Up Bear Creek

RAINBOW GATHERING … It's hard to explain an event of this size held in the woods where people can be as close or as far away from others as they please. It's about freedom. But it's also about peace, light and responsibility. And at heart it's a giveaway … Free food at dozens of kitchens. A central dinner circle where everyone who comes gets fed. No alcohol. No combustion engines (we walk, carry or roll everything into the site). No buying and selling (although barter is encouraged). No personal fires. Leave no trace. Everyone take responsibility. Total silence on the morning of the 4th. These are some of the rules of the gathering … But more than rules, Rainbow's really about a ring of power held by thousands of people – where love and trust and sharing are expected, and anything other outré … The gathering's north of Steamboat this year. Starting July 1 and running until the 7th. Check online for directions, www.welcomehome.org and read up on Rainbow 101, if you are planning on coming. I'll be up by Yoga Camp. With Mary and Sara and Gorio and our friend Seven. Come by and visit.

ALTA CASSIETTO … Patient, with a twinkle in her eye … That's how I remember one of Telluride's Greatest Ladies. Editor of Dad Painter's Daily Journal. U.S. Postmaster. Local historian-par-excellance. I'd call and then arrange to visit her duplex apartment in Montrose. Always neat. With old pictures, scrapbooks, a lifetime of collected objects set on lace. What the Japanese call netsuke … And she'd receive me politely, sometimes with a little laugh. Make tea. We'd talk history. Telluride's past. Where this building had been before it burnt, and some anecdote of personality Alta would invoke by way of illustration of this or that event … She is being honored on the Fourth of July in Telluride, having passed away earlier this year. And well she should be honored. One of the most interesting women I've ever met. May she rest in peace.

BOOK ALERT … Most New Orleans library branches were wiped out by Katrina, and they've sent out a call for books to assist in the library restoration. They say all books are welcome … Contact Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations Office, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Ave., New Orleans, LA 70112-2007 … Thanks to Lee Taylor for this alert.

MORE RAINBOW … Someone emailed me this week and complained about my "rude" label for Steamboat last week, suggesting one cannot blanket an entire community with the actions of a few. Maybe not, but does Telluride, Mountain Village or Norwood have a loitering law? … This someone claimed the Rainbow Gathering wasn't as idyllic as I'd painted it, citing the Denver Post (although I have a trust problem here, already) regarding the group's failure to secure a permit (actually, a permit was denied just this past week, after a Rainbow sought to get one) … Regarding the alleged incident – wherein Rainbows allegedly tossed tiny pebbles at law enforcement officials (some wise woman's public censure tactic) in protest over Israeli checkpoint protocols initiated outside Big Red Park by U.S. Forest Service personnel (employees of the public lands agency that's been handing out tickets to thousands of Rainbows for violating a self-imposed forest closure order by Routt-Medicine Bow Forest Supervisor Mary H. Peterson) – it's clear the Forest Service is attempting to provoke incidents with its confrontational forest closure orders and ticketing. But then again why wouldn't we expect yet another Patriot Act assault on our civil liberties from Bush administration appointees? … By the same token, I'm not saying the gathering is always peaceful. In a crowd of 10,000 people, you can find almost anything you want – including trouble. But the tone and atmosphere pervading the gathering is spiritual and peaceful. Rainbows cheer, "Welcome home" when you arrive, and "We love you" when you leave. That's why Chuck Parry, one of our local Christian ministers, runs a free Rainbow kitchen every year … And although it's a huge crowd, one can also be entirely alone, just by walking off into the woods. And there are lots of local neighborhoods and theme camps and group fire circles ... Finally, this same local questioned the environmental impacts of such a large gathering. A fair question. Grand Junction's Daily Sentinel asked the same thing a year after the gathering in Paonia in 1992. And the journalist doing the investigation reported that there was no evidence of a gathering at all a year later, and the site was in better shape than many grazed areas of the forest. Every year there are volunteer crews (hundreds of people) who prep and restore the site for a month before, and a month after, the event. We're talking a lot of sometimes altered but in general very environmentally conscious people … Bottom line, as a paleohippie, let me say I've been attending Rainbow Gatherings since 1978 (28 years!). I met my partner Mary at the Oregon gathering in 1997. My youngest son's middle name is Rainbow. And both Sara (12) and Gorio (7) look forward eagerly to this annual family event. The hippie phenomenon of the Sixties – the counter culture, as we called it – didn't disappear. It went underground, and resurfaced in events like Rainbow, Burning Man, Talking Gourds, the Telluride Mushroom Festival. If you never experienced the Haight-Ashbury scene, didn't spend some time in a commune or simply would like to see what tribal indigenous life might be like for a week or so, you're missing a golden opportunity this year in Big Red Park – if you don't go.