The smell of breakfast and brewing coffee welcome me into the cozy Ridge Stop Cafe in North San Juan where I am meeting with Steve Sanfield, an award-winning children's author, poet and folklorist. Purpose: To discuss the much anticipated "Reunion Reading" he'll do with fellow poet and friend of nearly 40 years, Doc Dachtler.

It's not long after Sanfield arrives that he reaches into his satchel for a tattered photo of the two men. Taken in 1973 after a reading at Claremont College, both look as they do today, except with shorter hair and a few more laugh lines. While gazing at the Davy Crocket figures in the photo, I ask what was the response from the relatively conservative college?

"Amazement. We were these living, breathing hippies, carrying knives and reading poems about going back to the land, taking peyote and butchering deer, things that were really different to their lives," explains Sanfield.

Considered pioneers of the "back to the land movement," the men met on the San Juan Ridge in 1969. Dachtler had graduated from UC Davis with a degree in philosophy and was running the one-room North Columbia Schoolhouse. Sanfield and his family had just moved from the mountains of Santa Barbara.

They became neighbors, helping one another build homes, barns and raise children. With no electricity, many evenings were spent around campfires sharing poems, songs and stories. Sanfield says poetry was never a professional ambition for either man, but rather something they wanted to be an integral part of their daily lives.

In 1977, through a grant from the California Arts Council, Sanfield became the first Storyteller-in-Residence in the United States - serving every child between the Middle and South Forks of the Yuba River. Since then he founded the popular Sierra Storytelling Festival and published over two dozen books.

Dachtler eventually moved to Nevada City to work as a restorative master carpenter. He has published an ever-expanding collection of broadsides and two books of verse.

To this day, the two friends correspond with one another, preferring to send their poems and story ideas through postal mail rather than e-mail.

Dachtler and I speak by phone later the next day and discuss how their poetry is still relevant to a new generation of poets and readers.

"The poems reflect a current attitude; an outlook on life of doing the right thing and living a simple way," says Dachtler. "The world changes, but the principles have always stayed true."

The Nevada County Poetry Series and the Center for the Arts Presents "The Reunion Reading" an evening of poetry with Doc Dachtler and Steve Sanfield tonight (Oct. 16) at the Center for the Arts, in the Off Center Stage. The show starts 7:30 p.m., $5 general, $1 for 18 and under, all-ages welcomed. For more information call NCPS (530) 432-8196 or the Center (530) 274-8384.

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Lemonade is cool and refreshing, usually sweet and a little bit tart. Jesse Locks is a freelance writer. You can reach her at jesse@arthurmag.com.