European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 3, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Doily Magazine my la m Al a new York times a House at new Buffalo commune in new Mexico most of the Urban nomads have Long departed the experience Here is too intense Taos by John m. Crewdson new York times n the night a lightning Bolt plunged new York City into darkness several itinerant new yorkers were tucked safely away inside John Kim Mey s cozy Tepee a few Miles from the lofty new Mexico resort Village of Taos. As his visitors bathed in the glow of a kerosene lantern clucked at the misfortune of their blacked out friends Back Home Kimmey recalled that they announced now this is it we be found it. Who needs coned but by the next morning they were gone. For Kimmey a Tepee builder who has lived in Taos for nearly half his 37 years and who is consequently a kind of Patri Arch within the local counterculture Community sudden conversions and equally sudden renunciation Are old stuff. Though visits from seekers of truth and the curious will probably never end Taos is not the Mecca it was a decade ago when Large numbers of Urban nomads fleeing the Asphalt of Manhattan and san Francis co flocked there in search of a new and primitive life in the wilderness. Most of them have Long since departed. The experience Here is too intense for a lot of people explained Seth Roffman a Friend of Kimmey s and one of the new wave of settlers who has chosen to remain. Taos seems to be a transition Point. People come through they get what they need and then they  outsiders have been discovering the simple pleasures of Taos for years Ever since . Lawrence went there in the 1920s to live and write in a tin roofed Cabin overlooking the Taos Valley most of the celebrated communes that once flourished there Are gone As Well their members having gotten what they needed or More Likely having been driven off by the grim bitter cold Winters or the ennui or the isolation. The hog farm Kimmey said just kind of petered out a few years ago and the windswept Mountain Meadow where the reality construction company once stood is now an instant cultural ruin littered with the rusting hulks of battered cars and Wood burning stoves All but deserted except for an occasional Prairie dog. Where have All the communes gone the Morningstar commune is gone As Well its members scattered to nobody knows where its gently sloping grasslands now forage for John Gaugenmaier s Herd of goats. It is Gaugenmaier a quiet pleas ant Young Man who perhaps Best exempt fies the changes that have taken place there in the last few years. A student of the University of California at Berkeley in the turbulent years before the decade changed Gaugenmaier came to Taos to join the new Buffalo commune but left it about five years ago when he chose to pursue instead a strenuous and solitary life with his wife and Small child. He is part of what most there seem to agree is a trend away from the transients and hedonism that characterized the 1960s and Early 1970s and toward a permanence born of smaller More cohesive groups Many of them single families who Are dedicated to hard work and Bent on buying land and building houses. A lot of people came out Here and got disillusioned said Tahiti a be turbaned former merchant Seaman who moved there 10 years ago to get away from machinery and took up residence at new Buffalo and the hog farm before striking out on his own As a Blacksmith and Stone  were looking for the wild West and this was t the wild West Tahiti said. They were looking for Romance they weren t looking to go to work. They came out Here with pretensions and those pretensions got  Lake Tahiti Many of those who stayed say they did so because of the remarkable mountains that surround the place a Pano ply of crags and Spires that seem to change shape and color every half hour with the shifting sunbeams. An Indian legend has it that the mountains around Taos contain traces of every known physical element and act on visitors As a kind of spiritual Magnet and there Are those who explain their continuing presence there simply by saying the Magnet Mountain got  Only a handful of the original institutions remain. The Lama foundation conceived As a Center for spiritual and metaphysical studies is still in business although Richard Alpert the onetime har Vard researcher who took Ltd and changed his name to Baba ram Dass withdrew some time ago As one of its guid ing lights. New York times Tepee builder John Kimmey counterculture patriarch new York times former Seaman Tahiti. Magnet Mountain got me because a women s Retreat was in Prog Ress one recent weekend the Lama foun Dation was closed to male visitors and no one not even Kimmey seemed quite cer Tain what was taking place there Nowa Days. It s really questionable what they re doing. The founders Are evaluating that  another Long term survivor is the new Buffalo commune which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and which with some 20 residents five cows and a burgeoning Dairy Busi Ness is thriving. Some new Buffalo residents stood in the courtyard formed by the commune s hand some Adobe buildings the other Day and said that they resented an intrusion by a reporter not just because their privacy had been violated but because they feared the onslaught of tourists that might result from publicity. But after it was agreed that the com Mune s exact location would not be Dis closed some of those present talked about Why they thought new Buffalo had continued to flourish while so Many similar at tempts at communal living had failed. Incorporation said Art Kopecky a 33-year-old former China scholar who sits on the Board of directors of new Buffalo inc., the commune s Parent corporation. Incorporation s important for a com  it was also important he added to pro Duce something and he suggested that most of new Buffalo s contemporaries had vanished because their numbers had Short sight edly tried Only to sustain themselves and not to develop a marketable product on the , Kopecky said it required time and patience to learn the lessons of agrarian life such As that the lavatory facilities should not be Uphill from the com Munal Well and to reach that Point where members began thinking of communal living in terms of their whole life instead of As just a  but most important he said was the commitment. Kopecky who with eight years at new Buffalo inc., May Well be the senior comm Nard around those parts paused for a moment and gazed toward the Magnet Mountain looming in the Back ground. For me he said the dream is to show that things Don t have to be organized the Way they  monday october 3, 1977 the stars and stripes Page 13