I arrived at Texas Lake in the spring of 1973. I had just spent almost a year living with Timothy and Shareyl, who lived on the Similkameen River just outside of Princeton. I learned a lot living with them but I was missing being with young people, my own age. Timothy dropped me off in Hope and my intention was to walk up the Fraser Valley for a few days to think about things. I walked as far as Texas Lake and as I passed the old run down auto court which was to become the Hostel, I noticed triangles of plywood leaning next to a tree.

       I thought, "Looks like someone is building a geodesic dome." I walked into the yard and met Jeff (who later became Tyhson) and he told me the story of how he and his wife Pat were opening up a youth hostel there and were wanting to set up the dome to use as a craft shop.

       I had just recently bought "The Dome Book" by Buckminster Fuller and had spent the winter building models of domes. I built a small dome at Timothy's to use as a sauna and I really wanted to build a full-sized one. I asked if they needed help and Tyhson told me they needed someone to build the foundation and the platform to set the dome on. I had just learned a lot of new skills helping Timothy do stonework and building so I offered to stay and work on the platform for the dome.

       The next day I found myself in charge of the project.

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       I assembled a crew of traveling hippies and drove into Hope with crowbars, sledges and hammers to tear down an old building so we could use the lumber for the dome platform. We carefully demolished a building that somebody in Hope wanted torn down, pulled (and straightened to reuse) the nails and took loads of lumber back to Texas Lake. We brought windows, doors and anything useful back to the hostel and cleaned up the site and took the rest to the dump.

       Back at Texas Lake I cleared a 24 foot circle and dug footings into the ground to build rock and concrete piers to place the floor foundation on. I hauled tons of rocks and sand from the river and big, heavy creosote-soaked railroad ties to use for the foundation. From the center footing we went out 12 feet in 8 directions like spokes on a wheel. It was hard, heavy work lifting the railroad ties (I think we used a hydraulic jack) and getting everything level. I think we actually made a double floor with a layer of tar paper between them because we had enough lumber from the building we tore down. The floor turned out real nice and although I had only committed to building the platform, I wanted to stay to see the dome go up.

       We assembled the plywood triangles and many of them were rotten and had to be repaired or replaced. We built 4 big pentagon shaped windows and covered them with clear vinyl and built a beautiful cupola on the top.

       Now came the challenge of sealing the bugger. We decided to skin the dome with cedar shakes. We lived in a cedar forest and had lots of cedar available. I remember splitting the shakes by hand with a big steel blade on a handle, tapping it into a cedar round with a big wooden mallet and levering the blade to peel off a nice flat shake. It was a long process splitting each and every shake by hand but eventually we got the whole dome covered. Sealing around the windows was a challenge that we worked on over the years with aluminum flashing, caulking and anything else we could think of. It was a constant challenge trying to keep the dome dry. 

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    Eventually we finished the dome and opened up a craft shop. By then, more and more travelers were arriving to stay at the hostel. I decided to stay on and help get the hostel going. We set up the motel office as a kitchen and dining room and fixed up a couple of the motel cabins for the staff to live in.

       I bought a 1957 International Harvester panel truck and dubbed her "Nellie Belle." At the end of each day I would drive into Hope and look for stranded hitchhikers on the Hope-Princeton and Trans Canada Highways, and offer to take them home to a hot meal and a place to sleep. Nellie Belle's record load was 17 hippies with their backpacks and a dog! My motto was (and still is) "there's always room."

       We bought our food in bulk at a food co-op and various people did the cooking. I was observing the chaos in the kitchen and how some people were not very hygienic and how people were starting to get sick. I figured that someone needed to take over the kitchen and be in charge. Since no one else volunteered for the job, I figured that somebody was me.

       I had never cooked for large numbers of people before but I'd been learning how to be a good Aries director of energy and I volunteered to take charge of the kitchen. I didn't know what I would cook each night but inspiration would come, people would arrive and volunteer to help and I'd have them cutting, peeling and chopping and soon we had large pots and pans of food cooking away. My philosophy was "there's always enough." Some nights we'd feed up to a hundred people!

       I remember not stopping to eat until I was sure everyone had eaten and there was enough for the late comers. Sometimes I'd collapse in my cabin with a plate of food at 10 o'clock, tired but contented. Soon there were enough "together" people who wanted to stay and be part of the community that I was able to let go of my kitchen responsibilities and head out to focus on the garden. 

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    I had learned a lot about gardening living on Timothy and Shareyl's farm out in Princeton and I wanted to apply and expand upon what I'd learned. I had a pretty steady supply of labour to help with the garden project. Anybody could stay at the hostel for 3 nights if they paid their dollar a night (that included supper and breakfast). We were given 5 salaries by the federal government to run the hostel in the summer and in the winter were paid a subsidy by the local Human Resources Department for each person we took in.

       If they had no money, or said so, they were asked to do some work. Anybody that wanted to stay more than 3 days was asked to work. So I had a regular supply of workers. Some were a pain in the butt and some were a great help and a joy to be around. Some could be trusted with jobs like planting and others I would have just raking leaves or pulling weeds where they wouldn't mess anything up. Some of the old winos looked forward to a week drying out in a place that gave them healthy food and a sense of family. They would rake leaves for the compost pile all day long and relished just keeping busy doing something productive to take their minds off their woes. They would sit and have a hearty lunch with us and feel a sense of family.

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       We attracted a core group who became members of the "community." Our focus was service, serving whoever showed up. Some of us considered ourselves a "spiritual" community and others cringed at the word.

       We followed many different paths but came together in our desire to offer SERVICE to our fellow travelers. It was a good time and a good thing we did.

       I will always remember that time: those people, that garden, the abundance and all the people we fed from it, Om, Shanti, Galadriel, the chickens, the bees, walks to the Fraser River. Trish reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to us over the course of a summer at lunch time, tree planting - great memories.

       It was a very wonderful time in my life that I shared with you all. I look forward to reconnecting with you this summer.

                     (Raphiell Nolin)