i think that its necessary to differentiate between the more public face of the hippie movement and the many individuals who were inspired by it to do things a bit differently from their parents. there were many couples (and singles) who got involved in some aspects of the back-to-the-land movement in ways that were entirely decoupled from the “i know a guy who has 150 acres up on a hillside in colorado/new mexico/california/vermont” phenomenon.

its the individuals, by and large, who are still out there in some way, growing big vegetable gardens and more – the communes, with a few notable exceptions, had mostly folded by the early 1980s. i suspect woodring is thinking/talking mostly about the commune-centric side of the hippies, rather than the people who helped resettle some rural parts of the country and remain there today.

The hippies were destructive for a number of reasons. For one thing they were parasites who could only live the way they did (correction: the way we did) because others were willing to work.

I thought there was a lot of hippies who grew their own food and things?  It seems to me many of the people who weren’t hippies took far more from this earth than they “produced” through externalities, etc.  Just sounds like Woodring hung out with a lot of losers.