Back to the Garden

In 1988, documentarian Kevin Tomlinson filmed a “healing circle” gathering of aging hippies in rural Washington state, thinking he was preserving a dying lifestyle hailing from an outdated, obsolete 1960s social climate. Twenty years later, Tomlinson returns to those now senior-citizen nonconformists and finds them not only unchanged and unapologetic, but also notes that some of their formerly fringe concepts—such as sustainability and organic farming—are now mainstream. Other lifestyle choices, like marijuana smoking as practically the only form of religion they endorse, remain hippie-centric. While a percentage of the wizened interviewees have suburban homes and one even works for Microsoft (although she says her heart is with Apple), none have abandoned their utopian back-to-the-land ideals, and some have passed on their values and drum circles to their adult children (although one son, we're told, won't visit and has never brought the grandkids). The only note of regret comes from one mother of four children by four different fathers, who found that “free love” was not for her the liberating concept that it was for the footloose males. Overall, however, Back to the Garden offers a decidedly passionate endorsement of the much-maligned American counterculture whose core character has endured beyond Woodstock and Alice's Restaurant. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)