Welcome, Now Leave: How a would-be Shangri went hopelessly cattywampus

The true story of off-grid dreams and a failed development The funny-sad tale of Mount Shasta Vista, a sprawling, remote subdivision of 1,641 long-cheap, generous-sized parcels carved into the remote juniper flats of far Northern California, and the diverse, often at odds buyers attracted to them. Written by a resident of nearly five decades, the book is part local history, part memoir, and part social study. It’s told with the wry, patient eye of a bemused anthropologist who has watched the place unfold over time firsthand. It never treats Mount Shasta Vista as a punchline. Instead it offers an intimate, clear-eyed, comical look at the startling cultural conflicts that shaped it, and the root causes of its almost absurdist discombobulation. For decades after an initial group of well-heeled L.A. retirees flocked to the place in the rarefied late Sixties, land-hungry city dwellers with big dreams and small budgets snapped up the parcels to “escape Babylon” and live on the land. All reckoned with a pronounced lack of infrastructure: no water, few power lines, 66 miles of cinder roads – and a tangle of building codes that made the simplest cabin-building effort feel like a labor of Hercules. Hence, a spate of “outlaw” residents emerged. Starting in 2015, a radically new chapter began: rogue cannabis growers descended en masse to the 'ghost' subdivision, 80% empty. Arriving just as California's cannabis laws were about to be rewritten, the ensuing tension and chaos, the place breifly became ground-zero, a phenomenal, mini Emerald Triangle, gaining national attention. The strangely charmed land has forever been caught between the dream of tranquil country living and an endless series of rude awakenings. Welcome, Now Leave captures that tension with real emotional weight, displaying a skewed humor that keeps the pages turning. In this book you discover: The place’s peculiar, untold history How the Uniform Building Code collided with one’s desire for simpler living Why power line extension rates skyrocketed, and what that meant for people hoping to build homes The arrival of rebellious back-to-the-landers in the late ‘60s through the ‘70s, and later invasion by rainbow family members The phenomenal 2015 turning point, when the flood of unlicensed cannabis growers, mostly Asian American Hmong, turned the place upside down The systemic prejudice faced by these new residents, aggravated by bold grow operations Mount Shasta's reputation as a mystical, healing mountain and the seekers it continues to draw The radical body freedom embraced by some longtime residents The shifting maze of California state and county cannabis regulations and how people dealt with - or ignored – them Part local history, part social satire, part memoir, and part elegy for a strangely charmed lotus land that forever seeks a place in the sun, Welcome, Now Leave asks two simple questions having complex answers. Why did this place go so wrong? And how much will people risk, sacrifice, and compromise in their elusive search for the peace and quiet of country living? Told by someone who witnessed almost every page of it, this is a story you will not find anywhere else.
ASIN: 0977175405
VSKU: BVV.0977175405.VG
Condition: Very Good
Author/Artist:Ward, Stuart R
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Book has little sign of wear or use