Another woman called to the driver and he stopped to wait for her. She opened the side door and the bus was flooded with a brief blast of fresh air. ‘Thanks, brother,’ she said to the driver. ‘I baked a pie for Badger’s wedding and I gotta get on site.’
We passed other meadows filled with cars: Bus Village, where all the ‘live in’ vehicles park, and Bus Village II. Finally we got to Welcome Home, the entrance to Downtown, and the shuttle pulled to a stop.
‘Zuzus [treats, as in cookies or candy] and tips would be appreciated, brothers and sisters,’ the driver announced as we unloaded. ‘Especially green herb.’
Mike and Karen and I strapped on our gear again. On the way past the bus driver Karen stopped to give him two pieces of bread, and I gave him a pecan sticky bun purchased in Portland that morning. He seemed pleased, more with the bread than with the sticky bun. What takes on value at a Gathering, I will learn, is not always what is prized in Babylon.
When we arrived that afternoon, there were already twelve thousand people, with a rumored three hundred more arriving every hour. The trails were like city streets, except that all the people smile and wave at you. We walked past the welcome site and through the trading circle, past the Hare Krishna tent, the Jesus tent, the Lost and Found, the information booth, and up toward Morning Star Kitchen where we found a place to pitch our tents.
The Gatherings are remarkably well organized. Locations are thoroughly scouted and then a few hundred people come early for ‘seed week,’ when the main structures are built. Oil drums are buried in mud with fires underneath to make ovens, shitters are dug, fire pits are lined with stones and surrounded with log benches, tents are erected, stages are built, signs are posted, paths are worn, even a sweathouse is constructed. These people know what they are doing. Many have been doing it for twenty years. Karen told me that most of the old Rainbows she knows organize their whole lives around the event, living in their vans, taking odd jobs, traveling from Gathering to Gathering. Someday, a banner near our campsite read, We Will Gather 4 Ever.
After unpacking our gear, Mike and Karen and I hiked up through Tepee Village past the main meadow to a coffee circle kitchen called Lovin’ Ovens (all the kitchens had names: Morning Star, Turtle Island and so on) where some sort of celebration was going on.
Badger’s wedding! I remembered the sister with the pie on the bus. Here he was, a stocky, grinning man in his forties dressed in dirty jeans with a wide belt, wearing boots, a thick long-sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed leather hat. His bride was in her forties, too, short, with curly black hair tied back with an ornate clip, and wearing a long colorfully embroidered Nepali dress. They embraced and the circle of people around them began to Om until the sound rose to a crescendo and broke and everyone cheered.
Guitars started up and the crowd began to dance and twirl to Dead standards. Mike and Karen disappeared to say hello to someone they knew from the previous year, so I sat back on the log where I was perched and took in the scene. Everyone was having such a good time. It was Woodstock, without the music, the rain or the war.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned expecting to see Mike or Karen. Instead, a young man gazed at me with glazed eyes. ‘Hey sister,’ he said. ‘I’m giving out random massages. You want one?’
‘Sure,’ I said, practicing being free-spirited and spontaneous.
‘Come lay down on my blanket,’ the young brother said, and I followed him back into the main meadow where he had laid down a blanket in the tall grass. He told me his name was Lizard.
I spread out on my belly on the blanket and Lizard unsnapped my overall straps and folded them back so my tank top was exposed. He started kneading my shoulders, then my back, arms and legs. After a while he had me flip over on my back, then he folded down my overalls, lifted up my tank top and began to massage my bare stomach.
This is so great, I thought. It is so great that two strangers of the opposite sex can have this random totally nonsexual encounter without any of society’s hang-ups or expectations.
‘Now this is the part where you have to tell me if I make you uncomfortable,’ Lizard said. He began to massage my legs, creeping slowly up my inner thighs.
Was he molesting me, or just being thorough?
‘Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable,’ he said again.
His kneading fingers crept higher and higher.
‘Urn, Lizard?’
‘Stop?’
‘Stop.’
I sat up on the blanket and thanked him for the massage but explained that it had become imperative that I find my friends immediately as they might be missing me by now.
‘Plant one here, sister,’ he said, pointing at his puckered lips.
I gave him a fleeting peck on his pucker, managing to avoid the tongue he tried to slip into my mouth.
By the time I got back to the wedding, Mike and Karen were nowhere to be found, but I could see that the minions were gathering in the main meadow for dinner circle and I figured that’s where I’d find them. I headed down the trail, passing Lizard leading another sister to his blanket boudoir.
I found Mike amid the six thousand people who had dinner that night (Karen had volunteered to hand out bread). We all listened to announcements no one could hear because ‘megaphones would be a power trip.’ Then everyone rose, joined hands and Omed for a few minutes. Finally we all formed huge concentric circles and kitchen workers came around giving each waiting bowl a healthy scoop of rice and beans served out of dirty red-and-white coolers. The mothers, children and pregnant sisters got fed first, taking a good half of the food supply, then everyone else got what was left over. Considering that your portion depended on where you happened to be sitting when the cooler ran out, people were surprisingly mellow, content to get even one helping. After dinner, the magic hat came around and we were encouraged to put a few cents in if we could spare it. The hat money goes for food and coffee, with a guarantee that not a cent will be spent on Rainbow vices such as meat, nicotine or alcohol-though it is common knowledge that the kitchen workers get free drugs, a pretty serious incentive to sign up for dish duty.
There is plenty of substance use at the Gathering. Maybe 70 percent of the adults are under the influence at any given time. People smoke joints like cigarettes (which are not nearly as tolerated) and drop LSD and take mushrooms. But it is caffeine that seems to be the drug Rainbows are most enamored with.
‘Is the coffee done yet, man?’ I had split up with Mike and Karen after dinner and found my way back to the Lovin’ Ovens fire pit. There were twenty-some hippies huddled around the fire, several clutching Starbucks travel mugs, waiting for the five-gallon coffeepot to boil. Coffee is a complicated process at the Gathering. A delicate combination of instant, freeze-dried coffee out of a can and fresh ground coffee is stirred into creek water, which is heated over an open fire for a half hour until it boils. It’s cowboy coffee, swirling with debris and chunks of unidentifiable solids. It was my first glimpse of nineties culture at the Gathering-everyone around the fire was dying for a good cappuccino.
I headed back to my tent after my cup, and got a surprisingly good night’s sleep. When I woke up, I joined Mike and Karen for fried potatoes and coffee from Morning Star, and then headed for the trading circle. It was mid-morning and already hot. Women were shedding shirts to go bare-chested, and many men wore nothing but long skirts. I walked along the main trail to the circle, where people put out blankets of wares, anything from beads to clothing to marijuana.