Epic Sweep in the ’70s

After reviewing Dan Armstrong’s “Eugene Trilogy” in Eugene Weekly’s Winter Reading issue, I learned of another Eugene author who just finished a similar trilogy. Guy Maynard, who quietly edited the University of Oregon’s Oregon Quarterly for 17 years before retiring, turns out to have been a troublesome campus radical at Boston University back in the early ’70s.

When the law cracked down hard, Maynard and his colorful cohort of “freaks” headed west, first to California, then to the natural wilds of Oregon. They bought a farm on the South Umpqua River, and established their own experiment in communal living, named Ash Valley. Maynard and his wife, and some of the others, eventually ended up settling in Eugene.

Want to read an up-close, first-person, beautifully written account of one of Oregon’s countless communes of the period? Ash Valley is the stunning conclusion of a three-volume “Ridiculous” trilogy set in those early ’70s.

Volume 1, The Risk of Being Ridiculous: A historical novel of love and revolution (2010) describes the zany wild-ass college scene at Boston University 1971, interweaving sit-ins and protests with political debates, drug trips and the developing love of young Ben and Sarah (the novels’ names for the author and his wife, Shelley).

In Volume 2, Trial: A long year from here to there (2024), Ben is arrested and faces years in prison, but in the end is paroled, and he and Sarah marry. In the third and most recent volume, Ash Valley: The Promise of the Land (2025), they and their cohort of idealistic hippie revolutionary pothead freaks head to Oregon to found the title’s peaceful farming commune.

The year is 1971. They dream of ending capitalism, consumerism, racism, patriarchy and war, of becoming a model classless society for the future, “after the revolution.” But Oregon’s natural wilderness setting is so overwhelming, beautiful, awe-inspiring, threatening and life-changing, that it’s hard to keep the revolution in focus. Maynard’s descriptions of the Oregon landscape are inspirational.

The commune will start to fall apart only a year later, but the lessons learned are dramatic, deep, mature and permanent. Lumber companies will clear-cut the landscape, but Ben and Sarah’s marriage will survive, and survives even today here in Eugene.

Maynard’s writing throughout is vivid and authentic, like the daily journal of a great young writer witnessing exciting hard times with his eyes and heart wide open. The three volumes together have an epic sweep, moving from youth to adulthood and from war to peace. There is much to admire in the developing narrative voice, which shifts over the three volumes from stoned and angry, to bedazzled, thoughtful and loving. Ah, life! What a great trip.

Though it’s the third volume of a trilogy, it can stand on its own, and Eugene readers might think of reading it first. Ash Valley was released on Feb. 28 by GladEye Press.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

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