I love being greeted into a Rainbow Gathering. "Welcome Home!" everyone shouts, and everyone crowds around to give you a hug and you always part with, "lovin' you sister, lovin' you". It's so sincere. They are lovin' on you. They're lovin' on each other. They're lovin' in the woods.
My greeting yesterday was the same. But rather than a forest full of hippies, I was surrounded by a forest full of trailer trash and dirty punk kids... and then that one guy... who was fabulously flamboyant, but insistently straight. They were all sitting in the oven that they built into the dirt. There were sticks jutting out of the ground with tarps and blankets draped over to make what was the main kitchen where makshift tables were set up and a tent FULL of food was standing next to it. I met Crab, Captain Rainbow, Taco, and all the other so-and-so's. Those are their "family names". Their given names like Jack and Conner were what they called their Babylon names. Of course it's kind of hard to remember a bunch of names like Joe Shmoe and So-and-so. But it sure is fun to try.
As soon as I sat down in the kitchen to make myself comfortable the eleven year old fat girl started pestering me to go swimming with her. Her mom was mean to her and always said 'no' to things, so anyone who is remotely nice about something (like myself), even if they're saying no, she takes it as an almost yes and will do her best to manipulate, bat her eyelashes, and get all up in your face until you say yes. And I wasn't having it. Until she asked if she could tattoo me with a sharpie.
"Ehh, Okay." What's the worst she could to? "Just nothing on my face." I told her. So she sat in front of me, looked me up and down, opened her sharpie and went to town on my arm. She started drawing a cross. Well that's sweet, I thought. I can dig this. I stared off into space for awhile, and when she finished I looked down to a giant cross on my arm with a blacked in snake slithering around it, and the words, "We love you" in chicken scratch nearly up on my shoulder. Oh god I hope this comes off tomorrow.
I decided right from the start not to stay for a long time. I didn't like the vibes. I'm big on the vibes. Gotta trust my vibes. You know? So I hiked up to the meadow where all the overweight people told me NOT to go because I'll HATE the hike (which actually wasn't that bad). I pitched my tent there and hiked around a bit, helped make dinner, and contributed my two jugs of water to my Rainbow Family. That was going to be it for me until the next morning.
The only other young girl at the gathering was not friendly by any means, and all the young guys (well, the ones that actually spoke every once in awhile) just talked about smoking pot and how they want to stay in he woods forever doing nothing. Not my idea of a productive life.
Later in the night we gathered around the fire for a drum circle, a time of discussion and suggestions for the gathering, and I skipped out to bed right before the "om". I've got different idea of spirituality than these folks, and I didn't quite want to hold hand with them around the fire chanting and making myself vulnerable to a spirituality that I'm not sure I am completely comfortable with. I walked back to my site and prayed my own prayers to my own God and fell quickly to sleep after journaling.
Until.. that is... around midnight a couple of drunk kids walked back to their tent which was right next to mine screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs to the people on the other side of the meadow for a GOOD twenty minutes. I heard one whisper now and again "I think people are trying to sleep man," and the response to that would be, "GET OFFFFFFF MY PORCH MOTHER FUUCKKKEERRRRRRRR. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOH OH OH OH. YI YI YI YI YI. OIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII. WHERE YOU AT BOY!"
Twenty minutes.
This morning I packed up my tent, peeled the snails off my tent, and hiked back into the woods. I hiked down the hill and thought, well this doesn't look familiar. And hiked back up to the meadow. Examined the area a bit. Well maybe I just don't remember what it looked like. That's probably it. So I hiked back down again. I got the same spot and thought, well crap, I can't go down there. That doesn't look familiar. Once again, hiking all the way back up to the meadow, back to the Quit Your Bitchin' Kitchin' (as they liked to call it), and asked for help from a brother who walked me all the way back to the fork in the road where I got lost in the first place. Yep. I went the wrong way and would have ended up in the middle of nowhere Iowa in the middle of nowhere in the woods!
One hundred miles later I am in Omaha at a Starbucks where I washed myself and brushed me teeth in the bathroom, and got myself some beloved coffee. Welcome to the open road.
Nebraska, I hate you. I've got 450 miles of nothingness ahead of me until I hit Colorado.
And Champiagn, actually, I miss you lots. And all the people you have there. I'll be back.
