These people built utopic communes in the 1960s. Here’s what they look like now

From the 1960s to ’70s, some one million Americans, disillusioned with modern life, left their comfortable homes in cities and suburbs for a totally new way of living.

Through the Back-to-the-Land movement, communes sprung up around rural parts of the country , with a large concentration in Northern California, on land that was cheap and easy to buy. People built dwellings from salvaged materials, grew their own food, and relied on alternative energy sources. These actions greatly influenced how we think about sustainability today, and laid the groundwork for more modern homesteading lifestyles.

It is largely thought about as a movement that happened, not one still happening. But around five years ago, the writer David Jacob Kramer and photographer Michael Schmelling set out to find the homes still standing in NorCal, and the people still occupying them, half a century on.

What they discovered ranged from weathered sheds to beautiful gems of vernacular architecture that are slowly being reclaimed by nature. The groups involved once flourished in numbers, publishing and taking instruction from a proliferation of DIY books and guides that celebrated self-building and self-sufficiency, such as the 1973 ‘bible’ of the genre, “Shelter.”

Michael Schmelling/David Jacob Kramer

The back-to-the-landers who have remained in their homes are now in their 70s and 80s. They have stayed through generational shifts, governmental conflict, wildfires, and now, face the realities of aging in shrinking communities that require laborious upkeep. In the new book, “ Handmade Utopia ,” Kramer and Schmelling collect more than 40 oral histories that are accompanied by photographs.

“It was really important to show exactly what it looks like now for the people that really stuck it out. There were tons of people that went up there and did it for a summer or two,” said Schmelling in a Zoom call with Kramer. “Our initial impression was that this is really hard living. It’s hard when you’re 22, and it’s even harder when you’re 80.”

Kramer asked Schmelling to join the project after meeting a former back-to-the-lander who showed him the house he built and lived in, which was in extreme disrepair. He was thinking of burning it down, according to Kramer, who asked if he could photograph it before he did. As the writer sought out more of the communes, he realized they were rapidly vanishing, as their occupants aged, left or passed away, and the homes abandoned or torn down. Even as the pair worked, there was loss, with a few subjects dying before the project was completed.

“It motivated us to keep going, and with a sense of urgency as well,” Kramer said.

Many of the structures had never been photographed, and residents were wary of visitors. Some of the longest-standing communes still exist because they didn’t have names, were hard to access, and evaded public awareness. But Kramer and Schmelling found them from word of mouth and collected their stories.

One woman, Diana Wiedemann joined a lesbian commune, Trillium, in 1973, co-founding the Heartwood Women Construction company, a rare women-led carpentry group. In a different community, Dan Borghi spoke about running a portable sawmill for 30 years while his daughters grew up, attended a local high school and left for “super expensive” universities.

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“This place isn’t going to last. Eventually it’ll leak through the shake roof that’s on here. I probably won’t be here to see it. My daughters, I don’t know if they’ll even want this place. Maybe they’ll want to sell it,” he says in the book. “Why am I worried about it anyway? I’m going to be dead.”

Schmelling said that they approached each home as a work of art in its own right. During the height of the movement, there was international interest in the architecture, but as Kramer details in the book, the builders never thought of themselves as architects.

Some simple homes were built primarily for function, while others converted sheds or tacked on mismatched extensions to existing spaces. More elaborate homes took inspiration from Buckminster Fuller-like domes, or flowing Art Nouveau-inspired lines. The builder Bob McKee was responsible for many of these grander spaces; he parceled out land to hundreds of people and helped owners design their residences with a distinct visual language.

“I call it hippie architecture and think it’s humorous. It’s so impractical,” one anonymous resident said in his oral account. “On the other hand, some of it is really beautiful, you know?”

The Back-to-the-Land movement’s design legacy isn’t just limited to architecture, as the book documents, but furniture design and other artisan crafts, and the infrastructures that supported their way of life, such as land planning, recycling and compost systems. The communities were early proponents of solar power, too, for their homes and greenhouses, as well as cannabis farming. It’s not a movement that could be easily replicated today, Kramer said, but he sees its impact everywhere, from organic farming to sustainable design.

While many of the people who gave their testimonies reflected on what it meant to live in their communities, they also spoke to the realities of getting older, with lifestyles that are hard to maintain, in homes that seem to have something new broken every day. Some have had to compromise on their strict non-consumerist attitudes. According to Kramer, some joke as they’ve gotten older that Back-to-the-Land has become “more like ‘Back to Costco,’” he said.

Still, the pair believe the project presents a “different view of aging,” Kramer said. “They still had a lot of conviction… they are very empowered.”

One person they met left only a recipe for his burial as his story. “Ten pounds of rinsed peat moss. Ten pounds of Golden Bi Luo tea. Ten pounds of moist black earth. Ten pounds of duckweed or liverwort. Two pounds of finely ground cooked fire-pit bones and oyster shells. One pound of finely ground charcoal.”

The accounts Kramer and Schmelling collected are often frank about the reality of living in the communes. And as they completed the work, Kramer said their purpose wasn’t to prove whether the movement was successful or not.

“For me especially, it was the impulse that was most exciting. Is there another way to live that is more meaningful, better for the earth, more equitable, more pure, maybe more joyful?” he asked. “I think everyone has those thoughts, but the willingness or the audacity to implement an experiment was far more interesting to me.”

从 20 世纪 60 年代到 70 年代，大约有 100 万美国人对现代生活感到失望，他们离开了城市和郊区舒适的家，去追求一种全新的生活方式。

在“回归土地”运动的推动下，公社如雨后春笋般在乡村地区涌现，尤其集中在北加州，那里的土地价格低廉且易于购买。人们利用回收材料建造房屋，种植自己的食物，并依靠替代能源。这些行动极大地影响了我们今天对可持续发展的思考，并为更现代的自给自足生活方式奠定了基础。

人们普遍认为这是一场已经发生的运动，而不是一场仍在发生的运动。但大约五年前，作家大卫·雅各布·克雷默和摄影师迈克尔·施梅林出发寻找北加州那些至今仍然屹立的房屋，以及半个世纪后仍然居住在其中的人们。

他们的发现涵盖了从风化的棚屋到美丽的乡土建筑瑰宝，这些建筑正慢慢被大自然重新占领。参与其中的团体曾经人数众多，出版并借鉴了大量提倡自建和自给自足的DIY书籍和指南，例如1973年出版的该领域的“圣经”——《庇护所》。

迈克尔·施密林 / 大卫·雅各布·克莱默

那些回归田园生活、留在故土的人们如今已是七八十岁高龄。他们经历了世代更迭、政府冲突、山火肆虐，如今，又面临着社区人口萎缩、维护成本高昂等老龄化现实。在新书《手工乌托邦》中，克雷默和施梅林收集了四十多份口述历史，并配以照片。

“向大家展示那些坚持下来的人现在的真实生活状况非常重要。很多人去了那里，待了一两个夏天，”施梅林在与克莱默的Zoom通话中说道。“我们最初的印象是，那里的生活真的很艰苦。22岁的时候很艰难，80岁的时候就更难了。”

克莱默在遇到一位曾经回归田园生活的居民后，邀请施梅林加入这个项目。这位居民带他参观了自己建造并居住的房子，房子当时已经破败不堪。据克莱默说，这位居民当时正打算把房子烧掉，克莱默便询问他是否可以在烧房前拍些照片。随着克莱默继续探访更多这样的公社，他意识到这些公社正在迅速消失，因为居民们年老、离开或去世，房屋也被废弃或拆毁。即使在两人努力工作的过程中，也难免会有损失，一些受访者在项目完成前就去世了。

“这激励我们继续前进，也让我们感到一种紧迫感，”克雷默说。

许多建筑从未被拍摄过，居民们也对访客保持警惕。一些历史最悠久的公社至今仍然存在，因为它们没有名字，难以进入，也鲜为人知。但克雷默和施梅林通过口口相传找到了它们，并收集了它们的故事。

戴安娜·维德曼 (Diana Wiedemann) 于 1973 年加入了女同性恋公社“三叶草”(Trillium)，并与他人共同创立了“心木女性建筑公司”(Heartwood Women Construction)，这是一家罕见的女性领导的木工团体。在另一个社区，丹·博尔吉 (Dan Borghi) 讲述了他经营一家便携式锯木厂 30 年的经历，期间他的女儿们长大成人，就读于当地高中，之后进入“学费极其昂贵”的大学。

南极洲是建筑的最后一片疆域。有一个人在那里设计的建筑比任何人都多。

“这地方撑不了多久了。屋顶的瓦片迟早会漏水。我可能看不到那一天了。我的女儿们，我不知道她们会不会想要这地方。也许她们会想把它卖掉，”他在书中写道。“反正我都要死了，我干嘛还要操心这些呢？”

施梅林说，他们将每栋住宅都视为一件独立的艺术品。在这一运动的鼎盛时期，这种建筑风格引起了国际关注，但正如克莱默在书中详细描述的那样，建造者们从未将自己视为建筑师。

有些简朴的住宅主要出于实用目的而建造，而另一些则是将棚屋改造而成，或是在原有空间上随意加建不协调的部分。更精致的住宅则从巴克敏斯特·富勒式的穹顶或流畅的新艺术风格线条中汲取灵感。建筑商鲍勃·麦基负责建造了许多这样的宏伟建筑；他将土地分割给数百人，并帮助业主以独特的视觉语言设计住宅。

“我称之为嬉皮士建筑，觉得很滑稽。它太不实用了，”一位匿名居民在口述中说道。“但另一方面，有些地方确实很漂亮，你知道吗？”

正如书中记载，回归土地运动的设计遗产不仅限于建筑，还包括家具设计和其他手工艺，以及支撑其生活方式的基础设施，例如土地规划、回收利用和堆肥系统。这些社区也是太阳能的早期倡导者，他们将其用于住宅、温室以及大麻种植。克雷默表示，这场运动如今难以复制，但他看到它的影响无处不在，从有机农业到可持续设计。

许多作证的人在反思生活在各自社区的意义时，也谈到了变老的现实：生活方式难以维持，家中似乎每天都有新的东西坏掉。有些人不得不放弃他们严格的非消费主义态度。克莱默说，有些人随着年龄增长开玩笑说，“回归田园”的生活方式“更像是‘回归好市多’”。

不过，克雷默说，这对搭档仍然认为这个项目展现了一种“不同的衰老视角”。“他们依然充满信念……他们很有力量。”

他们遇到的一个人只留下了一份关于他葬礼的配方作为他的故事。“十磅洗净的泥炭藓。十磅金碧螺茶。十磅湿黑土。十磅浮萍或地钱。两磅磨碎的熟火坑骨头和牡蛎壳。一磅磨碎的木炭。”

克雷默和施梅林收集的资料往往坦诚地反映了公社生活的真实情况。克雷默在完成这项工作时表示，他们的目的并非是为了证明这场运动是否成功。

“对我而言，最令人兴奋的是那种冲动。有没有一种生活方式更有意义、对地球更好、更公平、更纯粹，或许也更快乐呢？”他问道。“我想每个人都会有这样的想法，但真正让我感兴趣的是那种愿意或有勇气去实践这种想法的勇气。”