On August 11th the Golden Gate National Park Conservatory is offering an exciting opportunity and no doubt local Pagans will want to get in on this deal. For on the 11th there will be a hike to Druid Heights in Marin; which is located just above Muir Woods.
Local Pagans might have heard of Druid Heights, but then again, the area has been kept so secret that maybe they haven’t. The community is typically off limits to hikers and random visitors, but for only two days this summer (the first was July 30th) a lucky group of people will be treated to a hike and evening of amazing poetry amongst the beautiful architecture that is known as Druid Heights.
The land was once home to a secret and hidden bohemian community. In its heyday it held hundreds of gatherings for the counterculture of the Bay Area. Down a dirt road and missing from most maps the Druid Heights community was created right around the time of World War II when Else Gidlow decided to hitchhike her way to California from New York. She was a poet, anarchist, and the first woman to publish a set of lesbian poetry back in 1923, called On a Grey Thread.
Alone in Marin Country at the age of forty Gidlow performed what she called a transforming ritual. In the ritual she built up a fire and felt the room fill with all the mothers and grandmothers of her ancestry. She wrote about the experience; “I knew myself linked by chains of fire to every woman who has kept a hearth."
This ritual led her to a five-acre piece of land right on the edge of Muir Woods. There were already a few frame houses on the brink of collapse when she arrived and there was no plumbing, but she saw in the place magic of what it was to become.
Gidlow was a co-owner of the property with Roger Somers. He was a well known Bay Area house builder, architect, and jazz musician. He created a style that represented the bohemian California of the time. Most of the structures still standing in Druid Heights were created by Somers and, another member of the community, Ed Stiles throughout the 1960s.
Stiles and his wife are the only remaining members of the old group still around. They have a lifetime lease on one of the buildings. Their home like many of the other buildings were built with an artist’s eye, not worrying about codes and permits. Because of that they are often under the scrutiny of the Park Service on whether they can continue to live in them.
Many famous names visited, or even lived, on the property including; Gary Snyder, Dizzy Gillespie, John Handy, Alan Watts, Neil Young, Tom Robbins, Catherine McKinnon and Margo St. James. Because of the fluid nature of the homestead Gidlow referred to it as "an unintentional community".
Gidlow lived on the property until her death in 1986. She was cremated and her ashes were buried under an apple tree. Somers also lived on the property until his death in 2001. He passed away soaking in his redwood hot tub, just two days after September 11th.
The land and community has been written about many times. In the last few years Druid Heights was included in a photography book that archived spiritual sites in California by Michael Rauner, called The Vsionary State.
This hike and poetry session, on August 11th, is an exciting opportunity for any seeker of spiritual sites. It is a moderate three mile hike with both uphill and downhill sections to get to the property. Once you are there the views are amazing and the energy is something that you have to experience.
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