People who have never been really don't understand the Rainbow Gathering. That's okay, plenty of people who have been don't understand it either. Folks think it's just hippies, it's not. For instance, there are two Jesus camps that come every year, the 'purity' Jesus camp, and the camp Jesus would actually want to hang out in if he came back. The Jews pack their strict and lax sects into one camp. The Baha'i only have one camp as well, while the Hare Krishnas have had up to three different camps some years. There's a twelve step camp, fer cryin' out loud. And Fairy Camp is not a bunch of happy hetero hippies with fairy wings on. So, you know, Rainbow is not all one thing.
There are two major types that come, though. Hippies and Crusty Punks. How to tell them apart? Hippies like The Dead (still!), String Cheese Incident, & Phish. Crusty Punks like The Misfits, The Dead Kennedy's, and Crass. Hippies have dreads. Crusties have shaved heads. Hippies have tattoos of Buddha. Crusties have tattoos of Rat Fink. Hippies say "We love you, brother!" Crusties reply, "We tolerate you."
Then there are the people like me, or Rob Savoy, or Hawker, or Calamity Jane, who don't really fit any category. Actually, we're in the "hardcore" category, people who go to Rainbow primarily as a form of service, who work our asses off, who don't have a big ego or an agenda to push. You can tell the hardcore kids because we don't have an official outfit, but we all have a ton of gear strapped all over, we generally look tired but happy, and we are often found discussing the finer points of duct taping people to trees.
There is one last type. The Rainbow Elders. There is no heirarchy at Rainbow, it's Anarchy. Only, there is a heirarchy at Rainbow, and everyone knows it. People who have been doing it for 35 years are in a class of their own. They generally don't do much of anything except sit around, smoke pot, tell us all what to do, bitch about the fact that we never do what they tell us to, and complain about "kids these days." They can often be found in our consensus decision making circles because they actually have the patience for it, and would rather sit around and make decisions that someone else will have to carry out than just getting off their asses and doing it. But we love them anyway.
The LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers: covers rangers, wildlife officers, sheriffs, ATF agents, and various other authority figures) were pretty bad this year. They were ticketing women for going topless on main trail. I'm sorry, but I think most everyone in that damn forest was in agreement that we like seeing topless hippie chicks. We really don't need to be protected from boobies. I don't believe I have ever felt in any kind of danger from a breast. They were also towing cars that weren't ALL the way off the road, and ticketing people for drug possession. It wasn't the worst I've seen, but it was pretty bad.
Now, I'm going to hand out a little TMI. I had the opposite problem that I usually do this year. I was constipated. Normally at Rainbow, what with the constant bleach water disinfection, the beans and rice diet, and the questionable water, I get a bit... loose. I think my bowels remembered Rainbow, and preemptively clenched up. So I didn't have to use the trench shitters as often as some years, thankfully.
It's not exactly fun. We dig them close, but not too close to kitchens, off in the woods with some privacy, but you will still find yourself squatting over an 8 inch wide trench with some crusty chick on one side and some hippie guy on the other. No privacy. So, you go, sprinkle on some ash or preferably lime to keep the flies out, a little dirt, then use the bleach hand wash hanging from a nearby tree. If you're squeamish, you may be able to find one or two shitters with tarp covers and seats, but you'll be waiting in line for half an hour with all the other squeamish types.
So where was I in my little narrative? The 3rd, the night we did the gong show. I headed over to G-Funk, even more intent on plugging in there now that my friends Jason and Jessica were there. Everyone was still pretty freaked about the meningitis. I'd gotten some more info from my contacts at CALM. That's when we learned it was bacterial, not viral, and thus a lot more transmissible, although easier to cure. But no one from either CALM camp had seen anyone with either of the major symptoms. And the incubation period is 4-72 hours, and the woman who had it had been out of the gathering for over 48 hours, so we were really almost past the crisis point.
Aaron presented a volunteer project he and the G-Funk crew had been coordinating, and I was impressed. You see, at Rainbow we've got the skills to go into a situation with no infrastructure, not knowing what kind of equipment or food is going to show up, or when, or even which people, and we make food happen in large quantities. We can handle complete chaos and lack of coordination without batting an eye. Now, there is another situation where those kind of skills are invaluable: disasters.
Aaron has been taking Rainbow know-how to disaster sites like New Orleans and Wavelands for several years now, and this last year he has been networking like crazy with local, State and Federal agencies. They know us now, and they know that we know how to get things done. He is trying to expand and looking for volunteers. Well, I've been looking to volunteer for something I believe in, so this could be a good fit for me.
After, we prepared for the next show: the Gong Show. That's our anti-talent show. You go on stage, you will be gonged whether you've got talent or not. So if you actually have talent, best to wait for the Fourth, when we do the real talent show. Aaron and the other regulars were still a little freaked about the meningitis, so they asked if anyone else wanted to MC the show, and I volunteered. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I turned out to be very good at MCing a Gong Show and making snarky comments about the performances. The audience laughed a lot, anyhow. Whenever we'd run short on suckers^Wperformers I would whip out my worst cow and elephant jokes to torment the audience with until someone volunteered. "Ha HA! You can't gong me, I'm the MC! And I WILL keep telling bad jokes until someone gets down here and makes a fool of themselves."
On the Fourth, the way things are supposed to work anyway, we have silence in the morning. People assemble at main meadow around the peace pole and silently pray for peace. Around noon, the kids from Kiddie Village parade in, dressed in cute costumes they all made that morning. The kids give a shout, we do our om, then it's a wild crazy party with lots of drums.
Only, it never actually works that way. In all my years, I have only once seen the kids make it all the way into main meadow and give a shout before the om. This year we didn't even have a meadow, we a had a rocky peninsula in the middle of the overflowing creek. People were circled up in the water. The kids made it almost to the bridge before the om. The one nice thing was the fact that, after dancing up a storm, one could go jump in the creek to cool off.
I ate some, um, porcini mushrooms? Well, some kind of mushrooms anyhow, I'm trying to maintain a little deniability here. J & J stuffed them into my mouth after the om. They were on some 2CT7 someone had given them. We all headed off to set up a base camp near G-Funk. I ended up running down to dance several times, they were kind of a hippie puddle in their hammock, 2CT7 being a little more, ah, intense than the amount of fungi I ate, anyhow.
The castle had been trashed by a pack of miniature hippies and crusties who bore a resemblance to something out of "Lord of the Flies," so Aaron and I set about fixing it up. While we were busy working, a hot hippie chick showed up and demanded attention. Aaron and I kind of ignored her, and she said, "Well, if no one is going to talk to me, I'm leaving!" I said, "Hey, nothing personal but as you can see, we're actally working hard here trying to get this place ready for tonight." She stormed off anyway. You know? The majority of really hot people suck.
I had been fighting off the sniffles, I'd jammed my knee carrying a sixty pound pack down a 15% slope, my feet hurt, and the fungi was wearing off. I stayed and helped coordinate acts for an hour or so, then begged off for the night. The next day, J & J woke me up saying goodbye, so I was sad, then it started to rain in torrents again, and I basically said, "Fuck it. I've got water and power bars and a book to read. My knee still hurts and I still have the sniffles. I am not coming out of my tent today." And I didn't, but I finished Vernor Vinge's newest book, "Rainbows End."
Friday, I was feeling much better, it looked like the rain had let up again, and I had two tiny pieces of paper to munch, courtesy of J & J. I did so, and waited for the usual effects. An hour went by. Nothing. Then another, still nothing, and it started to rain like crazy. I went a little "Milton from Office Space" and started muttering, "That's the last straw, I told them. Burn it down!" I packed up my gear, this road punk asked if I needed my tent and I was so intent on getting out, I said "Take it!"
I wasn't angry or that bummed out: just really, really ready to be dry again. I found a pack of crusty punks on the trail out, trying to get to Santa Fe, so I said, "If you can be ready in half an hour, you've got a ride." I had to get a pack of hippies to help push my car out of the mud it had sunk into during all the rains, and it took the kids a while to get ready (I say kids because they were, I think, all under 21.) so I gave rides up and down the hill to folks packing stuff out.
Finally, as we hit the main road out, the damn little pieces of paper took effect, though three hours late and much weaker than advertised, probably from all the dampness diluting things. In the end, it turned out to be just enough to keep me awake and alert through the night, without actually making the road jump and swirl.
It was nice having company for the ride home. They were nice kids, but I felt a bit melancholy. I remember being a kid, on the road, no commitments, no security, perfect freedom. I miss it, and yet I don't. I felt the draw of that freedom, but at the same time, you know, one of them had a hernia and no medical insurance, and that's no fun. The 18 year old girl had lost her only pair of shoes at the gathering. They all had only what they could carry.
All that is fun and adventurous when you're 18, but it's kind of sad and pathetic if you're 36. We left around 9 at night, stopped at the "Ozone Burger Barn," which has the most delicious burgers and the most stereotypical back-woods cousin-lovin' Arkansas family I have ever seen running the place. None of the kids had a license so I ended up driving all night. We pulled into my mom's in Albuquerque around 9 the next morning, because I had to wait until the 14th to move into my new place. They got cleaned up, I drove them up to Santa Fe and dropped them off in a parking lot, seeing as they don't really have homes. I drove back home.
I was just about to fall asleep when I thought to plug in my phone and see if I had any messages. There was one. From Jenny. Saying, "I made a horrible, horrible mistake. I thought the problem was our relationship, but now I have the same issues with Mr. Y. The problem has been me all along! I'm so sorry, and I know you probably don't want me anymore, but I can't stay with him, and I want to give it a second try with you. I miss you so much. I'm going to work on my issues. Call me."
More on that later.