In a dog's world
Being different
Is no distress to the cat.
Though less elegant
Should I
Be less wise?*
Elsa Gidlow is best known as a writer, publishing the first volume of lesbian poetry in North America, On a Grey Thread, and the first lesbian autobiography not published under a pseudonym, Elsa: I Come With My Songs. What she’s less known for is her outsized impact on many culturally important movements, including the women’s movement, through the founding of her “unintentional community” Druid Heights.
The name brings to mind the mystical hippies of the 60s and 70s, not the pragmatic women who inspired the name: “the revolutionary and teacher of Irish lore, Ella Young (the Druid), and Emily Bronte (author of Wuthering Heights).”1 Gidlow purchased the land in 1954, a time when banks could legally discriminate against women, especially unmarried women like Gidlow. Turned down by banks, Gidlow’s friend Dorothy Erskine gave her a private loan from her own funds.2
Erskine, too, quietly left a noticable impact on the Bay Area as an “environmentalist and conservationist in the 1960s and 1970s, and a staunch advocate of retaining open space in the quickly developing Bay Area cities”; she founded the Greenbelt Alliance, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, and she “aided in the creation of the Save the Bay organization during the early years of San Francisco’s landfill efforts and played a role in establishing the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.” A small park with stunning views in San Francisco was dedicated to Dorothy Erskine in 1979.3
From the beginning Elsa shared Druid Heights with Roger Somers and his wife Mary. Roger was “a visionary house builder . . . In his woodwork and design, Somers developed a flamboyant, organic, deeply Californian style influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Japanese architecture, and the twists and turns of living things. . . . Somers invited the young artist [custom furniture maker Ed Stiles] to live at Druid Heights and install his shop in a building there in exchange for giving Somers access to his woodworking tools. . . . Several Druid Heights homes and structures were built or converted by Somers and Ed Stiles.”4
Through the years, “the community [became] a popular retreat and meeting place for three countercultural movements in the United States, including the Beat Generation of the 1950s, the hippie movement of the 1960s, and the women's movement of the 1970s.”5 A study by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area found “this small community succeeded in its goal to create a secluded, supportive space in which imaginative people could work, live and celebrate, unburdened by the demands of mainstream society . . . their efforts later had a significant impact on the emerging counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would eventually influence broader events in the history of the United States.”6
Many influential figures moved through Druid Heights—Catharine MacKinnon, Betty Friedan, Lily Tomlin, Celeste West, Margo St. James, Allen Ginsberg, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Neil Young, Ram Dass, to name a few. Alan Watts, who lived the last years of his life at Druid Heights at Gidlow’s invitation, seemed most inspired by Gidlow: “Through knowing Elsa, Alan was introduced to women’s and goddess spirituality and a deeper mysticism.” Subsequently, the dedication in Watts’ autobiography is, “To Elsa Gidlow.”
Yet while both women and men were visitors and residents of Druid Heights, Gidlow was primarily “a champion of women’s rights and a mentor to many younger women, feminists, writers and activists”;7 according to Marcelina Martin, a friend of Elsa, she “dreamed of a retreat where women artists could come and work in a peaceful, supportive environment. Elsa wanted to encourage women just as she had Alan Watts.”8 Elsa’s autobiography notes, “My vision, my dream, has been taking shape for a long time . . . It is of a place where compatible women might be brought together for shared activity on many levels. I have the space here for women artists who can develop a comradeship. I am calling it ‘The Druid Heights Artists’ Retreat.”
“That is, until the federal government decided it wanted the land in 1972, setting off a chain of events that would not only threaten the community’s continued existence, but to erase it from collective memory. . . . In 1977, the National Park Service absorbed Druid Heights into the Muir Woods National Monument, an area of historic redwood trees it had folded into the recently created Golden Gate National Recreation Area . . . After the government invoked eminent domain, only legal tenants were allowed to live there, ending its status as a revolving door for artists and thinkers. . . . Gidlow stayed at Druid Heights until her death, in 1986. A series of tenants rented out her portion of the property until 2005. Since then, her parcel has sat uninhabited.”9
“And most important, one had time and quiet days and nights (at Druid Heights) to mull over thoughts and ideas and how to implement them, or time to write about life.” – Margo St James, in her August 12, 2009 oral history interview on her days at Druid Heights. St. James lived at Druid Heights from 1969 to 1974.
The first time I visited Druid Heights it was a classically beautiful northern California summer day. I pulled into the two car gravel lot with crooked mail boxes and left my truck precariously perched on the dusty edge of a cliff before setting off on a gravel path gently sloping downhill, lined with shady trees swaying in the warm air blowing in off the Pacific ocean less than a mile away.
As I followed the curving road into Druid Heights, the wind picked up, rustling loudly through the monterey cyprus and blue gum eucalyptus. When I rounded the corner and took the few short steps to stand on the deck of Alan Watt's library, the wind quieted; the tree dappled glow of the sun through the dusty windows in the door enveloping me in a peaceful reverie.
That’s when I first envisioned Elsa’s dream, what could have been a women's retreat. I saw my ever-growing collection of feminist theory, poetry, and literature rubbing spines with the collections of other like-minded women under the warm sunlight filtering through the domed skylight; the discussions between women that would carry through the cool briney wind gusting up Mount Tamalpais; the artistry that is only birthed when women come together to collaborate away from the influence of male hegemonic society.
Surrounded by the echoes of the women who came before me, I fully realized the importance of creating and maintaining space that prizes interconnectedness, artistry, intelligence, respect, and most importantly female sovereignty.
Later I drove to a crest on Panoramic Highway. Through binoculars all I could catch was the glint of the late day sun on their lonely power lines dipping down into the sea of blue gum eucalyptus. Towering above the other trees in the valley, the trees she planted and tended created an unintentional natural monument, a commemoration of her contribution to the women's movement. Being able to see what’s come before—and imagine what we’ve since lost—is a galvanizing moment; it’s an invitation to begin conceptualizing what we can reclaim, what we can rebuild. Like the women that came before, like Elsa, I’ll keep searching for my woman-centric enclave.
The long road
The longing search
The threshing of flesh for soul:
To find
To find at last
The seeking is goal*
“Today, and each dawn, Elsa lights a candle and burns incense before the ivory porcelain statue of Kwan Yin, Chinese Goddess of Wisdom and Compassion. She builds a fire in the stone fireplace beneath Ella Young's enchanting face, and sits in the curved chair. The cat, Lady Tiki, purrs on her lap. They gaze out the window at the "dancing dryads," madrone, bay laurel, live oak. Rose-lipped fuschias nod at them through the glass. Elsa's beautiful bright eyes watch the flames. She begins to write.
Abigail Hemstreet
San Anselmo, CA
April 1982”
― Elsa Gidlow, “Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty”
*The included poems are from Gidlow’s “Makings for Meditation; a Collection of Parapoems, Reverant and Irreverant”
https://alchetron.com/Druid-Heights
https://savedruidheights.org/2020/02/09/views-of-druid-heights-circa-1954-1968-and-then-through-1979/
https://sunnysidehistory.org/2018/10/08/sunnysides-other-park-and-the-legacy-of-dorothy-erskine/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120415155455/http://www.millvalleyhistoricalsociety.org/history-of-homestead-valley-2012.html#january2012
https://alchetron.com/Druid-Heights
https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/11/28/beatnik-era-peyton-place-may-be-given-national-historic-status/
https://memory.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/ca/ca4300/ca4301/data/ca4301data.pdf
https://poet-warrior.com/druid-heights
https://web.archive.org/web/20211111163826/https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvd4e/americas-only-lgbtq-historic-district-is-falling-apart-druid-heights-elsa