ABSTRACT
The Ranch occupies 140 acres of meadow, orchard, and can-yoned forest of redwood, fir, pine, alder, laurel, and madrone, somewhere in rural California. The ranch house is the "communal" house and is used primarily for collective purposes. People who live at The Ranch sleep in "their own" houses, some of which have been built by their own hands. The existence of the communal house plus the private residences provides a nice balance between needs for privacy and collective sociability. The Ranch is blessed with good land, good water, and a temperate coastal California climate. Unlike many other communes, The Ranch had no single income-producing collective enterprise around which it was organized, no charisma, no missionary zealotry. On his first trip with the medical team to the region, the author had never even heard of The Ranch and certainly had no idea that it would wind up occupying his thoughts for many years.
