Those Were The Days

Life And Love In 1970s Northern New Mexico

It was a high time in Northern New Mexico. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s hippies in flowered buses and VW vans rolled into Taos, mostly city kids trying to “get back to the garden.” The dismayed locals called it “the hippie invasion.”

This is the story of two writers who found each other in the maelstrom of the commune days. Jim Levy was breaking up with his wife Deirdre, who later became Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun whose books became bestsellers. Phaedra Greenwood discovered she was pregnant while living in a tool shed at forty below zero. Eventually, Jim and Phaedra settled down in an old adobe outside a small Hispanic village to raise a family. These were the golden days, but the times were a-changing. The women’s movement swept in; Three Mile Island sparked No Nukes demonstrations, and Watergate proved that you can’t trust authority. It was time for Jim and Phaedra to test themselves in the world. A surprisingly honest and moving remembrance of the cultural upheavals in northern New Mexico in the 1970s.