I have some good friends who went back to the land in the early 1950s. They moved from a mid-West city to as-rural-as-you-can-get eastern Oregon, worked very hard, and eventually were able to buy a 700 acre ranch, and build their own house with lumber from their property, where they've lived for decades. They tree-farmed sustainably, and gardened, taught college and school, and realized a vision. They had gone to a Quaker college, - part of this back-to-land, sustainable vision emerged in this context, I think.
This kind of vision grew in the 1960s and 1970s. An estimated 2 - 10 million people tried to go back to the land in the late 1960s and early 70s (Turner). And hippies developed this vision to include hippy communes, of which only a few remain, partly due to a lack of organization business-wise, I think.
My good friends (my aunt and uncle Ted and Mary Brown) were sensible business-wise and they also practiced sustainable forestry, creating a kind of tree-garden on their land, which nevertheless involved very hard work. Not only did they realize a kind of 'little house on the prairie' American pioneering dream, without costs to Native Americans, they also raised a family in the process.
I find it fascinating that the hippie-countercultural social freedom movements of the 1960s have long prior roots - my good friends are an example - from the 1950s and before. And my friends sought and found a kind of freedom.
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For some, Harbin, as hippie commune, similarly involved a return to living on the land, and a sustainable environmental vision. The Harbin garden, now beautiful, but with all its ups and downs, is one expression of this vision. And visitors continue to return to the land and the experience of nature - in the pools, too - when they come into the Harbin valley.
Heading to the pools, soon.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallowa_Mountains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallowa–Whitman_National_Forest
(http://www.pacificforest.org/stewardship/images/brown.jpg)
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