A theme I incidentally explored in the course of doing research for a senior thesis* in community development at U.C. Davis in the 1970s. Focusing on my home county of Humboldt, Ca., I analyzed in some depth the county's less-than-successful (I might even say, ludicrous) efforts to participate in the twentieth century — chop down all the big trees, force the state and federal governments to create parks to preserve the remnants, invite tourists to view same (cut tunnels in largest trees to allow drive-thru experiences); encourage unbridled strip development to cater to tourists — and then offered an alternative scenario for the county's future. Though not warmly embraced by the professional planners and decision makers, it nevertheless took hold among certain grass-roots elements, who have kept the flame alive to this day.

What I proposed, in carefully veiled academic language, was that Humboldt secede, not just from the Union but from modern-day consensus reality. By temporarily sealing its borders and returning to its economic and spiritual roots, Humboldt could, I felt, position itself for the establishment of what I termed (in an appendix) a post-Apocalyptic "psychic free-trade zone," to be financed and brought to realization with the help of "visitors," whose eventual arrival in the region had actually been predicted nearly a century earlier by one Charlie Moon, a Chinese-Indian half-breed who lived on the Charles Bair ranch in Redwood Valley (and the only person of Chinese extraction who remained in the county after the pogrom and expulsion of 1885-6).

* "Humboldt County: Economic, Planning, and Environmental Issues, Past and Future," a senior thesis presented to the Dept. of Applied Behavioral Sciences, College of Agriculture, University of California, Davis; June 1977.