During dinner last night with my family the subject of Woodstock came up, and there followed some speculation on the effect of the free love movement on arts and culture in general. Not having lived through those tumultuous years in America, I look to the great musicians, writers, and poets of that time to surface the best ideas of that generation. I've always enjoyed the following prose by Hunter S. Thompson recounting both the climax and demise of hippy culture and I share it with you on this Valentine's Day.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. [...] You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

- The "Wave Speech" from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson