Destination: New Mexico : The Far Out Inn : New Buffalo, the ‘Back to the Land’ commune that drew hippies, journalists and filmmakers in the ‘60s, has reinvented itself as a B&B; for the ‘90s. But listen carefully, and you may hear the faint echo of a mantra . . .

I have a hankering for the ‘60s, and in the short time we’ve been married, I have dragged Joel, my husband, to various Zen monasteries and retreat centers, including Green Gulch in San Francisco, Esalen in Big Sur, and the Lama Foundation in New Mexico. He usually finds the settings delightful, but, being an environmental lawyer and a good old-fashioned civil rights activist, he is more than a little uncomfortable with the notion of “dropping out.” This discomfort reaches a certain pitch when the hippie culture is mixed with a lot of middle-class trappings, cellular phones and tofu, as it can be in Big Sur.

So when I told him that we were going to the New Buffalo Bed & Breakfast in Taos, he was open, but skeptical. The idea of a place that was once the biggest commune in the Southwest, the epicenter of the Back To The Land movement, opening its doors as a bed and breakfast made him queasy.

I, on the other hand, was only 10 in 1969, in a public school in New York City. It was not until college in Vermont that I heard the words self-sufficiency, homeopathy, tempeh or raised-bed gardening, and all of these things have stood me in good stead at one time or another.

There was also the problem of amenities. Joel appreciates a good, functional motel with a working television, cable channels and a mini-bar. I should say right here that the bathrooms at the New Buffalo are not conventionally located. While they’ve come a long way from the original six-seater outhouse of the commune’s heyday, it is still a short walk down the hall to the warm, clean, European-style (a row of stalls) bathrooms and showers (no tubs!).

But more than one person told me that I would love the new New Buffalo, so I promised Joel that it would not be like Esalen (for one thing, the room rates are $40-$60 per night, not $250). I told our 21-month-old baby, Sam, there would be plenty of ice cream, baseballs and maybe dinosaurs. In short, I made promises I wasn’t sure I could keep.

We arrived in Albuquerque on a Southwest Airlines flight early Saturday morning to 21-degree temperatures, an unseasonal scattering of snow and those ever-so-slightly-melancholy November skies. There was no problem renting a car with a baby seat, although it’s a good idea to reserve ahead. We found the best deal at Dollar Rent-A-Car, for $18 a day.

It’s a 2 1/2- to 3-hour drive north from Albuquerque to Taos, and there is no way to resist the pull of Santa Fe along the way. On this chilly morning, wandering in and out of its shops felt like being in a Northern European city; shoppers bundled up with paper packages and good smells wafting into the streets behind the whoosh of closed doors. Bustle and commerce.

Later, there was some silence in the car on the way up to Taos. We stopped to buy some chili wreaths and to ask directions at a mini-mart. A burly customer, who told us proudly that he was one of the original members of New Buffalo, directed us down a dirt road just past the mini-mart. “Weather always freaks out around Halloween,” he said with a grin. I was getting worried. The dirt road was not inviting, although the surrounding mountains were spectacular in the afternoon sun. Joel was telling me how much he liked the Taos Inn. We wound around houses in varying states of disrepair, a long flat mesa on the left and the deep arroyo that houses the Rio Hondo on the right. A sign at the bottom of New Buffalo’s driveway reads “THE HISTORIC NEW BUFFALO COMMUNE, NO DRUGS, NO ALCOHOL.”

I did not begin to relax until I saw the white tepees with their yellow pine lodge-poles against the blue sky (in warmer weather these can be rented for $10 a night). A pale full moon was already hovering behind the hills. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains were taking on the deep reds that inspired the Spanish settlers to name them. New Buffalo, a collection of three adobe buildings around a main building, sits on a hundred acres of pastureland and foothills. The sage, chamisa (native pasture grass) and juniper, in varying dusty shades of green and gray, blanket the red earth. Pinon, cedar and Russian olive trees grow closer to the hills and the river. There is a rough sweet smell in the air, a little smoke, a dog barking.

Rick Klein, owner and founder of the New Buffalo, came out to meet us. He has shocking clear blue eyes overlain with the dusty greens of the pastureland. In 1967, at age 24, Klein returned from traveling in Africa, and with money he had inherited from his parents, bought the hundred acres we stood on for $22,000 and gave it to the members of the newly formed commune. At times, more than 100 people lived in the adobe buildings and in tepees and tents on the surrounding land. They grew their own food, cooked in the communal kitchen, slept in sleeping lofts. Thousands passed through, including reporters from Time, Life, Playboy, Look, the New York Times and Esquire. When, in 1969, Dennis Hopper needed inspiration for the commune scenes in the movie “Easy Rider,” his first stop was New Buffalo.

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Inside the new New Buffalo, greenhouses flank the two wings that make up the main building, providing heat and light and flowers (the place is heated by a combination of wood, gas and solar methods, with backup electric radiators. The rooms are evenly heated and we were never cold, despite the surprise cold snap.) The Buffalo Room is a large, almost cavernous main area sunk into the earth in the style of the indigenous Pueblo people. Heated by a gas stove and rimmed by beautiful stone benches and steps leading to the adjoining wings, it is used for playing music, dining and gathering. Sam used it for yelling, beating drums, drawing with crayons, and playing with the box of toys (including dinosaurs and baseballs!) provided by Rick’s wife and co-owner of the New Buffalo, Terry Klein. There is a cozy library with a red enameled wood stove and a fine collection of ‘60s memorabilia off the main room, and a huge modern kitchen with slate counters, oak tables and chairs. I started to get smug.

We talked for a while about the Kleins’ hopes for New Buffalo. When, after a lot of soul-searching, Rick decided in 1989 to reclaim the land, the Kleins built a new wing on the main building, replastered and painted the walls, restored the adobe, and put in new plumbing and wood and propane stoves.

The five bedrooms have original Southwestern art, Navajo blankets and rugs, 19th-Century Spanish antiques, and goose-down quilts. They also contain original art from commune days: mosaics and mandalas and South American weavings that Terry insisted on restoring and preserving. The Tower Room (actually two rooms and a sleeping loft that can sleep a group of six) has a fireplace and walls painted with white clay that contains minute flakes of glistening mica. From the Garden Room you can hear a little brook that runs along the north side of the main house.

We stayed in the Enchanted Room, which has a beautiful morning bird (also called a peyote bird) emerging from the plaster on one wall. In the beams are carved the words: “They had preferences in smiles/ & lived in joy and peace. . . .” The adobe floor is covered with Navajo rugs, and a combination of low ceilings, small windows and Spanish-style furniture gives the room a warm sense of Southwest history that far predates the ‘60s. A futon on the floor made Sam feel right at home.

The toilets and showers are in separate but adjoining areas off the kitchen, each with its own powder room. There is plenty of hot water for the three showers, and both areas are heated with good ol’ suburban electric heat. The Kleins provide lots of big fluffy towels and soap but you should bring your own shampoo.

The “no-drugs, no-alcohol” referred to on the sign in the driveway is, in fact, a rule. Rick believes that drugs were really the downfall of the commune, and “that’s not the reputation we want now.” Although Rick and Terry say that no guests have complained about the rustic nature of New Buffalo, it may not be for everyone. There are no phones or TVs in the rooms, no Coke machines and no mini-bars. If you want music, you just have to make your own with a variety of drums and flutes and a guitar or two usually left lying around the Buffalo room. If you want to soak in a bathtub on your vacation, you’re out of luck (unless you hike to the nearby hot springs).

Luckily, there’s no shortage of places to eat in Taos (a 10- to 15-minute drive), and since the Wild and Natural Cafe was closed for dinner that night we chose Tapas de Taos, a brightly painted restaurant that serves an odd combination of Vietnamese food and tapas . I had a delicious dish of shrimp with garlic and lime juice and Sam had noodles to throw around the room, which didn’t seem to faze the waitresses or the clientele. We drove back under a full moon, up the now-familiar dirt road, past the horses standing perfectly still in the pasture. A few of the other guests, mostly in their 30s and maybe 40s, were playing hearts in the Buffalo Room.

In the morning, friends of Rick and Terry’s and some of the other guests talked in the kitchen over juice and fresh coffee and melon and granola and yogurt and pastries and croissants from a local organic bakery put out, along with honey, jam and butter. It seemed, suddenly, as though we had plenty of time: to soak in the natural hot springs by the river, visit the Taos Pueblo (a collection of buildings built by the Pueblo people between AD 1000 and 1450, and now home to some 150 Native Americans), stop in at the Mable Dodge Luhan house (original home and salon of the patroness who brought such luminaries as Georgia O’Keeffe, D.H. Lawrence and Willa Cather to Taos), eat, sleep and read.

After cleaning up, Terry took us down the road to the hot springs, deep, clear, hot pools that sit right on the edge of the Rio Grande. We took off all our clothes and sank into the water. Sam was aloof at first but soon he was splashing and singing. I found myself unable to make complete sentences, and had to resort to poetic phrases with more than one meaning. Joel lay back with his eyes closed. Two other people, wearing beads and looking very brown, had been camping nearby and soaking in the springs for three days. I wondered how they would ever return to civilization and what they would do once they got there.

GUIDEBOOK

Back to New Buffalo

Reservations: New Buffalo Bed & Breakfast, P.O. Box 247, Arroyo Hondo, N.M. 87513; tel. (505) 776-2015. Rates $40-$60 per night, including breakfast; rates increase to $60-$80 from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. Open year-round; the ski season runs Thanksgiving to Easter.

Getting there: From Albuquerque, take Interstate 25 north to Santa Fe, U.S. 84 to Espanola, New Mexico 68 through Taos, then New Mexico 522 north to Arroyo Hondo. Turn left at the bridge; New Buffalo is 1.1 miles.

For more information: Call or write the Taos Chamber of Commerce, 1139 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, Taos, N.M. 87571; tel. (505) 758-3873. Or the New Mexico Department of Tourism, P.O. Box 2003, Santa Fe, N.M. 87503; tel. (800) 545-2040.