In the House of the Goddess

Druid Heights, 1954-present

Mill Valley,  Marin County, CA

In the post-war years, bohemian circles, later known as the Beat generation, started getting together in San Francisco and Berkeley. They were open to sexual freedom and drug experimentation, rejecting conservative social customs. One of the writers associated with this group was lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow, who founded Druid Heights, a small rural residential community, in Marin County. When Gidlow moved to San Francisco in the 1950s she purchased a shack in Fairfax, CA, repaired and upgraded it. She also started applying her interest in Zen Buddhism, Taoist philosophy, and Celtic paganism to her work in the garden. Her spiritual interest in Eastern religions was part of the broader countercultural zeitgeist of the 1950s. 

In 1954, Gidlow purchased a 5-acre farm with Roger Somers, a jazz musician and woodworker, and his wife, Mary. Gidlow named the community after Emily Bronte's Wurthering Heights, and from the Celtic understanding of women as Druid priestesses having divine powers and kinship with the earth. The community expanded with Ed Stiles, woodworker and hot tub builder, and his wife. Beat scholar Alan Watts also joined in the later years. They shared an ethos of spiritual environmentalism which materialized in their handmade aesthetics. With anarchist values, they shared skills and do-it-yourself methods. While critical of industrial capitalism and consumerism, they explored interesting directions for cohabitation with the landscape and each other that continue to be relevant today.

Elsa Gidlow was known to many as the “poet-warrior” and perceived as a modern Sappho who drew legions of young lesbians to Druid Heights. She was a feminist and an anarchist and became one of the foremothers of the lesbian feminist movement. She openly published her lesbian poetry, examples of which are included in this section, and wrote the first lesbian autobiography. This female connection with the earth conveyed a sense of kinship with the non-human universe that was a strong influence on feminist environmental ethics.

The site originally had two run-down houses that needed significant repairs and renovations. Somers’s Dragon house renovation, a scale model of which is included in this section,  approached reconnection with nature through an eclectic style that included flamboyant forms evocative of the Bay Area Arts and Crafts architecture. He used salvaged materials and followed his intuition instead of master plans and building codes. 

In 1973, as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the forest, the National Park Service invoked eminent domain and purchased the land, giving the three owners lifetime leases. This section includes a set of 2021 photographs of the site’s current state of evocative ruination. Most of the buildings are unoccupied and have fallen into disrepair. Standing between the past and the future, the ruins at Druid Heights open critical questions: should the buildings be preserved to match how they existed in a prior time? If the ruins were allowed to disintegrate, could we potentially learn to live without hiding the fact that things decompose? 

Davis, Erik. “Druids and Ferries: Zen, Drugs, and Hot Tubs.” In The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape, 157–62. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.  

Gidlow, Elsa. Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance of Being Lesbian. Druid Heights Book, 1975.  

———. Elsa, I Come With My Songs. San Francisco: Booklegger Press & Druid Heights Books, 1986.  

Mendelson, Marcy. Druid Heights. Documentary, n.d. https://druidheights.vhx.tv.  

Wilson, Claire. “Poetry, Anarchy, and Zen: The Legacy of Elsa Gidlow and Druid Heights.” Q26, Fall 2019.  

Youmans, Greg. “Elsa Gidlow’s Garden: Plants, Archives, and Queer History.” In Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories, edited by Amy L. Stone and Jaime Cantrell, Reprint edition. New York: State University of New York Press, 2016