confusion.
But radical does not always mean an extreme departure from convention. Another definition is that which rises from a root source, connected to the fundamental. Radical can be the innate, the base. Maybe, we embodied both definitions, extreme in dropping out but acting on a fundamental aspect of ourselves as human. As always, meaning is subjective to the eyes of the beholder, a philosophy that once in itself was considered radical.
About the author
Margaret Grundstein was raised in Detroit, went to school on the East Coast, and upon graduation followed the great radical migration west. Her career has been eclectic, starting out in City Planning, shifting to photography, ultimately creating a niche that fit her life as a single parent, the owner/director of a preschool in Venice, California. Margaret also has a private practice as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She is a proud mother and grandmother. Naked in the Woods, from which is essay is excerpted, is her first book. Learn more about Margaret here.