It was 1983; we were on vacation in Hawai‘i. My husband handed me a book, The Findhorn Garden. “Here,” he said. “I think you’d like this.”

I started to leaf through the book: photographs of flowers, early morning dew on leaves, a basket of vegetables, a cabbage cut in half. “Please—take the children to the beach. I really want to read this book!” By the time they returned, I had finished the book and knew I had to visit this special place.

First we had to get there. It wasn’t a matter of airline tickets or itineraries. It was a matter of being accepted by the community. It was touch and go. I had rented our house and bought our plane tickets before receiving the go-ahead. My persistence eventually paid off, as if faith were part of the test. An invitation arrived to join the community as a Long-Term Guest. As I got to know others, I learned that it was not unusual for people wishing to come to Findhorn to experience some form of resistance, whether from within themselves, or seemingly from the universe. Perhaps this was the means by which the community sorted out who was really meant to be there.

Accommodation at Cluny Hill was principally for single people, but it was the only space available when I applied. That is how we ended up living there, and I ended up cleaning five spacious bathrooms a day, twenty-five a week. Was this a deliberate plan? Did they think my ego needed testing? Probably. Little did they know, I love cleaning bathrooms. I was happy with my hands in hot water instead of outside, shoveling snow.

My life became so much easier and richer than my life as a working single parent in Berkeley. The children settled into local schools in Forres. Lucy at Pillmuir Primary School, where she was happy, though initially could not understand a word of her teacher’s thick Scottish accent. Jason started at Forres Academy and was soon enjoying subjects he would never learn at the age of 11 the US: French, Scottish history, world geography, economics.

With Lucy and Jason happily settled into their respective schools, I was also happily settling into my life at Cluny. We were assigned a small but comfortable bedroom with bunk beds for the children and a single bed for me. What a relief not to shop and cook, but to sit down to tasty meals prepared by others. Once a week, we were assigned to the dish-washing crew. That itself was a fun experience, with guidance from Alan Watson Featherstone we learned to manipulate the huge, efficient commercial dishwasher.

Gradually, the other residents of the hotel—all single members of the community—relaxed about having a family in their midst. I seemed to be a responsible parent, and my children were not (as they had feared) screaming and racing up and down the corridors. However, as much as we seemed to be accepted, there were sometimes painful incidents when I realized we were not fully viewed as members of this community.

One Friday lunch, Stan approached.
“We’ll all be assembling outside the Universal Hall tomorrow morning for the community photograph. We do that once a year…”
“Oh thanks! We’ll be there.”
Stan appeared a little embarrassed. “Actually, we don’t include people who are here as long term guests ln the photograph.”
“Oh…I see…” was all I could manage in response. It hurt my feelings that we were excluded.
After our first six months living at Cluny (fall and winter), I was thrilled to receive the message that a caravan was available for us at The Park. Just before we moved, David Platt, focalizer of the Long-Term Guest program, came up to me at lunch. “After you’ve settled into your caravan, we would like you to start working in the garden. The original garden next to the caravan where Peter and Eileen live.” I could hardly believe it. I was going to work in THE garden, the one I had read about, the one whose story had inspired me to come here in the first place. I started to cry.
David looked worried. “Is that OK? We can see if there is somewhere else…”
“No…no!” I mopped up my tears. “I am just so happy. To hear that we will have our little home in a caravan and that I’ll work in the original garden, it’s…. it’s…. almost too much…”
I started to cry again.

Thus began one of the most deeply happy periods of my life. Cleaning bathrooms had been fine in the winter. Now that spring was approaching, I could work in the garden, my hands in the soil, listening to wood pigeons in nearby trees, tending vegetables that would feed the community, feeling totally at peace with myself and the world.

“It’s a good day to start preparing the soil for spring planting. I suggest that we all work on digging in the compost that is ready to go.” It was Paul speaking, a tall, good-looking American in his 30s, with a quiet demeanor.We gathered our tools that were hung neatly on pegs in the shed and walked to the garden to start work. Some of us turned compost in large wooden bins to reveal the rich soil at the bottom. Others took buckets of compost to mix into the garden soil.

I knelt down and took some of the soil in my hands. It was a rich dark brown, almost black, with a slight grittiness from the original sand. It felt delicious to the touch. I almost wanted to bury my face in it and eat it. On average (I read somewhere), every human consumes about two pounds of soil each year from vegetables that have not been thoroughly washed, or from ingestion while gardening or walking outdoors. I love the notion that unknowingly we are taking some of the richness of the land into our bodies.

At first, I missed meat and fish at community meals but pretty soon I found the vegetarian meals were so varied and tasty that I didn’t miss them. After that year of living at Findhorn, I never ate red meat again. As our work in the garden proceeded from plantings in early spring, I found it so satisfying to bring produce into the kitchen that we would later eat at lunch—lettuces, radishes, carrots, snap peas. Later in the season, we would harvest leafy greens, runner beans, potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables. I’m sure that satisfaction was connected to my English childhood, growing vegetables for my family during World War 2 to supplement our rations.

Up to this point I had not revealed that I was on leave from an academic job. University life was far away, a different world. I was happy to be somewhere where physical work mattered far more than intellectual pursuits. I heard a rumor that an academic had once interviewed residents for a dissertation project, and when finished had left abruptly. Some people felt ripped off. I sensed a slight anti-intellectual bias at Findhorn. People were learning how to deepen their spiritual lives and live peaceably with others, not how to deepen their understanding of abstract knowledge.

But the time came when it seemed appropriate to come “out of the closet”, so to speak. In the spring of 1984, the community purchased the whole of the caravan park, plus Pineridge: 22 acres in all. I remember fund-raising sessions in the community center, stuffing envelopes, and addressing them to anyone who had ever visited the community.

There was great excitement about permanent housing to replace the slightly decaying caravans. Future building would be a huge step. I thought an opinion survey might be a good beginning, so I approached a friend in the community—John Talbot. He was enthusiastic and my slight fear of being branded an intellectual academic dissipated.

Thus began a different phase of my work life at Findhorn. In the mornings, I continued to work in the garden. In the afternoons, I worked in a small caravan office which I shared the space with Virginia Lloyd-Davies (in charge of public relations.) I developed a questionnaire that was distributed to every resident: ”How satisfied are you with your current living accommodation?” “What kind of housing should be built?” “Should it conform with the same styles and materials as local Scottish housing or be quite different?” “Should there be a limit on size even if there might be some people who could afford more?” And so on.

As the survey forms returned, I analysed the results and wrote a report. But all was not serious work in that little caravan. Virginia and I (both British) had a similarly lively sense of humour. We spent many hours laughing hilariously during our tea breaks (and sometimes in between) at something we had heard or read. She was skilled in her job dealing with public relations at a time when some in Findhorn village and in Forres had their suspicions. What were we all doing? What did it mean that we meditated? Were we a cult? Some raised their doubts about us in letters to the local newspaper. Some years later when a hot tub was purchased at The Park, and a sauna was constructed at Cluny Hill, suspicions became more salacious. Were we engaged in sex orgies?!

Lucy experienced some of this prejudice when boys at her school bullied her and called her a “Yankee hippie.” But that all ended, she told me, when she grabbed the worst culprit.
“I pushed him down on the ground and sat on top of him. I told him to shut the fuck up…”
“Lucy! You didn’t… How did you know that word?…”
“Dunno… Just heard it somewhere…”

I was shocked, but also proud that my daughter had stood up for herself. The bullies never bothered her again. Later, as an adult, she told me that that incident was an important start in learning how to stand up for herself in life. I encouraged her to invite some of her friends from school to join us for a communal dinner at The Park. I hoped these children would return home and report that people in the community were not strange, that they seemed nice and friendly, and in a small way I hoped this would help soften some misconceptions about us.

While living at Findhorn, I did experience something that made me feel uncomfortable. Some members and guests didn’t seem interested in finding out anything about Scotland or even acknowledging that they lived in this country. I think they saw Findhorn as this little bubble out of space and time. Thankfully, Jonathan Caddy—whose parents had founded the community—and who was now a young man, was very knowledgeable about the local area and often led weekend hikes into the nearby countryside and mountains. The children and I often participated. We learned a lot about the geology, natural history, and botany of the area where we were living. We felt that we were not just at Findhorn but also in Scotland.

As the time approached for us to leave, the garden group gave me a lovely sendoff—wine, goodies, and a special card with their thanks. “It’s been special spending this time with you in the garden. Blessings on your travels…” “…Thanks for all you have given and shared of yourself with us…” “…Thank you for the gifts of your insights which has been of such value to the community….”

A few weeks before we left, I joined a group of women—members and guests—in an art therapy class taught by an older woman named Nina. I don’t remember much about the specific exercises. But I do remember sobbing at the thought of returning to Berkeley. At Findhorn, I had in some way discovered a deeper and truer self that could never flower in academia. I was fearful I might bury it once more, at some cost. I was reluctant, perhaps even terrified to return to that life.

As expected, my return to Berkeley was painful. Colleagues didn’t want to hear about my year away. I think they feared I’d joined some kind of cult. It was ironic that I had to keep silent about my academic side when I first arrived in Findhorn. In Berkeley, I had to keep quiet about my spiritual life, at least among my faculty colleagues.

Findhorn and Berkeley came to personify the two sides of my interests and my psyche—right and left brain, the spiritual and the intellectual, nature and writing, gardening and research. Some years after that pivotal time in Scotland, I had a dream. I am at Findhorn and meet a therapist. I am surprised to see him. We greet each other, and I lead him on a tour of the Berkeley campus, specifically to the College of Environmental Design where I was a student and faculty member for over 30 years. Acknowledging and integrating the Findhorn-me and Berkeley-me seems to be the work of a lifetime. Maybe that’s the whole point of old age if we are lucky enough to live that long. Hopefully, we can make sense of our lives and weave the myriad threads and unexpected twists and turns into a beautiful and satisfying coherent design.

Clare Cooper Marcus