• May 16, 1968: On Thursday, April 4th, I left home - for good. Wearing dirty jeans, love beads and carrying a few articles of clothing stuffed in a duffel bag, I proceeded to hitchhike down the Interstate.

Almost immediately I was picked up by three fellow hippies. One was a draft dodger on the run, his name was SA - short, he told me, for Sid Artha. (I kid you not.) We made our way westward.

A couple days later, I acquired a new pet which I named Flower. She is of the boa constrictor genus and measures about four feet in length. I discovered her in the desert of Southern Colorado and figured she'd make a good traveling companion. When she's not coiled around my neck like a reptilian necktie, she lives in a small metal file box painted entirely in a phsychodelica paisley with air holes punched into the lid that I keep in the duffel bag.

There was one girl in particular at the commune who captured my attention. This girl's name was Nancy. Nancy looked like a teenager, but told me she was actually 28! (Since she also had a son who looked to be around five years old living with her in the commune, I believed her. Her son was barefoot, clad only in a T-shirt and walked around banging a toy guitar.) It seems lots of the girls who live in these communes look young. Maybe it's because they are so content and at peace with themselves, they have no establishment-type worries to stress them out. Worry shows up as age on your face, you know.

I slept in the kitchen of the "Big Dome," along with SA, Nancy and Nancy's son, David. It was difficult sleeping, as there was a lot of ongoing activity with people coming and going throughout the night, the Big Dome being sort of a gathering place.

At one point during the early pre-dawn hours, there appeared to be some type of meeting taking place. It involved a couple of short-haired guys on their way to Canada. They weren't hippies; they looked completely straight with buzzed haircuts. They were military men gone AWOL and were here seeking advice on how to get away with it all.

One of the older hippies (in his forties, at least) was engaged in a serious discussion with these military men, suggesting clandestine routes across the U.S. and ways to avoid detection entering Canada. The short-hairs were difficult to hear; they spoke in hushed tones and kept looking around the dome to see who might be listening. I remained huddled beneath a blanket on the floor, finding the conversation fascinating, but eventually fell asleep.

It seemed that no sooner had I dropped off to sleep than I was reawakened in the pre-dawn morning by a new group of individuals making noise as they prepared breakfast. As the sun rose, filling the dome with natural light, more and more people trundled in until nearly the entire community was assembled. I was still sleepy, but ravenous. Everyone in the commune ate the same breakfast at the same time in the Big Dome - something everyone called pancakes, but actually was more like bread with melted cheese on it. It was surprisingly good tasting.

With a full belly, I walked outside into the brisk early morning air. The sun was shining, birds were chirping and various critters were scampering about. Savoring the tranquility that only early morning hours can provide, I was suddenly startled by a loud Tarzan-like yell directly to my left.

I pivoted, quickly looking up to ascertain the source of this auditory intrusion. Emerging from another dome about twenty feet away on the side of a hill was a naked man with long dark hair and flowing beard . . . the Tarzan yeller. He stepped out of the dome, urinated in a hands free manner while scratching his hairy face, then - breathing an audible sigh of relief - stepped back into the dome slamming the door behind him.

Nudity, I soon discovered, was commonplace. There was one guy in particular with a long red beard, brilliant orange hair that hung down past his shoulders and a milk-white body who walked around nude all day long. How he avoided sunburn out in the desert I do not know. Much to my disappointment, however, none of the females at the commune seemed to follow his au naturél example. Still, I enjoyed watching the gentle to-and-fro swaying of unfettered breasts beneath the simple peasant blouses worn by most of the women.

Days came and days went. At some point Sid Artha vanished from the commune and I never saw him again. Perhaps he dodged his way up to Canada. Life at the Drop City commune was very interesting and all, but I was beginning to get restless. I felt like it was time to move on. Late one morning I noticed a few strangers in a car parked a short distance from the edge of the little commune. They appeared to be sightseers, gawking at the hippie freaks living way out here in the desert. I approached them, thinking that maybe these tourists would like to give a real live hippie a ride to the highway. They did. In fact, I rode all the way to Santa Fe with them. All I had to do in return was smile and nod as they preached to me non-stop about Jesus and the pearly gates of heaven.

After that, getting out of Santa Fe wasn't too difficult. I was able to catch a series of short rides that eventually took me to the Arizona/California border. Then, at a desolate desert location near Kingman, I was offered a ride from a groovy couple (fellow hippies) in a VW bus and we entered the Golden State together on a real high!

Somewhere in the California desert I was picked up by a middle-aged husband and wife couple driving a Mercedes Benz. Most often rides had been in VW vans and bugs, standard hippie-mobiles, so right away this was unusual. The driver's name was Terry Something-or-other. He was some sort of musical composer/director working in the movie business and had something to do with the musical score for Walt Disney's Jungle Book, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Pretty groovy stuff!

I was utterly fascinated to hear about his line of work, but the couple seemed far more interested in hearing about the vagabond hippie life of a young person such as myself. They were enormously interested in hearing about hitchhiking across the Great American Southwest and tales about Drop City.

They dropped me near Riverside, California and, as they drove away, I noticed a bumper sticker attached to the Mercedes that read LSD not LBJ. Very cool. I decided that perhaps it is possible to be middle-aged and still be hip - but probably only in California!

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