Kundalini and the Art of Being ... hitchhikers in order to avoid lawsuits if they should get into an ac-
cident. But apparently, so he explained, those who drive their own
rigs are more willing to take a chance and will occasionally pick up
hitchers to have some company while traveling down the lonely
road.
He took me all the way down I- to the Highway 99 turn-off.
From there I caught a ride from a local man in a pickup to Chico, and
then another to Highway 20 at Yuba City. At Yuba City, I got stuck
walking the long, noisy three or four miles across town and over the
bridge to neighboring Marysville, since there was nowhere along the
way to continue thumbing. By the time I arrived at the edge of town
outside Marysville, the sun was already going down. I hiked into a
nearby orchard and slept under the stars for the night.
I made it to Ananda the next day. My final ride was from an aging
hippie in a Volkswagen bug. The passenger door didn’t open, and
the passenger seat as well as the entire back seat was piled high with
assorted junk. I stuffed my backpack through the window into the
back seat, crawled in through the window, and perched on the pile of
junk in the front seat, my head crooked against the ceiling. He knew
where Ananda Village was and went a little out of his way to drop
me off at the entrance to the community.
Ananda Village is a commune of about three hundred folks, based
on the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, a Hindu yogi who
came over to America from India in the 1920s. The community was
founded in 199 by one of his direct disciples, Swami Kriyananda,
whose autobiography I’d recently read. Being interested in both yoga
and intentional communities, I was excited to check the place out. I
had been in contact with them before coming, so they were expect-
ing me. I planned to do work exchange there for a week or so before
continuing on my way.
I spent ten sublimely eventless days there—just what I had hoped
for—doing yoga, meditation, light work in the kitchen and garden,
and going on quiet walks through the surrounding dry forest. I spent