Druid Heights is a remote bohemian ghost town and an important vestige of California counterculture.  It’s near San Francisco, but it’s not on any map.  Once a thriving off-the-grid community, it is important for its contributions to American counterculture of the 1960s, 70s and 80s.   It was a home to LGBTQ and feminist pathfinders. And one of America’s foremost Zen Buddhist philosophers lived and taught there.  Its residents, including Gary Snyder a Pulitzer Prize winner, were characters in the novels of Jack Kerouac.  And, its mostly abandoned buildings are significant examples of bohemian architecture.  Druid Heights is eligible to be included in the National Register of Historic Places. 

Brilliant minds and personalities found a refuge at Druid Heights.  But three resident owners, all very different, were the guardians and anchors to life at Druid Heights. The ground breaking lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow championed women’s rights, sapphic love and goddess culture.  A wild, playboy architect, Roger Somers, built madcap forest homes that broke all the rules.  He also threw the biggest, wildest parties in Marin County.  That odd couple was joined by Ed Stiles, a straight arrow furniture maker who raised his family amid the creative chaos of Druid Heights.

Only Ed Stiles, 84,  is still alive and living at Druid Heights.  He recounts a lifetime of wonder amid the often-crazy  events and colorful characters of Druid Heights.  Then, following the euphoria of the Summer of Love in 1967, it all went bad.  Friendships, dreams and life in paradise were shattered.