Welcome, Now Leave: How a would-be Shangri-la went hopelessly cattywampus

The true story of a tragicomic, once-obscure, far northern California backwoods ghost subdivision, why it failed, and how it eventually drew national attention

The peculiar history of Mt. Shasta Vista, a monumentally failed development that elevated dysfunctionality to an art form, Welcome, Now Leave explores the motley past of the contention-drenched remote subdivision - 1,641 21/2 acre lots over seven square miles - that flew off the tracks almost from its start.

In deep-diving into why the 60-year-old backwater went so astray, its author, an actual 46-year resident, examines his wayward realm's outlandish history with the eye of a bemused anthropologist and timing of a deadpan humorist.

He tells of the hopes and dreams (and self-interest) of lot holders and realtors as the arrested development, chameleon-like, transforms from shared campground to fledgling retirement community, to countercultural, code-ignoring back-to-the-lander magnet; to sea of rogue cannabis growers.

The writer, at 35, having reluctantly conformed to building code, rebels against his imperious older neighbors by hosting a hippie rainbow gathering, driving them apoplectic and making regional TV news. Decades later, shoe on the other foot as bold growers, mostly Asian American Hmong, snap up hundreds of empty parcels and gain national attention, he at 67 adapts to the extreme changes.

Related issues covered include:

• the Uniform Building Code
• off grid solar living in rural California
• historic Back-to-the-land movement
• systemic U.S. racism against Asian Americans
• comparisons to similar rural developments in the region
• the cannabis boom in rural California

Welcome, Now Leave is part local history, part social satire, part memoir, and part elegy for a strangely enchanted lotus land. One that forever seeks a place in the sun. Readers might gain a new understanding of how squirrelly urban refugees can get in their elusive search of tranquil country living.