A Queer Climate Movement Takes Root Along the Russian River

There’s a certain kind of queer magic that thrives along the Russian River.

For more than a century, queer people have sought refuge in rural Sonoma County, leaving the stress of city life for the peace — and parties — of the sprawling river valley and redwood forests. Artists, hippies, nude sun bathers, cruisers and even disco legends like Sylvester have all flocked there over the decades.

Now, two groups, Shelterwood Collective and Solar Punk Farms, are actively calling queer people back to the land, and not only to party. They’re creating a different type of magic: Shelterwood is restoring acres of forest through Indigenous practices like controlled burns, and Solar Punk advocates for environmental policy and farms the land — all while making space for queer community-building, joy and self-expression.

“I’m not selling this as a panacea, but as one small piece of a larger puzzle of correcting the arc of history,” said Shelterwood co-founder Nikola Alexandre. “It matters that the last gas station before coming to Shelterwood and leaving is in Guerneville, which is maybe the gayest rural town in the U.S.”

‘Caring for our elders’

About half an hour northwest of Guerneville, Shelterwood is an oasis that centers queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and disabled people. The property was once a religious cult and later a Christian camp. Since 2021, Shelterwood Collective has cared for its 900 acres of forest through stream restoration, forest thinning and prescribed burns.

The forested valley, surrounded by a ridge, is home to wild boars, foxes, deer, mountain lions and the occasional bear. The Kashia Band of Pomo Indians stewarded these lands for thousands of years. White settlers and the federal government forced them from their ancestral lands in the 1800s, which also eliminated their practice of cultural burning. In the mid-19th century, loggers turned the nearby town of Cazadero into a major timber hub.

Alexandre said that when Shelterwood purchased the land, it was overgrown due to poor management and needed room to breathe. With a five-year grant from Cal Fire, the group is physically thinning the forest and using prescribed fire to allow native species such as blue oak, sword fern and hummingbird sage to thrive once again.

“We’re not trying to micromanage a forest, we’re caring for our elders,” Alexandre said of large trees unscathed by fire during a prescribed burn in October.

Standing on a cascading hillside meadow, with billowing smoke around him, Alexandre said actively burning the crowded forest has a two-fold purpose: tending the land and queer hearts.

“The mythology that we are not part of these ecosystems, or that the only thing that happens to Black folk in the woods is negative or harmful, is one that I sought to truly push back against,” Alexandre said.

Giving ‘queerness space to breathe’

Shelterwood’s work isn’t just physical, it’s communal. The five people who live on the property, along with visiting friends and organizers, host weekend gatherings centered on queer folk.

Around Halloween, at a party called 900 Acres and a Ghoul, dozens of queer people dressed as sexy witches, a giant slice of pizza in a jock strap and horror movie characters like Casey Becker from Scream. The group of mostly 20- and 30-somethings danced to techno under a canopy of branches, carved pumpkins, connected in cuddle puddles and hiked in the fog.

“We dance with our human and non-human kin for a couple of days, and that is the joy that fuels many of us,” Alexandre said.

Matt Wood made the two-and-a-half-hour trek from San Francisco. The 30-year-old said every time he visits, he feels a little bit more restored.

“I think it’s also healed my relationship with nature a lot,” Wood said. “I had to relearn what it means to hike or camp because I associated those with white, higher socioeconomic activities.”

Wood has also learned the healing nature of prescribed fire, and sees his experience at Shelterwood as parallel to burning off the hardness of city life.

“A good burn was something I never knew about, but this maintains the health of the forest,” Wood said. “I think that’s something that we can all kind of apply as well.”

For Brandon Jones, Shelterwood’s executive director, restoring the forest and holding space for queer people is about developing a sense of sanctuary. The sprawling property gives “queerness space to breathe,” Jones said. “There’s something radical about removing queerness from confinement and throwing it into the open space to frolic.”

To keep the magic intact, Jones is figuring out how to shift Shelterwood from relying on grants to a retreat model for events and weddings, with potential for a farm and restaurant. Jones said he’s exploring more reliable funding options, as grants and private funding become harder to acquire in the current political climate.

“Once you get through our gates, there is spaciousness,” Jones said. “That’s part of the magic.”

Planting the seeds of sustainability

The Shelterwood Collective isn’t alone in its mission of centering queerness and climate resilience. About 20 miles away from Shelterwood, Nick Schwanz and Spencer Scott run Solar Punk Farms in Guerneville. It’s a working farm, a communal home they share with at least two others and a redwood forest.

Fed up with their jobs in health and tech in San Francisco, the couple wanted to live in a way that could make a tangible difference to the environment. At first, they dabbled in climate-related jobs. But they wanted to get their hands dirty, so they began looking for a piece of land. In 2020, they bought a 10-acre parcel in Guerneville with their savings.

“The queer history there was one of the big things that really drew us to the space,” Schwanz said.

The couple wants to help make the entire Russian River area resilient enough to weather future floods and fires. They see the Russian River’s queer history and the local climate movement as important factors in protecting the region.

“Queer people know that we have to protect each other,” Scott said. “No one’s coming to save us, we’ve got to do it ourselves.”

They grow squash, tomatoes and other produce, and host environmental salons, natural wine events and climate-themed drag shows.

“Our mission is to make the sustainability movement feel irresistible, not just essential or something that we should do, but something that you really want to do because it’s fun, sexy and interesting,” Schwanz said.

The duo’s move to Guerneville isn’t just about harvesting vegetables and raising chickens. They want to “shift culture” by influencing local policy to better support the environment. Schwanz is the president of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce, and Scott is on the county’s Lower Russian River Municipal Advisory Council.

Their influence is starting to have an impact. Schwanz pushed the chamber to adopt a goal of making the area a regeneration hotspot, and next year it aims to co-host a countywide festival focused on river health.

“The goal is to take Guerneville’s super power of getting a ton of people here and having a great time and diverting that energy towards a climate goal,” Schwanz said. “The sense is that every year is worse than the last. Our near-term goal is to feel like every year’s better than the past.”

Schwanz and Scott are also friends with Alexandre from Shelterwood Collective and hope to learn from the group’s forest restoration efforts.

“We’re hoping to get some guidance on how to best do forest thinning, burn piles and controlled burns,” Scott said.

Alexandre believes the restoration work by Solar Punk Farms, albeit on a very different scale, is essential, and it’s even more vital that queer communities focused on climate remain undivided.

“It’s my hope that these kinds of communities, collectives and sub-regional groupings of folks who are in close relationship with this place will become more and more frequent,” Alexandre said.

A long queer history

Gay San Franciscans began flocking to the Russian River in the 1920s and never stopped. The area served as a vacation destination, with people taking ferries, trains and cars to its redwood-lined riverbanks.

“They wanted to get away from the stultifying rules about how you’re supposed to live your life, and your sexuality is part of that,” said Tina Dungan, who teaches a course on Sonoma County’s LGBTQ+ history at Santa Rosa Junior College. “It’s the beauty of being in the trees.”

Shad Reinstein, an independent researcher in LGBTQ+ history, described the Russian River of the 1960s–’80s as the West Coast’s Fire Island. Bars, restaurants and hotels catered to the queer community. Journalists at the time called the area “the New Gay Mecca” and “a resort town that welcomes gays.”

She said so many gay men visited the area that she believes artists like the Weather Girls, who performed at a resort there, found an audience for their song “It’s Raining Men” among the throngs of shirtless men.

“I personally believe that was performed about the river,” Reinstein speculated.

Though gays and lesbians came to the river for fun, Reinstein said the gay men she’s interviewed said there weren’t any historical queer communes in the Sonoma area. But she recently learned of one gay men’s retreat center, Wildwood Ranch in the Cazadero area, that was run collectively from the late 1970s. She noted many gay men also joined straight collectives.

The Russian River has gone through economic highs and lows, and weathered the height of the AIDS epidemic. These days, the LGBTQ+ scene on the river isn’t as prolific as it was when it was considered the Fire Island of the West Coast. Reinstein attributes that, in part, to positive developments including gay marriage, antiretroviral therapy and greater queer acceptance in mainstream society.

“In the 1970s and ’80s, both lesbians and gays were working to create a culture and a community,” Reinstein said. “That was different. I don’t think that’s happening the same way.”

Yet with LGBTQ+ rights under attack, the Russian River remains an important safe haven, and Solar Punk Farms and Shelterwood Collective are bringing the vibrancy back. “I’m really excited that it’s there,” Reinstein added.

Many queer people of past generations sought the woods as a place of escape, but Shelterwood’s Alexandre takes a different view. He said he and his friends are “not escaping anything,” but nurturing the queer cultural ecosystem while tending to the land. The goal is for both to thrive for generations to come.

“We want to create safety for those communities who traditionally don’t get safe spaces,” Alexandre said, “and also acknowledge that all our futures are intertwined.”