"LOVING YOU" … It's almost too sweet. Everyone calling each other "brother" and "sister." Perfect strangers. Tramps in rags, paleohippies, dreads, punks with rainbow mohawks, trustfunders in goldflecked cotton twill and tie-dye … And as one walks into the encampment from the parking lot, lugging all one's gear, everyone calls out along the main trail, "Welcome home." As though wild nature – the unroaded beetlekill meadows of our public forests – were our true home. And we were just coming back after a long absence in our un-natural, un-"real world" … The Rainbow Gathering – regardless of what you might have heard in newspapers, or on radio and TV – is a spiritual gathering … The Krishna Kitchen is one of the largest free meal sites each year, and they feed thousands. When not cooking, the monks – male and female – drum and chant "Hare Krishna" non-stop, or pass out buckets of free cookies along the miles of trails, and proselytize … Our own Chuck and Linda Parry of the Telluride Christian Fellowship have been running the Bread of Life Kitchen for a dozen years or more. Feeding the hungry. Dispensing hot tea and filtered water. Letting their Christian example speak as loud as any preaching. This year they were close to Granola Funk, where inventive Rainbows constructed a large stage designed like a pirate ship, and held nightly talent shows as camp entertainment … My family bivouacked near the Yoga Kitchen, in a lovely hidden meadow in the last canyon fold of the mile-or-two encampment (itself a giant meadow – surrounded by fingers of small watercourses – where nearly the entire gathering held hands on the Fourth of July in Rainbow's traditional silent prayer for peace) … Practitioners from many yogic traditions gave classes. Their was breathwork, bodywork, rebirthing, dakini dance and various kinds of meditations … On the 3rd, Wayne Talmage of White Buffalo Farm in Paonia married Kara in the Main Circle in a traditional Druid wedding (I got to invoke Air in the East) … Of course, for those of us bioregionalists or earth-centered spiritualists for whom formal traditions mean less than the gestalt of a watershed and its myriad plants, fungi and animalia, the Wildcraft Kitchen was our focal point, and we held a wild food feast one morning, just before a plant identification walk. Talking about how returning to the natural world and fully understanding natural systems was perhaps the most important thing we could do as humans to prepare for the coming disruptions, signaled already by peak oil and global warming … The point is, like India's gigantic Kumbha Mela, the Rainbow Gathering is a spiritual event. A time for even counter-cultural Americans to pray for peace.

THE DIGGERS … Rainbow didn't appear sui generis. It sprang from the counter-cultural traditions pioneered in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, at music festivals like Monterey Jazz and Woodstock, and in the pages of liberal rags like the L.A. Free Press and the Village Voice – and their hundreds of imitators around the country … Peter Berg, who recently visited Telluride for Mountainfilm, was one of the original Diggers – the legendary theatrical and social action group which ran a free soup kitchen in the Haight, held ceremonial street actions like the Burial of the Hippie, and initiated a free store – in what was to become the hippie movement's giveaway tradition which H.L. Hyde catalogued in his book on indigenous barter economy, The Gift … It was in the early Seventies (which was really part of the decade they called the "Sixties") that Rainbow Gatherings began – in Colorado, ironically. Near Granby. Many hippies migrated back to rural America, thanks to Mother Earth and the Whole Earth Catalogue. Steven Gaskin left San Francisco with a large contingent of Pacific Rim counter-culturalists and founded The Farm in Tennessee. What had been the visible hippie counter-culture, centered on the West Coast and dotting the national landscape in college town and resort enclaves from Boulder, Telluride, Jackson Hole to Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill, went underground. But once a year hippies from all over the country would get together for a counter-cultural spiritual event, a Rainbow Gathering. And it was, and still is, in effect, a giant giveaway. No admittance is charged. The hungry are fed. The homeless find a free village for a week. The encampment is prepped a month before, and the land restored for a month after. Alcohol, meth, heroin and cocaine are strongly discouraged (at Rainbow, rather than developing a police force, everyone is encouraged to take personal responsibility for upholding rules and traditions – just as was the case in many indigenous tribes). Plant and chemical allies and fungal entheogens are a matter of personal choice (understanding the irrational social prohibitions currently in force) … In a real sense, Rainbows are reincarnations of the hippie phenomenon that so shocked the world in the Sixties, and continues to perturb the establishment, to this day.

HEAVY-HANDED … My buddy Jim Rosenthal gave me a bumper sticker before I left for Rainbow – "America, The Land of the Free, If You Do What You're Told." It was fitting … Our federal government tells us many things – some of which I believe, and some of which I don't. Remember, my sweet 16 came in the Sixties. Subverting the dominant paradigm was a maxim of the counter-culture of my generation. And well it might, for who hasn't caught the Feds in a tangled web of lies all too many times in our own lifetimes? – nuclear power would lead to energy "too cheap to meter"; DDT's safe; we were attacked in the Tonkin Gulf; we'll find WMDs in Iraq, et cetera, et cetera … Since the first gathering in 1972, Rainbows have taken the First Amendment to our national Constitution quite literally, and believe all citizens have a right to "peaceably assemble" on public lands. However, the executive branch of our government has issued administrative orders tempering our Founding Fathers' unequivocal language, requiring permits and bonding and insurance for all gatherings over 75 people … As disciples of Jefferson and devotees of Leary, Rainbows believe they don't need permits – after all, no money is involved. And no real organization. There are no designated leaders. The Rainbow Family's decision-making structure is more tribal than corporate (or non-profit) with decisions being made based on council circles, where whoever attends can participate – elder, neophyte or loon … This year, after a track record of 34 years of cleaning up and restoring natural forest landscapes after each annual gathering, the Rainbow Family was subjected to a series of closure orders, by Routt-Medicine Bow Forest Supervisor Mary Peterson, making it illegal for anyone to enter within a two or three mile area of the Rainbow site. That technical change order in forest status, manipulated by the current public land administrators, stripped thousands of counter-cultural citizens of their rights to peaceably assemble. And subjected them to ticketing, makeshift court appearances and fines. Peterson also crafted a forest order to ban nudity – again only in the small area of the gathering. And camping was prohibited within 150 feet of streamcourses (brooks and small creeks). The latter made some sense, even if it was applied with a tape measure by a phalanx of Forest Service law enforcement officers on horseback, six deep, crisscrossing the encampment. But having over 75 officers involved, with a mobile Incident Command Center, squad cars, helicopters, airplanes and horses, was clearly overkill. There were, of course, a few incidents that could have used some peacekeeping, as with any larger gathering of folks. But the 250 tickets issued were mostly given out for being in a closed area of the forest – a technicality invoked by Peterson for the very purpose of creating a confrontation with citizens arriving for the gathering. And it was done mostly at a checkpoint on the only road into the site. However, after a day of ticketing in the week leading up to July 4th, 100 Rainbows did what they always do when they encounter inappropriate acts. They surrounded the checkpoint, and refused to let it continue. And the officers, far outnumbered, retreated. And that was the end of the checkpoint ticketing … Federal, state and local law enforcement folks continued to threaten visitors with tickets (although no more were issued) and they continued to tour the gathering site as well, walking the many trails in single-file lines of nine and 10 officers at a time, fully armed, in flak jackets and gloves. It was a most unsettling sight, more provocative than peaceable, at a gathering where everyone came to pray for peace and was trying hard to treat each other like family.

ANNIVERSARY … Mary Friedberg, Sara Mae, Gorio Rainbow Oshá and I missed last year's gathering in West Virginia … I've been going since 1978, but only when they've been out West. And since they alternate East and West, I've missed about half of the gatherings in the last 28 years … Mary, Sara and I met in 1997 in Oregon. And Gorio was the outcome of that meeting. I met my first co-parent, Betzi Hitz, at the Oregon Rainbow Gathering in 1978, and Iris Willow was the happy outcome there … This year, up in Routt County, not far from Hahn's Peak, just over a ridge or two from Big Red Park, 15,000 Rainbows held their annual peace demo. Making a huge connected circle of life … Until the children's parade from Kid Village broke the round, like a sperm penetrating an ovum. And once the last child had made it into the center, the conch shells sounded and everyone began to cheer, and dance, and drum for the rest of the day and on into the night, until daybreak on the 5th.

DOUBLE RAINBOW … Caravanning with friends, we took different paths home. Our kids going with friends to hear Michael Franti and Spearhead free at the Mountain Village in Steamboat Springs … Finally, both cars home (Mary's Dodge Caravan only a bit worse for wear – after a deer/car collision – than my 215,000-mile Geo), the rain lifts on the 8th, just near sunset, and we get a full double rainbow, marrying Lone Cone to the Sneffels Range.