Rainbowland

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about the rainbow gathering but I remember the general whisper in the air. It was sometime in high school and it felt like a a low rumble , another frequency telling me something else beyond the familiar world of my friends and family and school was out there.

When I was 17, Gaynor and I took one month during our summer vacation to do Wolf research as part of a team of UCSF scientists out in the forest in Montana ( an interesting coincidence is that Vanessa years later wound up working at UCSF). We were in Whitehall or Whitefish and there was this old hippie with a big rainbow top hat. He had just been to - or was coming out of - a rainbow gathering. It was my first rainbow sighting and I was hooked!

It would be years before I actually made it to a gathering. 9 to be exact. In fact as I type this entry I have just come out of the forest in New Mexico from the 38th annual National Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes.

There is nothing quite like the experience of going into a gathering . The anticipation coupled with the unrelenting stress to the breaking point of questioning the insanity of going through this ritual time and time again. Why do I chose to go live in the woods with thousands of other people? I don't like being around people that much - especially when I am in the forest. Why do I do this to myself? How come I forget this over and over again?

Nothing will ever compare to my first experience, which also happened to be the Rainbow family’s’ first ever World Healing gathering. This event was substance free (including sugar& caffeine!) unlike other gatherings which usually have copius amounts of green and relegate alchohol to a specific area far away from the main area of the gathering.

The World Healing Gathering in 2006 was in Sinai, Egypt. After making it into Dahab we took a pick-up truck past the diving “town” of Blue-Hole , literally the middle of the desert. When nothing was around us but miles and miles of sand they told us to get out of the truck. I was convinced I was going to be shot. We weren't, and so we then proceeded to walk what seemed like an hour further and further into the desert.

As the sun was going down and Mohammed , our guide, getting increasingly nervous as the darkness set in -we rounded some more sand to the "welcome home" fire burning - hallelujah!
These 9 miles of windy New Mexico forest road did not quite compare to the Sinai desert but then again whatever could. This year, it was short gathering for me - less then 48 hours but enough for some yoga, some hugs, some welcome homes.

for more info on the rainbow family of living light go to www.welcomehere.org

RIP MJ

We were driving through Tennessee when I got a text from a friend about Michael Jackson. That was the first we had heard . I knew it would be all over the news. While I was curious to hear the details and looking forward to hearing his music on the numerous tributes that would no doubt be all over the radio I was also preparing myself to see the coverage of what continues to be an unprecedented uprising in Iran relegated to paragraphs in the secondary sections.

Astrologer Eric Francis has a fascinating article covering all of these recnet events on his website www.planetwaves.net.

We stopped in Memphis, Tennessee. I wanted to pay tribute to Elvis and it seemed fitting to be their on the anniversary of another pop icons passing.

Graceland, though the mansion itself is qute beautiful, it has become to quote a phrase a true example of current day “idol worship”. The gift shops and strip malls line the way to what must have one day been a beautiful countryside. It gives one an idea perhaps as to what might become of the Jackson enterprise .