After working for the Lederle Laboratories for 10 years, de Ropp's attachment to the northeast U.S. waned, and he felt a pull to the West Coast. In 1961 he purchased a small house on several acres, in Glen Ellen (slightly east of Santa Rosa, California), where the climate was mild and soil could be worked to high fertility. In time he became an independent writer and teacher — much concerned about humanity's growing environmental and spiritual crises — and set up a learning community on his land around 1967 The idea behind it was experiential learning at the levels of body, mind, and spirit.