{"id":23937,"date":"2022-10-31T13:14:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T20:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=23937"},"modified":"2022-10-31T20:46:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T03:46:05","slug":"she-was-a-leading-lesbian-activist-before-disappearing-into-northern-california-a-filmmaker-wants-to-know-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/31\/she-was-a-leading-lesbian-activist-before-disappearing-into-northern-california-a-filmmaker-wants-to-know-why\/","title":{"rendered":"She was a leading lesbian activist before disappearing into Northern California. A filmmaker wants to know why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Sally
Robert Giard\/University of Oregon Libraries<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

RYAN KOST<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oct. 30, 2022 (SFChronicle.com)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a rhythm to life on The Land, a sweet cadence in the place up Sherwood Road, just outside Willits in unincorporated Mendocino County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The days began at first light \u2014 a meal, perhaps, followed by the gathering of firewood. Early on, in the \u201970s, days were spent building: constructing homes from scraps, developing a spring for running water, planting a garden and building a fence to keep the deer out. At dusk, before the only light around came from flashlights, ingredients were gathered and a fire started. There was singing, too, and lots of laughter on this Northern California land, claimed and staked for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHeaven\u201d is how one woman described it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the years passed, the community grew and then shrank until Sally Miller Gearhart<\/a> was the only one left, the lone holdout living on The Land year-round. Gearhart was a woman of many accomplishments. She wrote some of the first speculative lesbian fiction. She helped establish one of the nation\u2019s first women\u2019s studies programs at San Francisco State University. And she stood alongside Harvey Milk as he fought to defeat the anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the country setting had always called to Gearhart, so this was the place where Deborah Craig, a documentary filmmaker, found her in 2014. Now, with many of Gearhart\u2019s achievements lost in the haze of history, Craig is working toward completion of a film to introduce Gearhart to a new generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I first met Sally, I was like, \u2018What went wrong?\u2019 She\u2019s here, she\u2019s alone, she\u2019s in the woods. This is a sad story. It\u2019s not going to end well,\u201d Craig says. \u201cAnd we spent months and months, if not years, trying to figure out what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Deborah met Sally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Craig never sought out Gearhart, not specifically. As so often happens, one thing led to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her name came up in the course of a different project, about lesbians and aging, that Craig was working on while pursuing a master\u2019s degree in public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was just told, \u2018Oh, I know a woman you might want to interview \u2014 she still lives on a women\u2019s land community in the woods in Northern California, and she\u2019s in her 80s and she still cuts her own firewood with a chain saw.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That visual was everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted a picture of that,\u201d Craig says. \u201cI wanted videotape of that.\u201dExcerpt from \u201cA Great Ride\u201d (2018). Director Deborah Craig, co-director Veronica Duport Deliz. Silvia Turchin was the director of Photography. Video: San Francisco Chronicle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She got that tape and more, when she met Gearhart at her home,<\/a> tucked away in the hills outside Willits. Craig got her, late into her 80s, dressed in all denim, save for a white T-shirt and white Nike tennis shoes, driving around in a beat-up Jeep, seats all foam and springs, careening up and down dirt paths, shouting at the camera: \u201cYou OK back there?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More for you<\/p>\n\n\n\n