{"product_id":"huerfano-a-memoir-of-life-in-the-counterculture-9781558495739","title":"Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the late 1960s  new age communes began springing up in the American Southwest with names like Drop City  New Buffalo  Lama Foundation  Morning Star  Reality Construction Company  and the Hog Farm. In the summer of 1969  Roberta Price  a recent college graduate  secured a grant to visit these communities and photograph them. When she and her lover David arrived at Libre in the Huerfano Valley of southern Colorado  they were so taken with what they found that they wanted to participate instead of observe. The following spring they married  dropped out of graduate school in upstate New York  packed their belongings into a 1947 Chrysler Windsor Coupe  and moved to Libre  leaving family and academia behind.  Huerfano is Prices captivating memoir of the seven years she spent in the Huerfano (\"Orphan\") Valley when it was a petrie dish of countercultural experiments. She and David joined with fellow baby boomers in learning to mix cement  strip logs  weave rugs  tan leather  grow marijuana  build houses  fix cars  give birth  and make cheese  beer  and furniture as well as poetry  art  music  and love. They built a house around a boulder high on a ridge overlooking the valley and made ends meet by growing their own food  selling homemade goods  and hiring themselves out as day laborers. Over time their collective ranks swelled to more than three hundred  only to diminish again as  for many participants  the dream of a life of unbridled possibility gradually yielded to the hard realities of a life of voluntary poverty.  Price tells her story with a clear  distinctive voice  documenting her experiences with photos as well as words. Placing her story in the larger context of the times  she describes her participation in the antiwar movement  the advent of the womens movement  and her encounters with such icons as Ken Kesey  Gary Snyder  Abbie Hoffman  Stewart Brand  Allen Ginsburg  and Baba Ram Dass.  At once comic  poignant  and above all honest  Huerfano recaptures the sense of affirmation and experimentation that fueled the counterculture without lapsing into nostalgic sentimentality on the one hand or cynicism on the other.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45652004503605,"sku":"ByrdShop_1558495738","price":58.58,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781558495739.jpg?v=1781848345","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/huerfano-a-memoir-of-life-in-the-counterculture-9781558495739","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}