Inside the rainbow: Love, mud and smoke welcome members home
m.tdn.com | Jun 30th 2011 10:00 PM
GIFFORD PINCHOT NATIONAL FOREST — It’s unnerving the first time you hear it: A
stranger smiles big and says, "Welcome home. I love you."
It’s a kind sentiment, to be sure. But then you realize you’re expected to say
it in return. And, well, telling strangers you love them doesn’t come easy for
the uninitiated.
Dozens of people greeted me, my wife, Shawna, and Daily News photographer Bill
Wagner this way as we hiked into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest Wednesday
to camp with the Rainbow Family of Living Light.
The family welcomes everyone to one of America’s national forests each year to
eat, dance, sing and pray.
"Welcome home," they tell each other as they settle in for this time of simply
being together.
"Lovin’ you!" they call out in camp, again with the big smiles. Very few use
their true or full names.
The event officially begins Friday and climaxes Monday when attendees will
meditate and pray for peace in Skookum Meadow. As many as 20,000 are expected
to camp here before the event officially ends next Thursday.
It’s impossible to say how many had already arrived at the meadow Wednesday.
One Rainbow elder put the number at between 5,000 and 7,000.
Calling this a camp-out for hippies doesn’t quite do it justice. Think of it as
how the survivors of a societal meltdown — fuel supply collapse, apocalyptic
economic crash, nuclear attack — might give civilization one last shot.
Cars from just about every state line the forest road for miles. It’s a
two-mile hike to the main camp, where trees give way to an open meadow speckled
with tents and teepees. More tents are tucked among the evergreens, near thick
and wet snowdrifts. Smoke rises in plumes from cooking fires. Branches and
carefully cut logs serve as foot bridges across a clear mountain stream that
snakes through the camp.
There is no money here. People cook fresh vegetables, stew, oatmeal and rice in
giant, dented pots over roaring fires. The masses wander along muddy trails
with cups, bowls and spoons, lining up to eat for free.
Others pass glass marijuana pipes and joints, the skunky smell blowing over the
camps.
Many barter. As I strolled into camp, a woman offered me chocolate for pot.
There’s a different feel in each part of the gathering. In the western meadow,
the older traditional hippie-types and professionals with kids have set up
camp. To the east, just beyond a grove of trees, are the "Dirty Kids" and
"gutter punks" — the young and homeless, who wear mostly black. Some have
tattooed faces and pierced cheeks. The mood here is aggressive, loud and brash.
Dogs, mostly puppies, run everywhere. They occasionally growl and lunge at each
other.
Every adult is his or her own show: dreadlocked, barefoot, bearded,
long-haired, sunken-cheeked, wild-eyed, leather-clad, haunted and staring,
joyous and grinning — all happy refugees from the normal world.
A young woman dances through camp naked. Two guys gyrate at the roadside while
they sing a punk-rock song in Spanish. A couple stop for a lengthy make-out
session in the middle of a busy trail. A group of kids stand in a circle, palms
hovering over each other’s palms to pray. "Love is true!" a man says over and
over.
It all feels primitive, tribal and at least slightly off-kilter.
We chose to make camp with the street kids. We pitched two tents — unknown to
us at the time — about 30 feet from latrines, which are shallow trenches cut
into the soil. A few wet, brown-stained clumps of toilet paper had been tossed
into the dirt not far from our tent.
Down the hill, young men set up a kitchen named "Shut Up and Eat It." They tore
into logs with chain saws and hustled the wood to their fire pits.
The old hippie tribes began congregating for these gatherings 39 years ago with
a message of peace and love. But these days the event also attracts a different
counterculture group, known amongst the Rainbows as "Dirty Kids." Most are
homeless and wander from city to city, some hopping freight trains.
"They don’t do well in town," said Karin Zirk, a 50-year-old database
administrator and graduate student from of San Diego who has been coming to
Rainbow gatherings for decades.
But here in the woods, Zirk said, these street kids are "equal members of the
community and the world, and what they have to offer is valued."
"A lot of them would say, ‘This is home. This is the only time I feel like I
have a home,’ " she said.
Maybe that’s why some of the toughest-looking kids — the ones who you feel
glaring at you from across a meadow, smile when you meet their eyes. "Welcome
home," they say.
Justin Heckman, 39, dug a pit to dispose of dishwater at the "Montana Mud"
kitchen — one of the Dirty Kids’ camps just down the hill from our tents.
He said he comes to these gatherings partly because people here share his
outlook on the world: They "stand for the rights of the earth." They disdain
government "control" of the public and are "anti-technology."
Heckman, of Arizona, said his parents kicked him out when he was 14, so he
started hitchhiking and became, for a time, "a gutter punk with piercings in my
face."
"You’re young. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re trying to heal from
something — for me it was anger," Heckman said.
Coming to the gatherings is "spiritual in a sense," he said. "It’s the only
thing that gives you pride sometimes."
Hazel, a 19-year-old who was hanging out in the "Montana Mud" camp, said that
last year she hitchhiked and rode freight trains through 38 states, including
in Pennsylvania, where she attended her first Rainbow Gathering.
"It opened my eyes to community and a whole different way of living," Hazel
said as she slurped from a bowl of Ramen. "I feel at home here. It’s bliss."
Along the trail, I ran into Brittney, 21, who traveled here with her mom from
Oklahoma. She was helping run the Bread of Life kitchen, a Christian camp. The
camp, she said, has been helping the most troubled street kids — people
surrounded by "dark, evil spirits."
"They call it the light in the darkness," Brittney’s friend Madeline, 15, said
of the Bread of Life camp.
"Last night we met this guy — he’s been a street kid since he was born,"
Brittney said. "You could tell darkness just overwhelmed him." But, she said,
he started helping in the kitchen, and she hopes he’ll learn more about her
faith.
After the gathering, Brittney said, she and her mother plan to hitchhike around
the U.S., "staying in shelters and witnessing to kids."
Across the main meadow, Monica, 25, walked along a path with her 18-month-old
daughter, Abigail. She said they took the bus here from San Jose because it’s
"a place that’s free and loving — where my daughter can run around and I don’t
have to worry about her."
"It’s really good for kids to be in this kind of environment," said Monica, who
studied child development at a Cupertino, Calif., college and attended a bible
college in Scotland before her daughter was born.
She worked her bare toes through the mud as she spoke.
Monica’s new friend, Lee, also has a son, Tobias, 9, who was playing in a
family friendly and drug-free camp on the other side of the meadow called "Kid
Village."
"It’s the best thing going on in the world," Lee said of the gatherings.
"Everything seems really chaotic in the world as far as how we treat each
other. I feel we’ve lost our connection with each other. This is like a breath
of fresh air."
Just after 3 p.m., we gathered in a circle with about a dozen Rainbow members
and two Forest Service officials to work out a written agreement for using
Skookum Meadow and the surrounding area. These sorts of gatherings usually
require a permit, but Rainbows insist that they are exercising their First
Amendment right of free assembly on public land and that no permit is required.
This "operating plan" — like others at past gatherings — will serve as a
compromise.
A Rainbow elder named Gary offered the group coffee from a steaming cauldron
and, with a laugh, assured the Forest Service officials it contained no LSD.
Since the Rainbow Family has no governing body, anyone is invited to these
meetings and all decisions are reached by consensus. Speakers hold a feather,
signalling they have the floor. Nobody had a feather during this meeting, so
Janine Clayton, the supervisor of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, removed
a bright-pink ribbon — the kind used to flag trees — and tied it in a bow.
The agreement seemed to cover all aspects of the event, from cleanup to how
medical tent volunteers would dispose of "biohazards" to where Rainbows would
be allowed to engage in "public nudity."
Clayton told me there haven’t been any major problems at the gathering so far.
The most significant incident as of Wednesday afternoon involved the arrest of
a man on a felony warrant. He was carrying a concealed weapon, she said.
>From an environmental perspective, Clayton said, she’s worried about all of
>the loose dogs that have been racing up and down the stream’s banks. The dogs
>are stirring up sediment, which will harm spawning fish.
"The stream is noticeably cloudier today than it was a day ago," she said.
"That’s a biggie."
In the evening, we volunteered to help cook dinner at Camp Eugene, which is in
the main meadow. We chopped organic kale for a vegetable dish. Bill, our
photographer, hauled food and luggage down the hill from a supply drop point.
"It’s indescribable — the feeling of community, of being part of the human
community here," said Riverstone, 39, who is helping run Camp Eugene. "There’s
no money. When you take away that aspect, it takes a way a lot of the things
that are dysfunctional with our society. Everyone can find their place — at
least for a short time."
Riverstone, a Eugene horseshoer, had brought his four children to the
gathering. "This is the greatest schoolroom they can experience," he said.
Around 10 p.m., we climbed into our tents. A huge congregation of street kids
gathered around a bon fire where giant logs had been set alight. The kids
danced and hollered to the ceaseless pounding of drums. A dreadlocked guy
played a flute.
This pounding, punctuated by a regular, screamed battle cry from the group,
continued through the night. The kids had found their noisy home in the forest
— and no one would dare tell them to keep it down.
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