Women's land

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2003 by Corinne, Tee A

Excerpted from The Little Houses on Women's Lands

Beginning around 1969, southern Oregon had become a mecca for the back-to-the-land movement. Acreage was cheap. In one county, Josephine, building codes did not exist until 1974 and were rarely enforced until much later. There was easy access to major metropolitan areas via Interstate 5-the north-south freeway-which brought an ever changing group of explorers to and through the area.

A wave of women immigrants began moving to Southern Oregon in 1972. Fueled by a decade of second-wave feminism's "we can do anything and everything" optimism, some came as single women with various sexual orientations, some as lesbians with or without lovers, and some came partnered with men from whom they later separated. Some later returned to heterosexually oriented lives.

One response was the establishment of the Oregon Women's Land Trust created to purchase and hold land for all women. Its primary holding is OWL (Oregon Women's Land) Farm, bought in 1976. Initially, there were four buildings: a large log cabin, log barn, chicken coop, and small tool shed. In the following decades, OWL Farm became the site of numerous building and renovation projects and multiple dwellings.

Women were drawn from all over the world by Country Women magazine (published out of Albion, California, 1973-1980); WomanSpiril magazine, a quarterly published between 1974 and 1984; and by Country Lesbians: The Story of the WomanShare Collective, a book published in 1976 and later translated into German.

Carol Newhouse, a co-founder of the WomanShare Collective, writes of seeking a country life in Oregon in the early 1970s. It "was about coming out, and coming into our power and identity as Lesbians. We intuitively knew we had to get out of the patriarchal cities, and redefine ourselves and our lives. We actually tried to build a new culture. Of course we had internalized a lot of the mainstream culture, and this always haunted us. But that is what I think it was about. Not back to the land, but back to ourselves. It was a spiritual experience for all of us I think, whether or not we used the word at the time. It was a healing, a rediscovery, and an affirmation."

Nelly Kaufer writes of moving (in 1972) to the land which would later be called Cabbage Lane. At the time it was a collective of heterosexually active men and women. "I came to check it out and ended up staying. I arrived with my young dog Rocky Raccoon...by hitchhiking to Gold Beach, taking the boat to Agness at the head of the Rogue River Trail, hiking the 40 mile trail and then hitchhiking to Cabbage Lane."

Most of the woman-made buildings consisted initially of a single room 8x8 feet up to 10x20 feet with a sleeping loft and a wood-burning stove. Rarely did buildings have inside running water. Pit outhouses were the norm. In some cases these have been replaced by composting toilets. Outhouses were often roofed, open structures positioned with lovely views. Pelican Lee writes, "the outhouses always had great views. I picked out the spot for the first one at Owl Farm, way up a hillside for the view. Got lots of complaints about having to climb that hill!"

The buildings on communal lands were points of continuity. They were named: Moon House, Rattlesnake, Indigo, Madrone, The Sun House, Star, The White House, The Coop, Trillium. Since residents changed on a weekly or monthly basis on some of these lands, former residents frequently asked after the buildings rather than specific people who once had lived there.

Small cabins were easy to build and manage. They represented a negation of traditional womanly roles. They were not built to accommodate childrearing or large-scale entertaining. Often lovers lived in separate buildings thus reinforcing the autonomy and independence which were cornerstones of this community. In some cases, special buildings were constructed to house children. Communal spaces - like the outdoor kitchen/dining area at Cabbage Lane or the main houses at WomanShare or at OWL Farm-served to unite women. The outdoors was used for many gatherings and women often had outdoor beds for the dry, hot summers.

Conceptually, collective rather than communal living was the norm. Women formed loose-sometimes anarchistic-affiliations. Rules were minimal, control decentralized.

There was a longing for the imagined freedoms of women's land aptly captured in Ruth Mountaingrove's song "No Woman's Land": "I'd like to build a cabin / where I could feel at home / Where I could live with sisters / on land that is our own."

Women's Land was and is a dream. It encompasses self-sufficiency and independence, creativity and community support.

Most of the southern Oregon land communities could not in the past and cannot now be sustained without infusions of money, energy, and new residents from the outside. But outside need not be very far away and not all of the small homes were in isolated areas. An active interchange has always taken place between urban and rural dwellers. Community activities take place at homes on the edges of towns and downtown in cities as well as in open spaces surrounded by mountains and trees.