Collie Ryan: A Magical Mystery

My husband at the time found Collie on Mount Shasta and brought her to the Colorado River where several of us were staying. We had left Yucca Valley where hundreds of hippies from all over the United States came together. How we all came to be there at that time is still a mystery. It was the High Desert’s Haight-Ashbury.

We were camping at a spot on the Arizona side called the “Indians Own Campsite”. Collie sang only Donovan’s songs at the time and had not written any herself. She also painted beautiful pictures of Buddhas and Hindu Goddesses on our canvas walls. Larry Creech asked her to write some “occult” songs, occult meaning “hidden”. She agreed and created the first of over 700 mystical songs she wrote during and since that magical time.

The songs came in batches. She was sort of like “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs”. They were usually written after deep discussions of philosophy between her and Larry, who was a student of Theosophy and an Associate of The United Lodge of Theosophists. The topics were of the Universal Brotherhood of Man, the Oneness of Life, the Journey of the Soul, and other universal concepts. We had become like Gypsies, wanderers, seekers of Truth.

It was happening in many places in the States. I guess that’s why they called us “Flower Children”. We were like families of wild flowers springing up in different areas. No one really knows how or why, but I think it was an awakening, or a pouring down upon us of Soul Light.

We moved to the California side of the river and set up a better camp with a butane stove and refrigerator, and built a shelter from wood and things we found in the desert. Lots of friends and hippies from Los Angeles and Yucca Valley came and Collie sang around the fire every night. In the mornings the deer mice would dance for us jumping high in the air and we would feed them cornmeal pancakes.

We finally left the river after a year or so and went our separate ways. Larry, Katherine and I started a Carrot Juice Factory in Lompoc California called “New Age Farms”. We wanted to do something to help the Hopi Indians. We had visited them and Collie had done a concert for them. Our association with them and reading books about the plight of the American Indians inspired many of the Indian songs in the album “Indian Harvest”. We had started “The Colorado River Gold Mining Company” and produced three albums for Collie.

The juice factory, New Age Farms was like a Fellini movie. We hired all the beautiful girls that were living in Lompoc while their boyfriends were in Lompoc Prison.

Collie was living in Watsonville with her family and she came down to do concerts at The Sun and Earth Health Food Store and Restaurant in Isla Vista. That’s where we sold some of the albums.

We sold the juice factory and bought a place in Yucca Valley. Collie moved in with us to continue working on her paintings and music. There were many wonderful musicians there. Young and old came together. It was something good for the community. Donovan was living in Joshua Tree at the time and he sang at the concert too.

Collie left and moved to Big Bend Texas, but never stopped writing songs and we visited each other many times.

There are so many amazing songs. They came as one, with the melody, words and guitar all together. She didn’t write the words and then add the music. Many of them contain ideas from the Bagavad Gita and the Vedas of India. We continued studying Ancient Religions.

It was a time of awakening to the Brotherhood of Man and the Pilgrimage of Soul. I guess you could leave out the Theosophical aspect and call it philosophy but that wouldn’t really explain it truthfully.

Collie has maintained the “River Life”. She totally dropped out so to speak and has lived directly with nature all these years, surviving by selling her hubcap paintings. This has enabled her to keep the songs alive and write new ones.

The River Camp has come to an end after 35 years and is being turned into a golf course. Will another spot in nature open up for her as a home base? What will be the future of my friend, this amazing lady, an artist, a poet, and a Songbird unparalleled?

Tommie Lee Zook, 2009