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