Ruth Mountaingrove was born Ruth Shook in 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Kutztown State Teachers College (Now Kutztown University) in her home state. Ruth was a renowned painter, photographer, composer, musician, and poet. She got her first camera in junior high, and her first volume of poetry, Rhythms of Spring, was published when she was only 23 in 1946. Ruth married Bernard Ikeler, and they had five children together. Ruth credits her awakening to Feminist thought to Betty Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystique. This work helped her to recognize some patterns in her life which were the result of abusive family situations. She and Ikeler divorced in 1965.
Jean Mountaingrove was born Jean Janette James to an upper-middle class family in Des Moines, Iowa. She attended graduate school for social work. She was married twice and had two children. After her second divorce, Jean was living in Los Angeles. She was able to quit her job and begin traveling the U.S. on a journey of self-discovery after receiving some family inheritance. She realized her homosexual orientation at LGBT author Rita Mae Brown’s feminist workshop. She said, “I realized I had been loving women all along.”
Ruth and Jean met at a Quaker retreat for single parents in Pennsylvania in 1970 at Pendle Hill, the Quaker center where Jean was living. They recognized each other as spiritual kindred who had similar life goals and fell in love. Their relationship was not without challenges, as they both had multiple children from their first marriages.
Ruth and Jean were instrumental in the development of the Lesbian Separatist Movement in the 1970s. Queer women sought a safe place where they could be self-sustaining away from gender oppression and homophobia. They wanted to flourish as a community while promoting and sustaining a natural environment that could flourish as well.
During this part of the 20th century, many queer people in the U.S. left their rural environments and migrated to friendlier and safer urban areas. The feminist separatist movement was going in the opposite direction, working toward possibilities of reclaiming the safety of the countryside. Ruth and Jean first lived together in a hetero-oriented religious community called Mountain Grove, from which they took their surname. The patriarchal nature of that community didn’t provide Ruth and Jean with the peace and growth in safety and feminist solidarity they sought. They looked around for several years for available land where they could develop such a place. During their search, they spent several years on the land of their gay friend Carl Wittman who owned a rural intentional community called “Golden”.
There had already been some interest in women living together in this way and some were already doing it, but they didn’t have full legal rights to the land. The Mountaingroves sought to improve upon this, so they searched for fertile land that their community would have full legal rights to.
They decided to settle in Wolf Creek, a rural community in Southwest Oregon. They successfully created a legal nonprofit on the land – a 501 (c ) (3) organization which allowed any woman who wished to participate in the sustenance of the natural environment to stay regardless of their economic situation.
The community became known as the Oregon Women’s Land Trust, also known unofficially as “Rootworks.” The goals of the OWL Farm, according to their Articles of Incorporation were to “provide women with access to land, to promote women's well-being, to encourage community that was ‘ecologically harmonious,’ to preserve the land and its natural resources, and to provide educational opportunities in land skills and country living for women.”
Four of the Mountaingroves’ children from their previous marriages accompanied them to the Rootworks land, where they all lived together in a small cabin. Ruth meticulously and lovingly documented the life of their community in photographs, educating many women in the art of photography along the way. The collection is housed in the archives of the University of Oregon Digital Heritage collection and can be accessed here:
https://oregondigital.org/collections/mountaingrove OWL farm still operates as an educational center for ecology, land management skills, organic gardening, and permaculture.
The group built a barn on the land, and from there began publishing WomanSpirit, which would become a groundbreaking Feminist/Lesbian Spiritual magazine. Jean had done previous work with another feminist magazine, called Country Women. She wrote for and edited an issue of Country Women that was dedicated to spirituality. This work inspired her idea to create another feminist publication focusing on spirituality in every issue.
In March of 1974, Ruth wrote about Jean’s inspiration in her journal: “Jean’s latest project is a quarterly for women interested in the spiritual aspect of the women’s revolution ... there is a great deal of interest in this area and women need a meeting place where all aspects no matter how strange can be discussed.”
Jean worked as the editor-in-chief. WomanSpirit was published quarterly from 1974-1984 to help provide women with a space for self- expression as well as spiritual resources and movements that were free of patriarchy. The Mountaingroves saw separatism as a kind of “hospital” where queer women could enjoy spiritual healing together.
Jean sought to create reform in religion, as she recognized that the sexism and homophobia in these institutions was not only as an issue of inequality within one's church or faith but as part of broader systems that perpetuated inequality. A major part of the feminist movement of the 20th century was work to shift away from ‘religion’ and toward the broader, freer idea of ‘spirituality’ which they felt could be accessible to all genders and orientations.
The Mountaingroves noticed that there was a much deeper level of the feminine outside of Judeo-Christian traditions. They sought inspiration from Indigenous North American as well as Asian and African spirituality in their community, as they felt that these traditions’ more matriarchal mindsets allowed for an appreciation and development of intuition.
The magazine focused on the Goddess movement, which paved the way in part to the modern New Age spirituality movement. WomanSpirit included poems, essays, prayers, rituals, art, and even handmade sheet music for songs. Many of the poets, artists, and writers who contributed to the issues went on to continue influencing feminist culture and thought.
Jean described the project in Volume 5 as an opportunity to do work that mattered, as something beneficial for many that she could be proud of in creating space for expression and spiritual growth for generations of feminists to come. She called it her “...group task – to reach out to and to link up with women who want to change. My personal task is ecological pioneering and spiritual search in nature. I trust that the next phase of my life will become clear as I connect with women through WomanSpirit and as my intuition grows. I hope that land will be entrusted to our care, and a new way can grow there: a religious life, a seed of cultural rebirth – a new amazon tribe. My part is only one part, but I see that it is important.”
Jean wrote in WomanSpirit Vol.1: “Nature has become my beloved other. I want to tune myself to her rhythms and her ways, I see myself becoming more like a tree - - the complete tree, above and below ground; steadfast and patient outwardly, flowing and delicate inwardly. I embrace the tree. I embrace my life.”
In 1975 Ruth and Jean collectively wrote: “We believe that many women, like us, need space to get in touch with their energy, wisdom and strength. WomanSpirit is a magazine to make space for sharking the deepest questions of women now....we hope it will raise our consciousness.”
In addition to WomanSpirit, the Mountaingroves also opened a lesbian-feminist photography camp at their home, which published a magazine called The Blatant Image and offered weekly workshops.
Jean and Ruth separated amicably in 1984 due to having grown apart and differences in parenting philosophies. Ruth moved to California to attend the University of Humboldt and keep working on her photography career. The Mountaingroves were an integral part of the interconnectedness of social movements in the 20th century. Ruth passed away at the age of 93 in 2016 in Eureka, CA. Jean passed at the age of 94 in 2017. Their contributions to feminism, American spiritual thought, LGBT awareness, and art are invaluable.
(This biographical statement written by J.P. Riley for a fall 2024 Queer & Trans Theology class at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.)
Biography Date: November 2025