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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

Commune Folk Seek Truth Down by the Riverside

Commune Folk Seek Truth Down by the Riverside

James Baxter, poet and philosopher, has established a commune on the eastern bank of the Wanganui River near the little Maori settlement of Jerusalem. To the people of Wanganui forty-two miles away, the Baxter experiment is ‘that hippie outfit up the river’ and there are stories of drugs and free love.

We paid the commune a visit and, in some of the most beautiful scenery in New Zealand found instead a group of people who describe themselves as refugees from a sick society. They believe that some of the qualities in the Maori way of life hold the key to a saner world and they hope to leave the commune better people than when they arrived.

One moment all was quiet except for the clatter of the evening meal being prepared and the murmur of voices. Then a door opened and a bearded, long-haired man in tattered coat and trousers entered, triggering a sudden change.

People sprang up from the floor with cries of welcome. There were embraces for men and women alike. A new energy was in the air as though the group page 228 had been reunited with a power source, a focal point for its activities.

The man who caused the transformation was Hemi, or James Keir Baxter, aged 44, poet, philosopher and central figure of what some newspapers have loosely called a hippie commune.

‘Family’ greetings over, James Baxter padded across the floor on bare feet and flopped on a mattress against the wall on the far side of the room. He introduced himself and we started to talk. Talking is something he does very well. Each word sounds as though it is part of a carefully written speech but, at the same time, it is obvious that he is extemporising.

Sometimes James Baxter pauses and, with the fingers of one hand, ruffles through his long beard shot with grey, or else licks his lips thoughtfully. Rarely does he have to search for a phrase, an example, a quotation.

James Baxter is a man of contrasts. His mind is brilliant but, instead of the high-paying job he could surely easily get he has chosen to live in poverty. At times his speech is deeply spiritual and gentle, but in a flicker he becomes crude with the tongue of a worker who has dropped a hammer on his toe.

James Baxter detests materialism, scorns senseless pursuit of the dollar and believes that modern society is so sick that it needs a spiritual transplant.

‘When we built our social house,’ he says, ‘we neglected to make a toilet.’

James Baxter has a passion for mental health and he is convinced that the aroha and korero of pure Maori life hold the keys to a saner society. Aroha with its open displays of esteem and love, and korero, a deeper, more relaxed form of communication, are principles he holds to be vital.

Alluding to an incident in the New Testament, he said: ‘There are too many Marthas in our society and not enough Marys.’

Houseproud Martha did not understand, he said, that Mary, who was listening to and talking with Christ, was, in fact, working. A different kind of work admittedly, but work none the less. ‘Korero is work,’ he said.

James Baxter does not believe that he has dropped out of society. Instead he claims to have chosen a different direction.

‘People tend to worship normalcy,’ he said, ‘and try to impose what they believe is the average normalcy on others. It gives people a sense of security to see other people conforming to a superficial norm.’

For James Baxter, his long hair, beard, bare feet and shabby clothes are a kind of nose-thumbing assault on this doctrine. He admits that his appearance might be seen as subversive by some members of the establishment, but he demands the right to be different. He implies that if society were prepared to accept differences, long hair and the rest might not be necessary. He is not against work if it is meaningful. Servility or dollar worship in emolument he abhors.

James Baxter believes that the aroha and korero of Maori life are not anachronisms but could benefit the community by giving society a wider base and greater mental health.

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Coupled with his esteem of things Maori is a fear that the larger European culture might devour the Maori one as ‘a groper devours a smaller fish’.

James Baxter likes to be called Hemi, the Maori version of James, and he hopes that the commune, which he purposefully established near a Maori settlement, might be helpful in preserving aspects of the Maori way of life.

The commune is on the eastern bank of the Wanganui River in three slowly crumbling cottages tucked behind the Catholic Church and Maori pa which make up Jerusalem proper. Wanganui is forty-two dusty miles to the south and Raetihi about twenty-five miles to the north-east.

Hills ring the little settlement and there is a feeling of peace and isolation. On a busy day, about three cars might pass by, each leaving dust clouds hanging in the still air.

To this kind of environment come people with hang-ups, seeking release from problems caused by emotions, drugs, alcohol and the general stresses of modern living. So far there have been no miracles. But people have been helped to find themselves.

Life is slow and pleasant in the commune. Waking up is a gentle happening prompted by the calls of bellbirds, tuis, magpies and the occasional pheasant. On awakening, the next pleasure is a quiet dip in the river, with or without clothes.

Breakfast and lunch do not exist. Few people are about before 10 a.m. and the routine which has developed is one of endless cups of tea or coffee padded out with heavy chunks of homemade wholemeal bread.

About 4 a.m. someone will count heads to gauge the level of the floating population and the only orthodox meal of the day is prepared and eaten.

Afterwards there is perhaps some singing, horseplay or a quiet talk and smoke. Books are read, letters written and time is left to look after itself.

‘Think by the hour, not the minute,’ says James Baxter, and his adherents do just that. When the yawns start to come it is time to find a bed. Every spare foot of floor space in the three cottages is covered with mattresses, sleeping bags, blankets and pillows; no, there are no problems.

For the newcomer, the first and greatest shock is the commune’s disregard for organisation. There are few rules and no set chores. In short, a person can do what he pleases when he pleases and still get a fair share of the food.

‘A kibbutz turns pretty much on work,’ says James Baxter, ‘but I wouldn’t like to emphasise that around here.’

After a while the visitor sees what he means. Any attempt at regimentation would be disastrous because the commune’s population varies from day to day. A hard core of from ten to twelve semi-permanents keep it alive, but casuals drift in or out as they please. During Labour Weekend, for example, thirty-seven people were fed and housed.

The business of finding food is an endless one. Two of the semi-permanent hard core of the commune do more than their fair share, but no one complains.

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There is Carl, quiet and monk-like. He hails from Stewart Island and is fond of gardening. Almost single-handed he has hacked several plots out of the scrub and planted potatoes, kumaras, peas, corn and other staples.

Then there is Peter, aged twenty-six and one of the oldest people there – the average age at present is from eighteen to twenty-one years. Peter confesses to having been an alcoholic, a heroin user and a pillhead. Now he does most of the cooking and fishes for eels in the river.

Sometimes James Baxter gets a cheque from his writing and lectures. Now and then one of his followers takes a job for a few weeks to add to the store cupboard.

But in spite of all these efforts, there are times when food is scarce.

On one such day Peter picked up his line and went down to the river to try for eels. There were few about but he caught two.

James Baxter walked down to see how Peter was faring.

‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got two but they aren’t very big.’

‘Two – I’ll take one over to the pa then.’

Peter doubted that this was a wise thing to do and said so. After all, there were fifteen mouths to feed that night.

‘The Lord will provide,’ said James Baxter and was gone with one of the eels.

Peter fished on, but when James Baxter returned there was still only one eel on the bank. Time slipped away as the two sat quietly beside a small fire, waiting. Suddenly there was mighty chomp on the line and after a short struggle they pulled in the biggest eel they had ever caught.

The Lord had indeed provided.

As they staggered back to the house with their catch, James Baxter laughed: ‘With first names of Peter John, you couldn’t miss!’

Later, as I sat on the same bank fishing for eels, I thought back over the events which had led to my being there.

The Weekly News had heard about the commune and was keen to find out what James Baxter was trying to do.

After several weeks he approved a visit in a brief, early morning telephone conversation.

‘Come whenever you like, man,’ he said. ‘We’ll be looking out for you.’

A quick trip home to pack, hasty bookings on a plane and four hours later we arrived at Wanganui Airport and stepped into a waiting rental car.

The girl who signed over the car knew all about the commune.

‘We went out there one weekend to have a look,’ she said with an air of daring, ‘We couldn’t see anyone about so we came home.’

With the back of the car laden with groceries, luggage, cameras and typewriter, we hunted for the Jerusalem turnoff. Directions were needed. A woman pushing a pram gave sideburns and hair an appraising glance.

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‘You’d be looking for that hippie outfit?’

‘Yes,’ we confessed.

The directions were simple and so was the road. For the first few miles there was tarseal, but this gave way abruptly to a dusty gravel track which wound through the hills on the eastern bank of the river.

After passing through some of the finest scenery in the North Island, we arrived at Jerusalem about 6 p.m. The first glimpse of the settlement was a striking one with the spire of the Church standing out from a cluster of cottages on the hillside and the river sweeping by in front.

Peter waved a greeting from the far end of the short road leading in to the commune.

‘Better take your ties off,’ he said. ‘You’ll look a bit out of place otherwise.’

We humped our gear across a paddock to the only house in sight. It had seen better days. Someone had scrawled ‘The Family’ in red paint to the right of the door. Two cats, one large and the other still a kitten scrabbled about among a litter of tins, fishing lines and boxes.

Inside, the house was much the same. Whatever the family had, it certainly was not material possessions. A group of people was gathered around a table in a large, bare kitchen, talking. There was Bill in beard and poncho; Moth, his face framed by blond hair and beard; Barbara and Lu (for short) in neckto-ankle dresses; Angela, an attractive blonde in jeans and skivvy; Andrew, Rhys and quiet Mary. There were others about, we were told.

To be blunt, the first impression was one of squalor, but the people were cheerful and it was surprising how soon the surroundings became acceptable, then pleasant.

That night there were fourteen people lined up for the evening meal. Peter had somehow crammed a huge roast into the oven in a dish that was too small, but his efforts were worth it. After quiet talks, the group dispersed to the cottages and those of us staying in the main house rolled ourselves in blankets on the floor and went to sleep.

At 4 a.m. Bill walked in, wondering if we would like to go down to the river to see the morning mist and have a swim. John went but I was too lazy.

There were some books on an old treadle sewing machine within arms’ reach. The selection included Buffalo Bill, Dylan Thomas, Women of Rome, assorted volumes of poetry and a copy of The New Zealand Handbook, 1874, which has an interesting section on the ‘indigenous natives’. I was almost ready to believe that the house had been there since 1874 and that the handbook had been left there by one of the original residents.

Later, Bill took us for an early morning walk around the commune. There were sleeping bodies everywhere. In addition to the main house there was Bug Inn hidden among trees further up the hillside. Parts of it had fallen down and no builder would think of trying to fix it. But Bill enthusiastically outlined his plans for reconstruction. At present he and Carl and the odd possum with page 232 wanderlust are the only occupants. From the hole that was once a bedroom window, there is a magnificent view of the valley and settlement below.

Further along the track was the third house, equally well hidden by the vigorous bush growth. This was the Big House and it had a kitchen and genuine colonial sideboard which would stir the heart of any antique lover. Wood shavings and tools lay about the floor, evidence of the beginning of restoration.

Outside, the biggest and most symmetrical chestnut tree I had ever seen cast a shadow over a small clearing. No one knows how old the tree is. It must have been planted by one of the first pioneers.

Further off still was a fourth house, almost strangled by vines and wildflowers. It belongs to two women in Wellington and is left alone.

Down in the church, Father W. Te Awhitu, S.M. was saying a morning Mass. When he was finished he would don working clothes, said Bill, and would take on the role of farmer. Father Te Awhitu had also helped with repairs to the Big House.

Later, Bill and I sawed, chopped and stacked logs for firewood and cleared away some of the tangled vines under the chestnut tree. I broke Bill’s axe on a hard stump.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It was a cheap axe. Anyway, it can probably be strapped up. There is still strength there.’

Nevertheless, I feel bad about it.

The rest of the day passed quickly with a swim, strolls and talks. That night, James Baxter returned with all his contrasts.

Behind him he has a B.A. and several books of prose and verse. He was awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1966 and 1967 and has battled on in his own way to solve his problems.

The embraces with which he greets people, he said, were demonstrations of love. People should not be afraid to be demonstrative in this way. After our talk, he embraced me and wandered off to a bed somewhere, a strange mixture of patriarch and guru.

The next morning, James Baxter sat talking in the kitchen before going off on his own for a customary period of meditation.

‘I don’t want the commune to become too big,’ he said, because it might upset the local Maori people and they have been very good to us. I would like to see a second commune established on a similar basis elsewhere in New Zealand.’

The ‘similar basis’ would include sharing of goods, love for one another, speaking the truth and saying what is in the heart. If swearing were necessary for expression, okay. There would be no quarrels over property and members of the commune would take no servile jobs outside.

‘In time we hope to grow enough fruit and vegetables to support ourselves and I would like to see work on handcrafts, spinning, weaving and Maori page 233 artifacts,’ James Baxter said.

‘I feel a need for whakaiti – becoming small. That is hard for the pakeha because he has always had the first seat at the table.’

Later, James Baxter stroked his beard and said: ‘Our society is based on a somewhat demented accumulation of material goods’.

Did he feel bad about materialism and chasing the dollar because he had not been able to get many dollars for himself?’

‘No,’ he replies. ‘It is all right to obtain a certain amount of goods, but there comes a point when others are not necessary and are being accumulated merely for the sake of having them.

‘Some dolls have forty dresses in their wardrobes. What good is that? They can’t wear them all.’

The idea of the commune at Jerusalem was born last year when James Baxter paid a visit there. Then he went to Grafton, Auckland, which he described as an area where ‘there is a good deal of community life and a certain number of drug users, but I wouldn’t say that was the main factor. There is a lot of Maori blood there and Maoris and pakehas living together at the bottom of the ladder.’

For a while James Baxter lived in a large house where drugs were used, hoping that he could help the people get off drugs.

He got his fingers burnt and returned to Jerusalem where he lived for six months as a hermit. When friends made inquiries about the community he had suggested establishing, he put them off for a while saying ‘later, later, when I get things more established’.

Now that the commune is established, the only unwelcome side-effect is tourism. The curious arrive on motor bikes and by car loads expecting to see ’that hippie outfit’ indulging in everything from free love to drug taking. They are invariably disappointed, except for one occasion when a performance was faked for some strutting teeny boppers. The teeny boppers bolted.

For the record, the only drugs used in the commune, I was told, were cigarettes and a little alcohol on special occasions. Life is Spartan by suburban standards. There is no radio, telephone, television, refrigerator and in two of the cottages, no electricity.

The bath in the main house is dirty from disease, but then everyone bathes in the river once or twice a day.

Nevertheless, police have been keeping a watch on the goings on, according to some of the Maoris in the pa. One woman told me that she had been approached several times by police, once after 10 p.m., with requests for information about the commune.

‘I told them that if they wanted to know anything they should go and see Mr Baxter,’ she said.

Half-way through the second day of our visit James Baxter disappeared somewhere to meditate and write six ten-minute radio talks for which he said page 234 he had been promised twenty dollars each. These days he writes little poetry – ‘In my last book I got at the marrow of my own bones.’

When he appeared again he had with him a Catholic priest from Palmerston North. While James Baxter is a practising Catholic and about half the people at the commune are Catholic by birth or choice, he is quick to point out that the commune has no formal connection with the Catholic Church.

That night, Mass was celebrated in the kitchen of the main house. Members of the commune sat on the floor against the walls and the priest stood behind the table on which he had set out candles, chalice, wafers and paten.

The candles stood in mixing bowls, the priest was in slacks and sweater. His only sign of office was a stole draped round the back of his neck and falling to the front.

On the wall behind him was a huge poster of Jimi Hendrix.

Above all the hesitant voices in the responses rose that of James Baxter. During the service he gave a reading from the Bible.

It was a strangely impressive experience.

On the third day, word came from a doctor’s wife in Wanganui that a girl who had been at the commune several days before was going around surgeries trying to get drugs.

Peter was upset. The girl was a friend of his. He wondered whether he should go in to Wanganui to try to find her. He left the house and strode down to the river to check his eel line and find a quiet spot to think. He was so tense that his hands shook and he spoke in short bursts.

At one stage, after he had told of his own connections with drugs in the past, he said bitterly: ‘Drugs are a bloody stupid scene.’

Peter’s friend had left the commune while he was away in Auckland and had later written a letter saying that she could not do without pills.

That afternoon, Peter and Bill drove to Wanganui saying that they might not be back until the next day. Just before midnight, when we were sprawled about on mattresses talking, they returned – with the girl. There were cries of welcome and embraces. The girl dropped some chocolate and cigarettes in the middle of the group. The prodigal had returned.

Few people were to get any sleep that night. About 2 a.m. a group from the pa arrived. They had been at Raetihi after a hard day shearing and were a little merry.

James Baxter made them welcome and someone suggested cards. Five games of 500 later it was 6 a.m. The shearers went home wondering if they should go to bed or back to work. Peter and I went to check the eel line. When Peter dropped the line back in with the same bait on it, a lurking big fellow pulled hook and bait free and was gone.

Soon it was time for us to go, too. We were packing our gear and saying goodbye when James Baxter suggested we pay a last visit to some folk at the page 235 pa. Once there, he happily committed us to dropping two women off at a wedding at Ranana on our way back to Wanganui.

One of the women had been looking after a bed-ridden First World War veteran in a house across the way. James Baxter suggested that she take the weekend off and leave him to mind the old man.

‘Would you?’ she asked.

‘A pleasure,’ he said, and left to get some of his things together.

I remembered asking James Baxter earlier if he thought the commune and its ideas of aroha and korero would last. He had been noncommittal, giving the impression that he would like it to but was not sure about the future.

My last view of him was of his strange patriarchal figure striding barefoot through the grass, blanket tucked under his arm, heading for the pa and his appointment with the old man.

1971 (635)