Groundswell was a queer land project and retreat center in the Mendocino woodlands, birthed in 2014 by the love and labor of a small group of San Francisco Bay Area based queers.

The project included a resident community of land stewards who hosted events and rented the retreat center to a variety of eclectic queer and kink communities to gather. William participated as both a founding member of the community and the benefactor of the project. 

Of the many legacies William left behind, Groundswell is one of the most potent. From his initial experience at the “first” Radical Faerie gathering in 1979 in the Red Rock Desert, William had been interested in starting some kind of community land project centering queer spirituality. At the same time, William was skeptical about the feasibility of such a community, and would spend the next decades supporting land projects such as Wolf Creek Sanctuary and Faerie Camp Destiny but was not willing to take the risk of initiating a community himself. In 2013 and 2014 as the Groundswell project was forming, he saw what he viewed as a final opportunity to take a chance on creating an intentional community land project, lest he live out the rest of his life never having tried.

Although the lifespan of the project lasted only seven years, Groundswell inspired thousands of queers to connect more deeply  with the land, queer community, and themselves. Many people met their life-long friends during visits to Groundswell to work and play. And, although Groundswell officially closed its doors in 2022, innumerable bonds formed from the Groundswell project still exist. It inspired the imaginations of so many who experienced it, and seeded a potent legacy of many other queer land projects which have sprung into existence directly inspired by Groundswell.