The Ashland Karma
THERE’S NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. In our deeply fractured world, Ashland offers an oasis, an alternate universe.
While the Supreme Court hacks away at our civil liberties, this southern Oregon town of 21,000 holds the Woodstock Nation tight. In few other places across America, I wager, will you encounter such a concentration of dream catchers, essential oils, women who have let their hair go grey and men with beards. Here, holistic medicine and spiritual journeys can raise hope, not eyebrows.
For many, it is the pace of life in Ashland that draws them in—along with the sweeping views across the Rogue Valley. “You gotta slow down, girl,” my best friend from high school, Kathy, said as we drove down Ashland’s main boulevard on my inaugural visit last summer. “This isn’t Brooklyn.” When she moved to Ashland seven years earlier, she received a speeding ticket for going 30 in a 25 mph. zone the very first day. “S-L-O-W is the mantra,” she said.
Some Ashland transplants discovered the town’s charms before and after drinking in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There is an Elizabethan fantasy at Ashland’s core, where an open-air stage broadcasts the pathos of Romeo and Juliet’s tragic love or Henry V’s conquests of France into the night. Since a modest production of Twelfth Night in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has hosted 20 million visitors, with a season that stretches nine months and includes 11 plays, three to five by Shakespeare along with world premieres.
If the OSF is Ashland’s altar, the Food Co-op is its town hall. Ashland may have more supermarkets per capita that favor organic food than any small town its size, but the Co-op reigns supreme. Like so much else here, it balances the inner self with public good. Chemical free, gluten-free, GMO-free, locally grown, whole grain, artisanal andfreshare the bywords. In a town with a lot of vegetarians, the Co-op’s humanely raised beef wins accolades.
At lunch, the Co-op’s take out section becomes a social hub where locals sit in the patio and exchange news and “through travelers” pause and gain their bearings. The Co-op’s avowed commitment to sustainability is palpable, as is its pledge to “pay it forward” in the community. Sometimes, a local resident who is down on his or her luck may stand near the entrance and quietly ask for help. Customers will offer not only spare change, but also hello’s, how-are-you’s, or a touch on the shoulder.
On the first Friday night of every month, Ashland’s artists welcome the public into their studios and shops. It’s a festive affair. We went three days after we arrived in Ashland at the end of March. As we left a cluster of galleries filled with iridescent blown glass and imaginative sculptures, we came upon one reveler giving her pet pig a spin.
A few weeks later, a three-day conference called “Finding Our Way: A Community Exploration of Compassion”unfolded in town. This is where I heard Annie Lamott speak about rediscovering mercy and where community discussions about racial differences and homelessness reflected our splintered world.
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