Tribal Light

This is a glowing teepee I passed by at the rainbow gathering one night last summer of 2004. It was a beacon of light to me in the dark wilderness that night, as there are no lights out at the Rainbow gathering, and i didn't have a flashlight that night. Symbolically it seemed to be beconing me to it and offering the goodness of the tribal lifestyle to be a part of my life again. How tempting.

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The Rainbow gathering is basically a huge hippy festival that is THE original hippy festival. It all started around the time of the summer of love in 1969. Around the time of Woodstock (that huge music festival in the summer of 1969) there was a ton of wandering homeless hippies, searching for more meaning in this world. So a bunch of hippies got together and decided to try to create a connecting place in some National Forest land for all these hippies to gather and just celebrate life together for a while. The people called themselves the "Rainbow" people, (meaning all colors shapes and sizes and types of people were welcome). The Festival started as just a new type of thinking spiritually, emotionally, physically, economically, etc. Meaning there are all differnet types of spirituality explored at the gatheing, new types of emotional interactions (new ways of greeting people, resolving conflict, listening to each other), new ways of connecting physically and taking care of your body physically (yoga, etc.), and there was a new type of economy that they started. No money is allowed at rainbow gathering. Only trade and barter. It keeps the values of things down to their real values. Only services and goods could be traded for other services and goods of equal values. it makes for a much simpler system.

With that, the rainbow gathering just wandered with the hippies, and every year after that, these homeless wandering hippies who were kind of a loosely connected family now, would somehow get a hold of each other, and try to figure out where they could have the next rainbow gathering. There are amazing strories every year of how they finally find a spot in some National Forest land (because that land is the only land in the US that is open for anyone to camp on),where they camp for over a month. They would spread the word through word of mouth (and it is still done this way...they try not to use the internet as the FBI always trys to mess up the rainbow gathering....for various reasons). The rainbow gathering I went to was in Northern California (way up at the tip by Oregon and Nevada).Over 10,000 people pitched their tents, teepees, school bus homes (i drove my converted school bus to it networking and picking up travelers and hippies all along the way)
It was so amazing to see this huge valley of forest land, bordered by huge expansive open meadows with a creek running through it, just scattered with little dwellings all over the place. It looked like a tent city, but if you looked carefully it looked similar to Hobbiton (home of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings).

The coolest part of if for me (well there was so much that was cool...like people sharing food with each other, people creating these Themed camps like, Bread oven camp (where they give out free bread that they bake in earthen ovens that they build from the earth at the gathering), there is yoga camp, childrens camp, bluegrass music camp, fairy camp, bus camp (where I parked my bus), Hawaii camp, Jewish Camp, Christian camp, bhuddist camp, etc. etc. etc. But anyways the coolest part of it for me, was this HUGE circle on July 4th where litterally 10s of thousands of people gathered quietly in a circle and prayed for world peace. It was sooooo amazing to watch. I went out on a hill at 7 in the morning and just sat there and meditated (as the whole gathering agrees not to talk for the whole morning to just meditate for world peace), and then slowly as people get up, and the straggling travelers trickle in to the huge beautiful meadow of the national forest land we are in (which also happens to be sacred native american lands), I just got to watch litterally over 10,000 people slowly form a HUGE circle.

I made my way down to the very middle of the circle and got to watch and take pictures of the whole ceremony. The elders of the Rainbow family who have been there every year since the late 60's were there and they lead a group "Ohm" which is just exactly what it sounds like. Say "Oooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:.
It's a bhuddist mediation chant. You say "Ohm" very slowly and long and with your eyes closed and sitting on the ground, and you just empty your mind and mediate on a subject (in the case of the rainbow gathering it was world peace). The whole circle of 10,000+ people all doing that together out in the wilderness brought chills to my whole body, and it was so amazing how strong the energy in the air was. I could feel the goodness and the positive energy being built up all around me, and it was so healing. I think that the whole world doing that together could seriously create world peace. And that is the aim of the rainbow gathering (along with environmentally conscious living, and harmonious relationships.)