Walnut Tree 3-13-2010 Photo By Thatch
Black Bear Ranch as a commune was founded in 1968 by a group of people who wanted to go back to the land, get out of the city and start a new life together in the mountains. Over the past forty some years many, many people have come and gone through Black Bear Ranch. Some stay for a few days, others stay for years. Black Bear Ranch is much more than a piece of land in the middle of the mountains of the Salmon River. Black Bear Ranch is a community, a family, a home for your heart, a place to nourish your body and your soul. It has had a profound effect on the lives of so many people. It stays with you, lodged somewhere deep inside. Some of us were born here, some were reborn here, yet Black Bear Ranch has become a significant part of us all. Many keep coming back to touch in, to enjoy and appreciate, but also to maintain, improve and nurture the Ranch. Some of us return often, others only visit for gatherings.
Black Bear Ranch is a place for people to live and also a place for people to gather. Each year the ever growing Black Bear Family gathers at the Ranch three times: at the Summer Solstice, for the Women’s Gathering and for Thanksgiving. Some years we gather to celebrate Winter Solstice as well.
Black Bear Ranch is a place for people to live communally and share the joys, work and hardships of mountain homesteading. The Ranch is nestled in a valley where Black Bear and Callahan Creeks come together, singing their clear mountain stream songs, while a spring supplies the Main House with year around cool water. We are blessed with rich, well cared for and established organic gardens. There are many old and established fruit and nut trees, planted both by members of the commune and by the Dagget family, builders and residents of the original Main House during the mining days around the turn of the century.
Black Bear is a place of coming and going. Sometimes staying for a long time, other times just a little while. A dusty road, a pond, eager hands to help with what needs doing. Day to day tasks of cooking, cleaning, gardening, gathering wood, building and maintaining structures and systems, caring for trees and natural features, welcoming visitors, attending meetings and participating in the communal process.
Black Bear is a anchor, a vestige of the sixties, one out of many that sprung up in the sixties still functioning as a commune. A place to come back to again and again, changing and yet never changing.
Written by Allegra 2009