spun's Journal: Rainbow Report

Wow. How I let myself go four years without going to a National Rainbow Gathering, I don't know. This was just what I needed. I feel centered again, like my old self. I lost at least five pounds of fat and put on quite a bit of muscle. My endurance and stamina are much better. I worked my ass off, literally. Working that hard is never that much fun outside of Rainbow.

I left early last Friday. One of my riders had canceled. Well, simply not called me is more like it. The other two called and canceled at the very last minute. So I made the twelve hour drive alone, getting into the Ozarks after dark. Luckily, there was a full moon, so the four mile hike into the gathering was not too bad. My first pack load consisted of clothes, tent, sleeping bag, and pad. Just enough stuff to throw down beside the trail and fall asleep.

The next day, I scouted out the site. It was about three miles from one end to the other. It was pretty linear, like most eastern gatherings that follow a watercourse. Western gatherings tend to be more circular, spreading out from a central meadow. I stopped in at CALM (the Center for Alternative Living Medicine, our med tent.) where I have volunteered many times and was disappointed to find out that one of my exes and two of my best friends wouldn't be there this year.

The site was full of mud and poison ivy. It wasn't as bad as the Pennsylvania gathering, which was also muddy, but had sharper rocks, but CALM still had plenty of foot wounds to deal with. I hiked back out to my car and brought in what I thought was my bag of med supplies, but turned out to be the bag of trade goods. I may have been a little unfocused due to the, um, herbal tincture I took that morning.

I decided that, as my two best friends at CALM were not showing up that year, I would volunteer somewhere else. I had always wanted to volunteer at the Granola Funk theater, because they always seem to have a lot of fun, there are always tons of cute hippie chicks there, and they have their shit together. There are definitely different levels of competency going on at the various kitchens and other groups, with CALM and Shanti Sena (the peace keeping group) at the top and various first time kitchens at the bottom.

CALM and Shanti Sena volunteers often put in 12 to 16 hour days. Me, I try to put in 6 to 8 hour days most of the time, with a few days off. G-Funk doesn't work super hard, aside from putting the stage together the work is mostly at night, performing or facilitating same. I may have been a first-timer at G-Funk, but I still got to produce a skit the first night I was there.

We did our version of The Dating Game on the 1st, with skits in between the rounds. My skit was "Rainbow Rangers," about a new force for peace and wellness, only they are really, really bad at it, offering such advice as a salt and dog poop poultice for deep wounds and vigorous scratching for poison ivy. Then I come out with a snake bite, and the Rangers offer the good advice of sucking the poison out. Only, I got the snake bite in a delicate place, while peeing, so the Rangers say, "You're on your own!" and flee. A cute 30 second skit, and it took me all of a minute to think it up. I rounded up three cute Rainbow sisters (we call everyone 'brother' and 'sister' at the gathering)and we not only pulled it off, it went over very well. Not that it takes any kind of genius to entertain stoned hippies in the woods.

The next day I hiked out for that pack of med supplies I had mistakenly left up the day before. I managed to catch a shuttle, thankfully. Giving lots of donations of, ah, herbal tinctures to the various groups actually doing work has its advantages. I get up to the top of the hill, and run into my two best friends in the whole world. Okay, I have an actual crush on both of them and have for years. Jessica and Jason, you know I love you.

So, my gathering just got ten times better. We hiked back in and I dropped off the med supplies. Seven Song, who runs an herbalism school and brings his students to Rainbow every year as a final exam, roped me into helping him set up a satellite CALM on the far side of the gathering, near the mud-pit we called the loop trail. I helped bring all the supplies over, and then went to G-Funk, which was a few hundred yards from the site of the satellite CALM.

That was when I learned the really scary scary bad thing. We had a case of meningitis at the gathering, and we didn't yet know if it was viral or bacterial. And it came in with a G-Funk sister. All of G-Funk had been traveling, eating and sleeping with this girl. They were pretty scared. Then we found out it was bacterial, the most transmissible. Fortunately, no one else at the gathering ended up catching it, though the CDC showed up to track and oversee.

More about overzealous forest service and sheriffs, the joys of trench shitters, more performances, rainbow crazies, hot naked hippie chicks, and rainbow cuisine in my next JE. I do actually have some catching up to do here at work...