Eugene: Where Alternate Realities Go to Live

ONE DAY THIS WINTER I found myself teetering across a slippery log that spanned a 10-yard washout deep in the Willamette National Forest. I cradled a big box of organic squash and wondered whether the rental car I left on a logging road would make it out through the collecting snow.

I looked behind me to regard the man I'd met at a Eugene coffee hangout an hour before. He called himself Alatin, but that was only his "woods" name. His hands were full, too, and he was struggling like a fly in a spider's web to free himself from branches that had latched hold of his expedition-sized backpack.

I hesitated, but decided the least I could do was edge back across and try to help since he was coming out here to live 200 feet up an old-growth Douglas fir and, in his mind, save its life. Rental car willing, I'd be spending the night at the Hilton.

It struck me as a particularly odd moment, but then, Eugene, my hometown, has always has been distinguished by its eccentricity, activism, alternative lifestyles and oddity.

From the outside view, Eugene is casual even by Northwest standards, a mid-sized college town where people go to the symphony in blue jeans, use valet bicycle parking and consider jogging a sport. Yet it also is a fiercely idiosyncratic place where ideas hatch, causes percolate, outrage festers.

The agitating anarchists have hogged the attention lately, but Eugene's alternate realities go far beyond them. It is home to organic farmers, bicycle zealots, hemp and pot champions, metaphysical healers, aging hippies and protesters for almost every cause. When I was growing up the issues were the Vietnam War, nuclear-free zones, civil rights, South African apartheid, rent-control for University of Oregon students and a huge cross erected without permission on the butte overlooking downtown. The cross finally came down two years ago, but arguments rage on: about pollution, saving maple trees, human rights in far-flung places and more.

Eugene is where the international editions of both the radical environmental Earth First! Journal and the vermiculture bible, The Worm Digest, are published.

A city club is compiling a book on Eugene's past half-century. One chapter has the affectionate working title, "Why is Eugene So Weird?" That's a good question. But as I watched Alatin struggle to free himself from the branches so he could live in the upper limbs, it struck me a better question is, why is Eugene so serious?

THE MORNING THAT America Online and Time Warner announced plans to merge into the next super-conglomerate and make very rich men billions richer, I visited two organic farmers who deliver their crops by bicycle and are happy to net $12,000 a year between them.

Full Circle Community Farm is a cooperative built on the Community Supported Agriculture model, which means that at the beginning of each growing season Kate Perle and Kevin Jones estimate their expenses and yields. Then they sell shares to members who commit to buying a year's worth of produce. That reduces the farmers' risk and gives sustainable small-time agriculture a chance.

They transport produce to collection sites as far as 12 miles from the farm, hitching carts that can carry up to 500 pounds to their bicycles. They ask members who pick up produce and volunteers who help in the fields to use alternative transportation.

Each spring, a neighbor brings his tractor to disc the field, but everything else is done by hand and without chemicals. They take what the soil gives and on its schedule. Spring means peas and lentils. Tomatoes come during mid-summer. Late in the year comes winter squash, potatoes and beets.

The only structures on the farm, which sits on the edge of encroaching subdivisions just north of town, are two tarp-covered greenhouses, a vermicomposting outhouse and a compact open-sided barn. As I walked around the barn, I came upon Odell, a round-faced 2-year-old, who stood on the second rung of a corral fence and watched his mother, Perle, milk the cows by hand.

Perle and Jones are in their early 30s. She is from Michigan; he's a Massachusetts native. They moved to Eugene in search of the Northwest lifestyle and became farmers after he worked as a volunteer hand on an organic-farming cooperative and became taken with the goal of chemical-free agriculture.

The couple farms four acres that produce about 14 tons a year to be divided among about 60 shares.

They don't have a car or the related expenses. With food they barter for dentistry, accounting and other things they need. Still, it requires 50 weeks of work a year and no short cuts.

I asked the obvious question: Why do things the hard, pure way when almost nobody else does? The answer struck Perle as equally obvious.

"Because it's the right thing to do," she said, as Odell played in a sandbox filled with dirt. "Eugene has this reputation for being this cool hippie place. My father says only in Eugene, that weird town that time forgot, could you live like you do. But I wish Eugene was more committed."

The wind picked up and the drizzle turned into slapping rain. Perle slipped a canary-yellow slicker on Odell and began burning sticks to heat a small kettle. Jones, tall, bearded and soft-spoken, invited me into the greenhouse, where we sat on upside-down buckets.

He was one of several hundred people handcuffed and hauled off to jail for failing to leave a swath of downtown Seattle designated as off-limits during the World Trade Organization protests in November. It was the first time he had ever been arrested (the misdemeanor charge was later dropped) and he spent four days in jail.

He went to protest corporate farming practices, support human rights, and alert people to what he felt was going to be Y2K trouble. It was worth it, Jones said, even though his wrist was still sore from a hold an officer put on him while he was booked.

"It felt like we were taking back some control of our lives," he said. "I just can't understand why people are willing to let corporations run the world."

When I mentioned I was going to visit the protesters who sit high in trees to block logging companies, he asked me to deliver a box of his squash.

WITH THE SQUASH in the trunk, I drove to the Out Of The Fog coffeehouse downtown to rendezvous with Dean "Dirt" Rimerman, a guiding force in keeping a tree-sit protest east of town going since April 1998. Alatin, a compact, bearded guy in his 40s, was there and asked for a ride.

Alatin said he spent six straight months in the trees last year, something of a local record, but had become "agro," which means stir-crazy. Tree-sitters also call this getting "treeked." Even when waking up in a bed upon his return to town Alatin found himself probing beyond the mattress with his hands and feet to determine where he was. Some tree-dwellers tether themselves the whole time, but some don't.

"Every step you take up there is a calculated risk," Alatin said. "It changes your state of mind. It tunes you to the subtleties of the forest. Everyone who has spent much time in the trees will tell you the forest talks to you."

Talks to you? Rimerman said the forest communicates through tree-sitters' thoughts. The trees usually speak in the "we" rather than the "I," he said, but have distinct personalities, one sparking analytical thoughts while another inspires creativity. He admitted it can be hard to distinguish between the thoughts of a tree and your own ego, and the idea sounds pretty weird.

It was snowing by the time my rental car hit the logging roads so we decided to stop short and hike uphill to the camp. Six people stood around a lean-to packed with supplies and beneath a banner identifying the protest as the work of Red Cloud Thunder.

Six people sat in four plywood-and-tarp perches about 200 feet high. Ropes ran like telephone-pole wires between the occupied trees, roughly grouped in a circle, enabling sitters to use harnesses to slide from one tree to another when they wanted to visit each other.

Alatin immediately prepared to inhabit a tree they call Grandma by having his possessions hoisted up by rope. Rimerman took me to a grotto and showed me a living 6-foot-tall stump they call Venus de Milo because it bears resemblance to the statue.

He circled it, sweeping his hands from its top to the ground, a maneuver designed to cloak it with the pure energy he said emanated from its top. He learned this from a Eugene shaman who visited the site and relayed messages from the trees.

Rimerman, 31, is a longtime forest activist who moved up from California to save Oregon old growth and be part of Eugene's vibrant eco-protest community. When a local sawmill got logging rights to the 96-acre stand, Rimerman helped organize the tree-sit. There were several clashes, arrests and property seizures the first year, but the Forest Service and logging company have left protesters alone for several months and the number of tree-sitters has dwindled as other, hotter causes have emerged.

Today, Rimerman drums up supplies and donations, troubleshoots problems, makes sure the trees are always occupied and acts as a spokesman. He works through more traditional legal and political channels, but says trespassing and property damage are legitimate tactics.

"I've been doing this nine years and you can talk till you're blue in the face about what's important and no one will listen, but when you feed the dark side by doing something like damaging property, you get a forum."

I found the tree-sit, the glistening white forest and Rimerman fascinating, but not enough to get snowbound. As we left the camp he yelled to the treetops, "Anyone have a sound-bite for the reporter before he leaves?"

Not a word, from the sitters or the trees.

I'D HEARD THAT ANARCHISTS have a hazy sense of punctuality, but Tim Ream sauntered into his favorite organic pastry shop right on time. Tall and lean, he wore jeans, a wool sweater, heavy boots and an olive bandana over his coal-black hair.

He is articulate and charming, qualities of a leader, but the Eugene anarchists, as amorphous and independent as they are, don't want one. In fact, he's been criticized by some as soft and by others as a grandstander.

It stings him, and at my prompting he launched into his resume: a 75-day hunger strike on the steps of Eugene's federal courthouse to fight timber legislation; a national speaking tour and congressional testimony; forest protests in California, Oregon and, last summer, in Washington; helping plan WTO strategy; and making videos that support radical causes.

"You know, I think there are people who are starting to feel some ownership of the concept of `Eugene anarchists,' " he said. "I think that's a very common, human reaction to want to have control over something good, but I feel the brand that is being promoted is only one variety and might not necessarily be the most sensible. To me, anarchy is not a means, it's an end."

In fact, "Eugene anarchist" is a broad label for radicals of various styles, motives and resolve who share the common belief that government and corporations must be dismantled.

Ream, 38, and many others are environmentally focused, influenced by hard-core direct-action groups like Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front, but savvy enough to work at the fringes of the system if it saves trees or animals.

The younger members, teenagers and men and women in their 20s, get most of the blame, accurately or not, for the vandalism anarchists have become known for. One older anarchist said, "When we don't want them at something we tell them, `It's just going to be a bunch of talking.' "

There are several subgroups, including one that sees itself as a "monkey-wrench gang," after Edward Abbey's book about environmental activists. They disrupt city meetings, torment Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey and pull off attention-grabbing stunts.

There also are ideologues like 56-year-old author John Zerzan. He's written for years about the evils of technology and the need to tear down society as most know it, but didn't gain his modest fame until he began visiting and corresponding with another technology critic, Unabomber Ted Kacyznski.

Anarchists don't mind all technology, though. They're online and have radio and television shows. Ream and his roommate, Tim Lewis, operate PickAxe Productions, which filmed the WTO mayhem and sold videotapes titled, "R.I.P WTO" for $5 apiece on the streets of Seattle the next morning.

The Eugene anarchists say they got too much blame for the WTO havoc, but they appreciate the attention. WTO energized them but the Y2K dud, in which the world held up just fine, depressed them.

I was struck by how much they disagree with one another. Ream and another local anarchist, Marshall Kirkpatrick, debated on a weekly cable-access TV show about methods and the power of shattering glass.

It bothered Ream, who served in the Peace Corps and spent time in a Buddhist monastery, that small businesses in the anarchists' own low-rent neighborhood were vandalized without clear explanation. Smashing a corporation's windows punishes greed, he said, but doing it to little guys alienates you from your most likely support.

Ream even said he would vote if it helped his cause.

Kirkpatrick insisted that voting or sharing your opinion in a government hearing are "alienating" experiences, but smashing a window with a rock empowers because it is "taking personal responsibility."

That prompted a call from a viewer who asked: "Hey Marshall, what's your home address? I feel I need to take some personal responsibility."

ANARCHIST WARNINGS ABOUT corporate and government power, consuming greed and environmental meltdown hit home for many in Eugene, but their tactics - including a downtown protest that turned into a riot last June - have led many longtime activists to regard them as a sideshow.

The real story, I was told several times, is with the people pushing alternatives, constructively challenging leaders and operating nonprofits for causes from transportation to environmental law to low-income health care.

With that in mind, I sought out Jan VanderTuin, a former bicycle racer and founder of the Center for Appropriate Transport, which embodies the spirit of this bike-crazed town.

CAT, as it is known, is a full-service entity housed in an 8,000-square-foot former sheet-metal shop. It sells, designs, repairs and manufactures bicycles and related gear under the business name "Human Powered Machines" and produces bike racks found all over town and up the road in Salem.

CAT is an alternative school for teens. It publishes the state's bicycling magazine. It runs a bicycle delivery service. It provides bicycle valet parking at community events, a concept emulated by Atlanta officials for the 1996 Olympics.

About 6 percent of Eugene's commuters commute by bicycle, far above the national average. There are more than 100 miles of bike paths and lanes in town and bicycle taxis called pedicabs operate within a 3-mile radius of the University of Oregon campus. Some of the world's best-known bicycle manufacturers, including Burley Design Cooperative, operate here.

VanderTuin, who lives at the center and doesn't own a car, started CAT in 1992. It now has 10 full-time employees and, at any given time, about two dozen students who design bicycles using computer software and build them with the center's industrial equipment. In pure cooperative style, VanderTuin takes the same salary as the youngest teen worker.

A California native, VanderTuin became an expert on cargo bikes and a believer in transportation alternatives and organic farming while living in Switzerland during the early '80s. He established the United States' first Community Supported Agriculture cooperative farm while in Massachusetts. He inspired Perle and Jones to do their organic farming and bicycle crop-hauling; CAT not only built their cargo bikes and trailers, but serves as one of the farm's collection points.

"My thing is education," he said, as students streamed in, wet and cold from lunchtime newspaper delivery runs. "If people still want to eat chemical food after learning the facts, then fine. If they still want to drive their cars everywhere, well I hope they just look at alternatives first."

Like every activist I met, VanderTuin, 46, is from somewhere else and moved to Eugene because it promised a different lifestyle. Like the others, he wants it to be more the Eugene he envisioned than the Eugene it is.

"I wish there was a lot more social experimentation going on here. There are a lot of former counter-culture people in this town who are pretty stuck in their ways these days."

THERE ARE REMNANTS of the '60s and '70s left, but, of course, it's not the same. The Oregon Country Fair, a three-decade-old celebration of hippie ideals, is bigger than ever, but old-timers pine for the days when there weren't so many rules and you could gain admission by picking up garbage in the parking lot. "We need to embrace the disenfranchised," implored one longtime fair-goer, "not the yuppies!"

A marijuana activist is liquidating his lumber company and moving to Belize, claiming police have harassed him and damaged his business. He vows, though, to return to sponsor his annual hemp festival in July.

Ken Kesey, author and icon, was busy editing footage from the 1964 cross-country trip of the Merry Pranksters into a 50-minute movie so I looked up his son, Zane, who runs Key-Z Productions out of the converted garage of a Eugene home. The room is filled with merchandise - far-out posters, memorabilia and books by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and, of course, Ken Kesey.

During a battle with Hollywood producers who turned his "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" into a 1975 Oscar winner, Kesey vowed he would never watch the film. He still hasn't, but his son sells it. In fact, Zane, 29, told me sales of all merchandise have soared since Key-Z went online. While happy for him, I found something about the notion of '60s counter-culture for sale on the Internet vaguely depressing.

The giant American flag that flaps atop Skinner's Butte, which rises sharply on the north side of downtown, also represents change. One day during the mid-'60s, a 51-foot concrete cross was erected on public property without city or voter approval. It took 33 years of argument and litigation, but it finally came down in 1997.

City leaders asked voters for permission to erect a flag there. The flag got 52 percent of the vote.

Last month, someone shimmied up the 90-foot pole, swiped the flag and replaced it with a banner displaying a smiley sun face wearing an eye patch and a wrench and pitchfork displayed like crossbones.

Despite a populace that's highly educated by national standards, one recent study pegged Eugene as the third-least-affordable housing market in the country, in terms of home prices compared with income. In Eugene, people accept lower wages in return for the cleanliness, beauty and lifestyle. That's partly why they are so serious. They're invested in the place.

"Eugene is a place with a level of involvement most cities would die for," Mayor Torrey told me. "But sometimes the causes seem more important than the results."

Torrey sees himself as a tolerant mayor of a tolerant town, but that's been tested the past few years. There have been two all-out melees downtown since 1997. A young man purposely vomited on Torrey in a council meeting; two other activists tried to smash pies in his face at another event. He survived a recall effort his first six months in office.

Yet he's running for re-election - against five challengers - and trying to weather a group calling itself "Eugene Anarchists For Torrey," which hopes its feigned support will be the kiss of death. Being mayor of this town of 130,000 deep in the Willamette Valley is a nonpaying job. But he had to beat eight candidates, including a communist, to get it in the first place.

Richard Seven is a staff writer for Pacific Northwest magazine. Benjamin Benschneider is a staff photographer for the magazine.