Down on the peacock farm

More human than legend, Kesey works hard to preserve his standing as an accessible American icon. It can be an inconvenience from time to time, hosting strangers who show up on his lawn, but Kesey also understands the importance of legend, and he maintains it through constant contact with his audience. In addition to endless public appearances and support of community events, Kesey and Babbs also maintain a Web site to communicate with their community and fans. "The idea of crawling off into your ivory tower and creating this thing that you slip out under the door, and then people publish it and you become famous, it's not healthy for the writer," Kesey says. "It's not really good for the public, because we're never really there.

"Writers are constantly complaining that they have to go to bookstores, etc. ... but for me, that's part of the same job," Kesey continues. "You owe it to the work, you owe it to the reader, you owe it to all the storytellers that have come through history that have maintained that connection between audience and writer."

In part, the philosophy propelled Kesey's bus trip across America. In the pursuit of a new consciousness and life as art, the Merry Pranksters spread a message about drugs, peace and love during a national identity crisis. Looking back on that time, Kesey says his association with psychedelic drugs wasn't overstated. "I think drugs are tremendously important, and being high is important ... but there are other ways to achieve enlightenment. Grief can do it. You can fast, you can pray," Kesey says. "But acid came along and we were trying to body forth a new consciousness, a completely new way to relate to your world."

Whether Kesey and company succeeded or not is up for generational debate, but his legacy remains forever tied to the '60s and a multicolored, technology hot-wired, souped-up bus with crazy man Cassady behind the wheel. "When people ask me what my best work is, I always say the bus," Kesey says, looking out into the fading evening light. "'Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Great Notion,' they're good novels, but the bus is a living work, a work that is absolutely unique. That doesn't take away from the novels; I couldn't have done it without the writing.

"I needed to have those type of publications under my belt before I could do something that outlandish. From that time on, I've never backed off from it," he says. "I write because I have to write. But I'm not writing to reveal my soul to the reader, I'm writing to reveal the reader's soul to the reader."

If he discovers something about himself along the way, then those are more lessons to come away with. What keeps Kesey going, keeps him writing, is what he describes as a single note. "If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right," Kesey says. "If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK."

The note? "It's love, always love."

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