| June 01, 2000 Profiles in diversity By DARYL GADBOW of the Missoulian |
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Who's coming to Montana for this
year's gathering? Think again
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| JACKSON - Even though there is a rather homogenous "hippie" look about
the 10,000-plus pilgrims who are attending the Rainbow Family annual gathering,
it would be a mistake to paint them all with too broad a brush. The folks camping in the sagebrush meadows of the upper Big Hole Valley 10 miles south of here come from diverse backgrounds and for a variety of reasons. The majority of middle-aged people who spoke to a Missoulian reporter this week said they are attending the gathering for their annual one- or two-week vacation. And most of them said they try to make the pilgrimage to the national Rainbow gathering every year. Young people in their teens and 20s probably constitute about half of the visitors at the gathering. Some said they are taking time off from work or school. Quite a few said they are vagabonds, traveling around the country. "Who is the Rainbow Family?" asks Barry Adams of Missoula, one of the original organizers of the first national gathering in 1972 and an unofficial spokesman of the group. "I call her sister. She calls me brother. In reality we're not related. We're just a bunch of individual citizens. I just speak for myself. I don't speak for the Rainbow Family. It's the same for everybody here." There are many opinions about the meaning of the gathering and reasons that it draws people from all over the country, said Don Arceneux, a forester from north Idaho. He said the public's perception that the Rainbow Family is a group of deadbeats and society's castoffs is not correct. "One thing you always hear about Rainbows is they don't work," Arceneux said. "I work. I pay taxes. I vote." The gathering, he said, "has all the elements of any village. There are a lot of vets here. I'm a Vietnam vet. Vets are drawn to it because it's a village that's not at war. It heals something that's the other side of peace that we all experienced as vets. We're all just individuals here who like to come together under the banner of peace. We've dropped all our separate views and today we all share this vision of peace on this planet. We are all into the experience of creating this village of peace. On the Fourth of July there aren't many villages like this. We hold hands in a circle and pray for world peace." The only way to get a feeling for the different kinds of people who attend the gathering and their reasons for attending is to talk to lots of them, Arceneux advised. There was no shortage of people at the encampment this week who were willing to share their philosophy about the gathering with the Missoulian. Here are some of their thoughts: Dharmika Henshel of Springfield, Ore., who brought her 2 1/2-year-old son to the gathering, has attended the national events for 10 straight years starting in 1979. Then she took some time for a career as a professional botanist with a graduate degree. She's attending this year's gathering on vacation from her current job with an Internet business, she said. At the gathering, Henshel said, "Everybody lets down their guard and everybody gives a little bit. And that's not what we're taught in society. We're taught to climb over somebody else's back." "I also come for the variety of music," she added. "And to see people you've met before at other gatherings. I have a master's degree in watershed management. I got into that because of what I learned about plants and herbs at Rainbow gatherings. "This really is a vacation for me. That will be the case for more and more people as we get to July. There's lots of people with regular jobs who come. I also come for the educational workshops and classes. A lot of information is exchanged. The subject matter is anything you can think of. "Each person has their own attraction to the gathering. I like to see the best in people come out." Felipe Chavez, a truck driver from Florida, operates the Kiddy Village Camp kitchen, serving free food to any who ask. "I come to gatherings because they transformed me into a better human being," Chavez said. "I see these children laughing, their songs of love and words of love. That's what brings us back year after year. This is a family gathering for us." Diamond Dave Whitaker, a 63-year-old beat poet and radio show host from San Francisco, helps raise money for the Kiddy Village kitchen, and generally entertains everyone he meets. Among other reasons, he said, he enjoys the gatherings because they "create anarchy out of chaos." Four generations attend Rainbow gatherings now, Diamond Dave said: beatniks, hippies, punks and hip-hoppers. Eddy, 29, of Holland said he just attended a Rainbow gathering in Australia that attracted a mere 2,500 people, compared to the 25,000 expected for this year's national gathering in Montana. The large size of this gathering, with its several dozen separate centralized camps, has its drawbacks, Eddy said. "In Australia, if you want food, you have to come to the central circle. "This feels like a lot of small gatherings going on next to each other." D.A.Y., a painter from Woodstock, N.Y., said he has helped organize Rainbow gatherings since the first one in 1972 and has attended every one since. Sitting before his banner- and flag-bedecked tepee, D.A.Y. said, "God has inspired me to use this as a ministry. Alternatives in becoming: That's the project. I come here to pray for world healing, peace and love. This state's been very kind. It's overpoliced as usual. But if that's the way they want to spend their hard-earned tax dollars, there isn't much we can do. This is the Tepee Circle of elders, who we call "earlies," including Barry Adams. I met him in 1970 when he took a trip to the East. He works very diligently serving human beings and the god in them. That is our major priority. As you can see, we've picked up the dysfunctional, the poor and the lonely. They come here to recharge their batteries, so they can deal with the world for the rest of the year." Coyote Joe is a 30-something bartender from Nebraska. "This is my 11th national gathering," he said. "It's different every time. This is my vacation. I get away from drunks for two weeks. There are people here I've known for 10 years. It was a consensus in the beginning to have an A Camp for people to deal with their problems with alcohol. You should have been here at night. There's a big, big drum circle, with like 200 drums of all different kinds. There's a lot of people dancing all around them." Sister, from New England, said she is here to pray for peace. She declined to give her name because she said she has been at the gathering site for 12 weeks, working with local health and Forest Service officials to ensure the health of the visitors and the environmental protection of the area. She said she fears that Forest Service law enforcement officers will target her if there are any problems. Greg, 25, drove 20 straight hours to the gathering from Calgary, Alberta, this week. He'd been to the national gathering in Oregon in 1997. "I came to get away from everyday life," he said. "I'm a sound engineer and manager of a band. I came just to feel the energy. The positive energy is the main point. And to meet someone they haven't met, and share their energy. There is government here. But it's not dictated by one person. Everyone has a say." Jannine, 24, makes natural skin and bath products in Canmore, Alberta. "I needed a good cleansing, to be around family and people who are kind, and they have the same intentions toward Mother Nature - appreciation, respect and love. This is what a true democracy is all about." Doug, 29, an auto detailer who plays in two bands - one rock, one country - in Pennsylvania. He attended the national Rainbow gathering last year in Pennsylvania. "I like the outdoors," he said. "And this is one of the only places you can feel free. Nobody bugs you." Yoame is a 16-year-old home-school student from Virginia. "Nobody judges you," she said. "This is my third national Rainbow gathering and my seventh gathering. They're beautiful people. If I don't go to one for awhile, my spirit can tell. I needed one for my spirit." David is a 37-year-old "traveler" from Virginia. "This is what I've always been looking for," he said. "This is the way it's supposed to be, without the mental crap." Hawker, 32, is an electronics engineer from North Carolina. He's been attending Rainbow gatherings for 14 years. "I design audio equipment," said Hawker. "This is my two-week vacation every year. I work all year to bring things out here, like water-filtering systems. And I work with communications systems here. You see we have a lot of radios to communicate with each other. We have a complex system and I worked on developing that." "I first got hooked up with Rainbow from a Grateful Dead show, like a lot of other people," Hawker added. "There was a Grateful Dead kitchen serving people. And they asked me to come and cook. It was a powerful thing to cook for people, and give to people. And the more you gave, the more you got out of it. My big buzzword for Rainbow is the more you put in, the more you get out. It becomes a powerful resource. It's been valuable to me to learn about water-filtering systems. It's a deal where people come together once a year and share their resources and knowledge. "Of course the music's pretty good, too. I always record the music at the campfires every year and make a CD every year. It was available for downloading on the Internet. And it became very popular very fast. But there were too many people downloading it for my server. So it's not available now. I have to find a new server. I have three years' worth of music. I've met some big names at gatherings, and a lot of professional musicians you wouldn't have heard of. I think, if for nothing else, people come here for the music." Two teen-agers from Bigfork. "We heard there was a big party going on down here. But we didn't know it was this big." |
| Reporter Daryl Gadbow can be reached at 523-5264 or at [email protected]. |