Rainbow Gathering

We’d been on tour for a couple weeks and were broke, dirty, and hungry. The show in Louisville had been cancelled and it was too late to make the drive to Nashville, so a free place to crash was the order. Rob said that some hippies he met in a gas station told him about a Rainbow Gathering nearby. A Rainbow Gathering is a floating hippie commune of sorts that moves around from one national park campsite to another. The idea didn’t hold much appeal but Pete mentioned that our friend Chuck might be there. We discussed it back and forth; how sweet it would be to hook up with our friends, eat some free food, scope some naked hippies. On the flip side, it WAS a Rainbow Gathering.

We said fuck it, and decided to try and find it, so Ron and I located on the map what HAD to be the correct national park while Pete and the others loaded up the vehicles. There were already eight of us on this tour and the thought of adding three more of our closest friends to wreak havoc on Kentucky hurried us along.

After a few hours, we pulled into a gas station outside the entrance to the park. I filled up the van while Ron went in to grill the attendant for info; perhaps he’d seen an unusual number of dirty hippies for this part of Kentucky. Suddenly a Subaru station wagon passing on the road locked up it’s brakes and skidded sideways into the gas station. The car slammed into reverse and and screeched up next to van. I feared the worst. Then, amidst much screaming, who should appear from the Sabaru but Chuck, Arnold and Cathi! Much rejoicing was done in that gas station in Kentucky and we were all reminded what a small fucking world it is indeed.

So our caravan had become two cars, a van and eleven people. We were gonna TAKE OVER this hippie bullshit! As we sped along the gravel roads through the beautiful forest we told the new arrivals how the tour had been going (great, except tonight’s cancellation), and Arnold told us how their traveling had been going (great, except for Cathi’s crazy ex-boyfriend). Cathi was in one of the other vehicles, so Arnold recounted the story at length. Apparently, Cathi had met some guy, one of those old street sweepers who hang around any given scene to prey upon it’s young, naive female members, and had “fallen in love”. They bought a school bus together (the hippie equivilant to the first home) and headed off together. A week later Arnold got a frantic call from Cathi on a pay phone in Mississippi. It went bad, and she’d split, but he was chasing her. She was hitchhiking home, but he kept appearing in the bus, and she kept having to hide. Arnold and Chuck the drove to Oxford, Mississippi to resue her from ‘Sparrowhamk’ (kak!), as he apparently liked to be called, and they were now heading back.

After an hour of circling this huge park we stopped to have a conference with the others. Noone had seen a car or a fire burning or any signs of life of any kind. It certainly didn’t look like it, but this HAD to be the place. We laid out the map on the warm hood of Tom’s VW and figured that, if we kept on the way we were, we’d hit it eventually. Suddenly a roar that would’ve waken the dead erupted from the forest and headlights appeared from the opposite direction, coming towards us-FAST! We all jumped off the road as an enormous, dilipadated school bus screamed by, missing the vehicles by inches. The bus passed us and tore on into the forest without even slowing down, leaving us in a cloud of dust and monoxide.

Arnold came running up and told us that that was Sparrowhawk on the school bus! He must be staking out the Gathering looking for Cathi. We were now positive we were going the right direction and moved on, hoping to avoid any hippie domestic disputes.

We started to see these little piles of rocks here and there along the roadside and figured these must be some type of hippie marking system. Soon after we found the camp, our hearts racing at the thoughts of free food and nudity.

We rolled into the parking area and were greeted by a grungy, naked man of about 50 named Marty. Marty weighed about three bills and shook each of our hands very enthusiastically. I assumed because it had been so long since he’d touched a clean hand. Marty said to go ahead and scope a campsite wherever we wanted. Dave asked about the rumors of free food at these things and Marty sadly told us of a rift in the ‘Rainbow community’, as he called it. It seems another faction had set up a Rainbow Gathering of their own at a different national park campsite about a hundred miles away. Problem was, this splinter group had all the foodstuffs and kitchen appliances. Most of the people were just getting doughnuts at the gas station, Marty said, but they were working on constructing a new stove. I imagined a circle of confused flower children fussing over a pile of deconstructed bongs and VW parts. But, Marty said, we should have food soon. What were they gonna make, I asked. Doughnuts, Marty replied, natural ones.

We left Marty in his own stench to cordone off some solitude for ourselves. The group was tired from the drive and the heat and wanted some sleep before we plotted our next move, which would almost certainly involve doughnuts.

Pete and I counted four naked hippies on the way to our site. All dudes, all dirty as hell, topped off by the last one, a sullen-looking chap who wanted to know ‘what the hell we were looking at’.

After a few hours of listless sleep, punctuated by slapping at mosquitoes both real and imagined, Chuck, Dave and I had enough and decided to go check out the ‘kitchen’ ‘and see if there was any ‘food’ yet. At the ‘kitchen’ the ‘cooks’ were busily setting up road signs over a fire pit and generally being naked and dirty. Apparently, that was some sort of prerequisite for these things. Despite the fact that national parks have bathrooms and showers these people remained dirty as Frenchmen.

We milled around the site, kicking around empty doughnut and granola bar boxes looking for leftovers. Chuck asked for some water and a dude in a filthy GIVE MOTHER EARTH A HUG t-shirt pointed vaguely at a pile of milk jugs next to a pile of rancid garbage.

Dave and I were writing anti-hippie slogans in the dirt when we heard someone yell, “NO, not that one, that’s GASOLINE!” and turned to see Chuck throw a jug across the ‘kitchen’. We ran to help him as he sputtered and spat, retching to get it all out. Dave asked him if he’d swallowed any. Yes, Chuck said between heaves, a lot.

He didn’t start actually vomiting, per se, until we got him back to the campsite. Within a couple minutes he was on his side vomiting every couple minutes. As fountains of puke poured forth from him, Jeremy commented that it must really suck for Chuck to be tripping during all this. Seems he and Chuck had each dropped a couple hits of acid while everyone else was trying to sleep. Oh. Man.

The decision was quickly made to send Chuck home with Cathi and Arnold. It was only a days drive and with no health insurance, there weren’t a lot of options. The rest of us decided to head to Nashville. Sleeping on the side of the road was starting to sound pretty good. So we stopped at the gas station, bought the last three boxes of doughnuts, and rode on.