Recently I revisited a very traumatic and transformative event in my life, as did a group of people who were part of that event. Together we experienced some blessed healing and a re-energizing of youthful dreams buried in ashes for 55 years.
A long lifetime ago, when I was 18, I was in love with a woman named Regina, and was very taken by her beauty, both inside and out. I had never met anyone like her before. She lived so totally from her heart – a sharp contrast to the mind-oriented, intellectual identity I was so attached to at that time. We met in December 1969 and over several tumultuous months in the Boston/Cambridge area our connection evolved into a creative and caring blend of lover, friend, and sort-of-sibling.
Amidst loss, uncertainty, and feeling stuck, Regina struggled to find her way and wanted a change. One morning the following April, we were on the phone and she told me she was leaving the next day with some people to visit a commune in southern Vermont. She was very excited about it and I wished her well. She said she planned to be back in a few weeks and then we talked about hitchhiking together to California come the summer. That was the last time we ever talked.
A few days later, I heard on the radio that four people had died in a commune fire in southern Vermont the night before, the result of a candle burning down and igniting the wooden house when everyone inside was asleep, after a night of drunken partying to celebrate the first warm day of spring. The names were announced: “Josh Christianson, Mitch McKendry, Pete Peterson… and a girl named Regina from Cambridge.” Although they hadn’t yet positively identified her burnt body, I knew it was her, and a part of me went numb. The next day, in a surreal stunned haze, I visited the site, staring long and hard at the mass of charred timbers, and confirming to the state police that, yes, I knew Regina Dougherty and she had arrived there just days before.
The deadly fire on April 16, 1970 at the Johnson Pasture (JP) Commune in Guilford Vermont was a huge traumatic event that has continued to deeply affect all who lived there, especially those injured, as well as the commune founders, the larger community, and family and friends of the four who died. The fire certainly changed me – from that point on seeing life as fragile and unpredictable. And that changed the trajectory of my life to one of striving to live more purposefully, appreciatively, and to realizing that time and relationships are precious.
I have grieved for a long time. My grieving for Regina has been part sadness because I missed her so much; part anger that she didn’t take more precautions and maybe could have survived; and part guilt and self-blame that I didn’t do more to help her with her struggles that led her to want to go to JP. Somehow, I should have prevented her dying, I told myself. My underlying belief was that it was a mistake, not totally real, and over the decades I played the “what if” game, and spent too much time in the fantasy world of what my life would be like if she had lived. But Regina has also been a tremendous inspiration for me to live more from my heart, and less from my head. She has been my guardian angel, looking out for me, steering my rather unconventional life from going off the rails at times, and anchoring me in love.
For all the survivors, our grieving over the years has been a mixture of sadness, guilt, anger, disillusionment, a painful loss of innocence, and a questioning, even dismissing, of youthful counterculture idealism to live freely and close to nature, without modern conveniences. But the grief has also been about greater gratitude, learning, wisdom, and deep bonds of friendship and community.
Yet, with all that, after 55 years there was still something unfinished about the JP commune and the fire for so many of us. I discovered what that something was at a chance meeting not long ago with Jerry, the current owner of JP. He knew the history, felt the spirits of those who died there, and strongly believed we needed to create a memorial to honor and remember them. A lightbulb turned on in my head. Yes, what was unfinished was a celebration of life gathering of the JP community – to tell the many stories of living and dying at the commune, of darkness and light, to honor and remember Josh, Mitch, Peter, and Regina, and all who were there.
And thus was planted the seed for the gathering that took place on August 30 this year at JP, in an area that Jerry cleared, about 100 ft from the site of the fire. I had the pleasure of organizing and facilitating the event, with help from my wife Gaya and others. There were nearly 40 of us there, mostly in-person but also a few Zooming in from around the country and Europe too. There were many reasons why people came. One of the reasons, I suggested, was that Josh, Mitch, Pete, and Regina wanted us to. Through our heart connection with them, they called us to them, to remember them, to cherish and love them, to make sure they will always be a part of our lives. They wanted to be with us, and not be forgotten. Apart from spiritually, they were with us visually, in the form of posters for each one, with photos and brief descriptions.
We began the gathering with a blessing of the land from 7 directions, a welcoming and releasing of the spirits who died there but perhaps were not totally free to move on, and the dedicating of a memorial stone (that eventually will be inscribed with the names of those who died, pending additional donations.) But the heart of the event was the storytelling – in prose, poetry and music – stories of joy, adventure, wildness, excess and generosity, resilience, terror, miraculous survival, living on the land, discovery, caring, growing up fast, and visitation from spirits.
Here are a few excerpts: “We heard the screams, we tried to get up the stairs, but the smoke was too intense.” “We did not turn anyone away… We do not own this place, we’re doing our best to take care of it.. We were figuring out who we were. We were babies…” “We got stoned and drunk. We went to bed. I woke up and people were running by us, people running and screaming and jumping…we jumped out the window naked…” ”I heard about this place JP and someone told me to roll a pizza up in my sleeping bag and bring it up and they’ll let me hang out for awhile, so I did.” ”Your life can turn on a dime that is really unexpected.” “The fire started melting the tar and dripping down on us. I woke up to find this dim figure at the foot of the bed. It was a devil, his eyes were blazing white, his skin was red like a boiled lobster. He’s snapping this whip at me, the tip hitting my arm and it really hurt. He was furious, he was screaming at me, “WAKE THE F–K UP!” “The love we felt for each other and for these gone friends, we carry forward, it’s always there.”
By the end of the gathering, it was so clear that we JPers are all inextricably bonded, forever – in part by the drama of the fire, but mostly by the dreams we shared, however naïve we were, and how we’ve carried forth those dreams to give meaning to our lives and contribute to the greater good. Those dreams feel alive and re-energized, and ripened by the wisdom of age.
The gathering was both a great celebration and a tremendous healing. At long last, those who died in the fire were honored. For me, something has definitely shifted around Regina. I’m much more at peace and I’m more fully inhabiting the real world now. Realizing, on a deeper level, the fire is simply what happened, regardless of what should or could have happened. No matter what we want, shit happens. All the time. It was simply her time to go, and I can appreciate a certain beauty to how her life ended: Just hours before, Regina was twirling and dancing around saying “I feel free, free as a bird,” and then she died in a warm blanket of smoke, asleep, in the arms of a sweet lover. Yeah, she died too damn young, but what a way to go! My numbness from 55 years ago is just about gone.
Donations gratefully accepted to raise an additional $1000 to complete the memorial stone with either a plaque or inscription of the names of those who died. Please contact me for information about donating via Venmo or by check. Thank you.
