Malcolm Terence

In the 1960s, journalist Malcolm Terence helped found the Black Bear Ranch, a commune near the California-Oregon border that still exists. His new memoir, Beginner's Luck: Dispatches from the Klamath Mountains, is an exuberant record of this piece of America's 1960s history.

Terence lived at Black Bear Ranch for four years. While there, he watched the advent of the first wave of feminism, both women claiming their rights and men learning to do their share of domestic labor. People at the commune had left the world they had been raised in to reinvent their lives, so women cut firewood, men cooked took care of the kids. Terrence writes about attending home births and even being the only helper present for one when the midwives were late.

Many people cycled through Black Bear Ranch over the decades and stayed a few years or a few days until they knew what they wanted to learn. Over the years, hundreds of people came through. Terence now thinks of the commune as a sort of “feral graduate school.” He eventually settled down in the small Salmon River towns near the commune, where he worked in gold mining, logging, firefighting, and tree planting before becoming a school teacher. His memoir is a heartfelt testimony to these communities.… (mais)