Don’t want to take this too far off on a tangent but US’s post brought to mind something that I was a part of back in the early '80’s.
I was living in N. Idaho and got hooked up with a bunch of people who were somewhat scattered around N. Idaho and NW Montana that were tree planters. We would get together at contract bidding time, form a company, come up with a name, bid on Forest Service contracts, do the work, then disolve the company when the contracts were completed. No boss, every one responsible for there own tools, camp scene, food, etc. One guy had a little bus that we used to get our crew to work each day.
Later I became part of a co-op company, pretty much the same set up but with a few more things that were owned by the group and membership was more consistent. We kept the same name from year to year. Still no boss, everyone went out and planted except for a woman who who we paid to do our books for us.
There were a number of other hippie planting crews from Oregon, Wash., Idaho and Montana, all doing the same thing or something similar. We were competitors in the bidding process but once the work started we were comrades. Sometimes there would be two or three crews working in the same general vicinity and we would get together for some kick ass parties.
I suppose some might think of all of us scattered people as being of the same “tribe” since we had so many things in common and we would come together seasonally to bring in the money that we all needed to do the things we were doing. But for most of the year we lived in our own scenes, hundreds of miles apart. Some of those folks, I only saw at tree planting camp. And I had friends on other crews that I might not see for years. At that time we lived very hand to mouth so if I couldn’t make money or collect food on the way we didn’t go anywhere. I guess we were what ya’ll like to call bush hippies.
Sorry for the diversion, thought maybe you might find that interesting.