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In a separate long story, we drove to MN and hung for about ten days, waiting for news of the gathering location. I want to make this a description of what I know, not rumors, but one thing I know is what rumors I hear. The Rainbow runs on rumors, so they can't be ignored.
Rumors of the location of the gathering site came exceptionally late this year, and the rumor is that federal agents showed up at site council to make threats, that there were about a hundred people at council, though few of them had been to any of the proposed sites. It would be interesting to know more details of the site council, but we had nothing to do with it.
The car began to have trouble starting sometimes. Other times it started fine.
We went back to the new location. This involved a drive of about six miles along a typical unpaved but good quality two lane Forest Service road. Parking along the road looked possible, but further off the road was underbrush and swamp. We came to a bridge over a stream where a group of people were swimming. We felt like we were close. A few hundred meters uphill away from the stream we turned left. We followed a one lane track which became increasingly rutted, with fewer and fewer wide spots at which two cars going in opposite directions could get past each other, and more and more wash-outs and mudholes. It became clear that if this was the path to the gathering, it would be part of the walk in, not the road to parking.
We came to a grassy hilly meadow of good size, this could be a place for main circle, but there were three or four busses and some more cars parked there. There was a Forest Ranger and some others talking. The Detour Man was already there. He said that officials had encouraged him to send people here, but that he got into trouble with elders, and would no longer take it upon himself to tell anybody where to go. We did not talk to the FS man. A bus driver looked at our map, and after some discussion we all formed a caravan to get out of there and to a point three or four miles north-west of Robin's campground. We last saw the FS Ranger walking in a different direction. I wish we had talked to him, he seemed like he was probably a local who might have given a straight story.
Once out of the woods we did not go with the caravan to the new location, but instead stopped by Robin's campground again. There were still some cars parked there, but no people around. We passed a few more police cars. When we got to the road that the bus driver had marked on our map, we saw a couple piles of rocks that looked like they had been stacked, but had been knocked over. There were three police cars gathered at the corner, two on the main road we were on, and one on the side road we planned to take. Expecting trouble, we turned right. The police made no move to stop us, and so we drove up the deserted road through empty forest for a couple of miles, until we got to the traffic jam.
There were cars parked along both sides of the road, people wandering about, a bus stuck in the ditch, a cruising police cruiser, and in general, a scene of chaos on the verge of trouble. We turned around and went back a few hundred yards where we found a large flat clearing (old logging staging area is my guess) at the side of the road with a parked van and a tent about 40 yards in. We parked there, but near the road.
We walked back to the traffic jam and found the start of the trail in, a grassy double rut, apparently an overgrown jeep or ATV trail. In a meadow a few hundred yards in, we saw a small sign that said ``Area Closed by Forest Service order 83472.87'' (paraphrased, in particular I don't remember the actual number). So we didn't stay in that meadow. The trail went on for most of a mile going through several meadows, some forest and swamp.
We worked for a while to help put up NERF kitchen. There were flies everywhere. They did not bite, but if you stood still there would soon be two dozen of them walking on you. Later we went down the hill and across the bridge. Near the bridge on the other side they were building a drum circle space by digging terraces around a central fire pit. Further up the trail was Kickapoo Kitchen. The trail was slippery with mud and it was getting dark, so we went back to our tent. It thundered and rained hard that night.
NERF had no shitter, so we went back to the car to get the shovel. As we approached the clearing where we had parked the car, we saw what we first took to be a green bus, but which turned out to be a semi-trailer sized horse truck. As we checked the car and got our shovel, we talked to Dead Log, who said he was bringing a lawsuit to prevent interference with his daughter's insulin supply. Six or eight horses got off the trailer, and as many LEOs mounted them and did nothing for a long time. A car came along the road and they stopped it, told the driver he could not go that way, and directed him to the ``legal gathering location'', which they called ``Whitetail'', a name we did not recognize, but took to be the place at the far end of the Detour. This seemed odd, since I thought the FS position was that all gatherings of 75 or more are illegal. We went back in, leaving the horsemen hanging about in the road near our car doing nothing.
We went looking for a place to dig, and found a loose turd in the bushes. Thinking that the People had already chosen a place, we dug near there. \HE/ has dug some shitters in the North East, and is not one to exaggerate the difficulty of a troublesome but simple task. Yet this was more troublesome than usual, because the clay came out in lumps like twenty pound footballs which stuck to the shovel so tightly that they must be scraped off with a hand trowel. I dug down a few feet, got the loose turd on the shovel and tossed it in.
As I finished this task, the horsemen came down the trail. They said that the whole area from the road to the river was closed. I asked why, and one of them said ``archy site''. He seemed to think that was sufficient explanation, and indeed it was. I had heard this story at the Old Job regional gathering. In their continuing quest to make Rainbow Gatherings illegal, without the need to explain to a judge how the small print could override the Constitution[4], the FS sometimes invokes their right to protect our cultural heritage by closing archeological sites. So, the day before we arrived, all land on the west side of the river was found to contain valuable ancient artifacts[1].
We had come prepared to live independently in the woods. We had food and a personal water filter, but there was no water to filter. The water we carried in was more than half gone. The water in the river was too muddy, it would clog the filter almost immediately. That evening the thunderstorm started before dark, and continued into the night. The water came down hard, but it came straight down. We sat under the NERF tarp and remained dry, though the water coming off the tarp filled the huge kitchen kettles. It was the only clear water we had seen, except what we had carried in. We sat alone in the dark and pumped water through our filter into a water bag. It felt good to know we had drinking water for a few more days.
That night \HE/ thought about the water and the clay and the car and how easily \SHE/ gets lost and how far she was going and how long he would want to dodge LEOs while waiting for her to find him again, and began to talk about not staying in the forest while she went to the west coast, but instead waiting in Green Bay.
Next day, we talked with the people who had carried the NERF kitchen in. Proust said an FS ranger had put a sign next to his tent. He asked the ranger what it meant, but the ranger did not answer any questions, but said his job is just to put up the sign. Edna Millay needed a shitter so I showed her the one I had dug the day before, but it was filled to the brim with water and totally unusable. So I filled it in while she went looking for one in some other kitchen.
Even though it was at the top of a hill, the entire area behind NERF had turned to swamp. The water did not soak into the ground, but stayed in puddles several inches deep in every place that was a little lower than its immediate surroundings. Van Gogh said he had talked to the LEOs and they had said they would give us some time to move the kitchen to the other side of the river. He was tired, he had carried the kitchen across the river and up the hill to be far from the road and away from trouble. Informal consensus of NERF was that we would pick our battles, and there seemed no point fighting armed horsemen over a waterlogged fire pit. We would move NERF kitchen to the other side of the river. Other people camped in the closed area made their own decisions.
As we got near the bridge and headed up hill, we heard a big crowd of people chanting ``We are home''. Near the top of the hill there were a few hundred people holding hands in a circle in front of the line of bushes that separated the former NERF camp site from the grassy slope. We walked around the circle to the gap in the bushes where the trail went through. The gap was blocked by three or four horsemen. A dozen or so people were standing or sitting in front of them talking in rather loud voices. We went and stood in front of the horses and told them that our tent is in the clearing behind them, that we had spent the morning cleaning up the NERF kitchen, that we planned on leaving, but could not go east. One of the horsemen said ``We talked to you yesterday didn't we?'' We said yes (though they all look the same to me) and he said ``Maybe we can work something out'', but didn't say anything about what that something might be. We could see our tent about ten yards away through the bushes, but did not feel like crashing through the branches or dodging between the horse's legs to get to it. So we went back a little ways and sat in the grass.
We sat there a while without knowing what to do next. The clouds were getting dark and it seemed there could be another thunderstorm soon. After a while \HE/ began to think we should do something, but \SHE/ did not think we should try to go around behind the horses. \HE/ decided to see how far we could get by going the other way, so we went to a tent about fifty yards to the right and then started down the path behind it. We passed a few tents, some of which had people sitting in front of them. We asked them about horsemen, but none of them even seemed to know what we were talking about. We came to NERF without meeting anybody but lazy campers who took no interest in us. NERF was half broken down and empty, but the grassy area in front of it was filled with LEOs, horses, and little ATVs. We started toward where our tent was, but it was not there.
Between the time we talked to them and the time we walked around the back, they had thrown everything near our tent inside of it, including tent poles and pegs, a flag, a drum, and the full water bag, rolled it all up with the sleeping bags, clothes, and books that were already inside and strapped the whole bundle to the back of their little ATV.
This outrage, plus the approaching thunderstorm, made us brave and we told them that was our tent and they must not take it. They gave the tent back, but they made us show our drivers licenses, asked us where we lived and our Social Security numbers, and the color of our eyes. They told us they were going to be lenient and gave us two tickets (one for \HE/, one for \SHE/) for seventy-five dollars each, for the offense of ``being in a closed area'', to wit: the ``Choate town site''.
We had to pack everything up immediately and walk out. As we left we saw van Gogh sitting in the NERF kitchen and shouted to him that we were leaving and could not help with clean-up and moving any more.
We walked the mile back to the road. Sitting on the road where the trail came out were three or four more FS cars and trucks, with another dozen LEOs or rangers hanging about. We wondered how many of the taxpayers who supplied their salaries would approve of the way they spend their time, wished them an enjoyable thunderstorm, got in the car, and left.
If you ever get a chance to visit Green Bay, skip it. There is nothing there. I got the car fixed, washed the clothes, and read the books I had brought with me until \SHE/ got back late Sunday. We debated whether we would even go back to the Gathering, but since we were 24 hours from home and only 3 hours from the Gathering site, we decided to at least satisfy our curiosity. So Monday morning we started back, not knowing whether we would even go into the Forest. We thought it not unlikely that the Gathering had been broken up by riot police, driven out by thirst, or just degenerated into such a mess of mud and dysfunction that we would not want to stay. But we had to see.
So the five of us talked for about half an hour. Mr. Mason said that Malcolm Jowers[2] was in town with his National Incident Management Team (NIMT), creating trouble in the usual way. ``Malcolm Jowers'' is his real name---or at least if it is not real, he made it up not me. Since he is a Federal Agent paid by the taxpayers, I feel no obligation to protect his privacy. He is a mid-level bureaucrat in the FS who seems to have made it his full-time job to travel the country with a few dozen acolytes staying in hotels and trying to throw a spanner into the works whenever the Rainbow family does something.
Mr. Mason told us that the local people were getting quite annoyed at the NIMT, and the women behind the counter seemed to agree. They had a stack of official Daily Updates, which were one page descriptions of the state of the gathering from the NIMT point of view. When I expressed an interest in having copies of these, one of the counter attendants went and Xeroxed them[3]. She said there was no charge, but we threw a dollar into the collection jar that she said went to a local charity. The counter attendants said they do not work for the FS, but for that charity.
We had been unsure whether the bridge at the Gathering site was the work of Rainbows or whether it had been there a long time. At first we thought it was Rainbows, but it was a big bridge and it went from the end of an ATV track on one side of the river to a similar track on the other side, so it seemed that it must have been there a long while. The Rainbows certainly did not make the ATV tracks. But one of the daily updates says: ``The Rainbow Family had agreed to remove a makeshift bridge that provides access across Sucker Creek to the Choate town site by 2 pm yesterday 6/25. Instead of removing the bridge, they placed dirt on top of the bridge adding to the safety concerns already expressed concerning the stability of the bridge.'' Well, I don't know who Malcolm was talking to, or what he might have misunderstood to make him think ``The Family'' could agree to anything, or why he thinks a layer of dirt on top of a log bridge makes it unstable, but this does seem to indicate that the bridge was made recently. Later I talked to Proust about this, and he said he knows the people who made the bridge. Whoever they were, they were the most competent people anywhere near this gathering.
The daily updates repeatedly emphasize that the gathering is illegal, and obliquely accuse the Rainbow Family of various offenses from contaminating the water to not allowing the Forest Service to work with them. Here's a quote from the June 30 Daily Update: ``Enforcement Officers found shotgun ammunition in the camp and were concerned the weapon was hidden in the woods nearby''---a strange concern given that hunting is one of the desirable recreational activities[1] in the area. The gun stores around there are some of the biggest businesses. Did they find a box full of live ammo in somebody's backpack or glove compartment, or in the middle of the road, or just some spent shells in the woods?
One of the Updates (06-24) says FS LEOs arrested Bad Hair ``for gathering without a permit and if convicted could face six months in prison and/or a $5,000 fine.''[sic] Another confirms that the order closing the Choate Town site was signed on 2002-06-23.
All Updates from June 16 to June 27 say that 25,000 people are expected to attend, then it says that 2,000 people are there, with 200 west of the creek, the rest of them make no population estimates but emphasize that it is illegal for more that 75 people to gather anywhere.
Mr. Mason told us the Videotaped Water Dumping rumor, which is as follows:
Some people had a water tank of several hundred gallons on their truck and were bringing it into the gathering. Malcolm's team stopped them and told them to dump it out. They said that there were a lot of people, including woman and children, in the forest and that they were in danger of dehydration. The demand was repeated, and eventually they did dump the tank. This whole incident was captured on videotape. Later, during a town meeting sponsored by the NIMT to allow the public ``to share information, ask questions and voice concerns'' (phrase taken from a Daily Update) a Rainbow walked in with the videotape. Malcolm started shuffling his papers together and called the meeting to a close. The townspeople would not have it and insisted on seeing the videotape. Several of them became quite upset. Later a local official is said to have told Malcolm in strong terms that dumping water is not acceptable and he would not be doing that again.
We heard this rumor from a few other Rainbows, and from a local man who said he was at the meeting. Versions of the rumor differ in certain details, such as whether the truck driver was paid, and whether Malcolm was at the scene personally.
We decided we would go into the gathering. This time we drove up a different road on the east side. The traffic jam in the forest was even bigger than before. Some cars were stuck in the ditches at the side of the road, but just as before we saw a wide flat area off the side of the road where about a dozen cars were parked, with room for a few more. We turned around to go back to it, when we got there a state trooper was parked across the entrance. We went a bit further and I got out of the car and went to talk to the policeman. I knocked on his window, told him that the gravel pit looked like a good place to park, and asked him why he was blocking it. He apologized and said he would move forward. So we parked and walked in.
A poorly substantiated but widespread rumor says that Malcolm tried to get the governor of MI to declare a state of emergency at the Rainbow Gathering so that he could get FEMA funds. The governor told Malcolm that emergencies happened when fires or floods destroy property and kill people, and that a bunch of kids camping in the woods did not qualify. He then directed the state troopers to patrol the state roads as usual, and not to take orders from the NIMT. Whether this accounts for the many grim troopers on our first trip in, and the few and friendly troopers on the second trip, I do not know.
The rain had stopped and the trails were much drier. The flies seemed to be gone, or maybe they stayed on the other side of the river. NERF people were in a happier mood than when we left.
Main Circle had been set up in the closed area on the other side of the river. This was perhaps not total perversity, since the grassy hill on the West Bank was the only meadow that large anywhere on site, but still, we did not want to hang out there.
One day dinner was served at the West Bank Main circle. We might have gone there, but we got back too late, so we just ate at NERF. On other days the FS LEOs hassled anyone who crossed the bridge, and so there was no dinner circle, people just ate at various kitchens. We think dinner at Main Circle is one of the most important parts of a Gathering, and so we were disappointed that we never got to do it.
The shitters I saw were not as bad as the ones I had seen on the other side of the river, but that may be just because it was not raining. They were not well covered, and I was afraid that one rainy day would make them into disasters.
One afternoon we went back to the car, a long hot hike, to get the water we had left there and some other supplies. On the way we looked at the water pipe that had been laid out along the trail. There were several different diameters of pipe and the fittings holding them together looked like they would not hold pressure. There was no water running. A bystander told us that he had been around there for a while and never saw any water, nor anyone working on the pipe.
We saw a pickup truck with a big tank of water bumping along the trail. A man was running after it cursing at the driver for not stopping and giving him water. He had nothing to carry water in except a few plastic gallon jugs. The tank had a two inch outlet with a stopcock valve. If that valve had been opened it would have taken a person or two holding a twenty gallon bucket to catch the water and another to turn it off a few seconds later when the bucket was full. Nobody seemed to have the proper fixtures to hook the water pipe to the tank, and the truck driver did not know where he was supposed to go.
The NERF water filter had made it to the gathering and NERF was filtering river water for the kitchen. Unlike our personal filter, the NERF filter can be taken apart and cleaned when it gets clogged. I was told that the filter needed cleaning after every seven gallons. Fortunately, the river mud could be cleaned off and it did not permanently clog the filter. So NERF had water.
Someone had set up a solar powered water filter that pumped from a hole on the far side of the river and delivered water right to a little clearing near the bridge. It did not pump very fast, but it ran constantly and there was always a line of people with water bottles there.
We explored the back trails, looking for another path to the river where we could get water upstream of the swimming hole. We stopped at Jerusalem camp. They had a library of many shelves of books in Hebrew. We discussed the translation of Psalm 137 from Hebrew to Reggae.
We went skinny dipping with friends and strangers, watched a talent show on a stage made of logs, played the drum while dancers juggled fire, ate food cooked and given away by kitchens in the woods, attended a worship service led by an Elvis impersonator, viewed the sculpture gallary, and did most of those everyday Rainbow things that once seemed so exotic.
At noon on the third of July, as previously agreed, we had NERF council circle. About a dozen people showed up. I think we passed the feather once around the circle just introducing ourselves. We quickly reached consensus on the time and place of the next council, which is traditionally always the first item on the agenda. We talked for a while longer without any urgent business, made a sufficient AUM and wandered apart.
After it got crowded on the near side of the river, a couple of people took a banner and walked across the bridge, followed by a line of people two abreast. We could not see where they went after they crossed the bridge. I thought they were gathering near the river just on the other side. For about two hours we sat and watched as a people came down the hill behind us and walked across the bridge. Since everyone was silent, it seemed likely that many of them did not know that the horseman were on the hill until they got near the river.
There were six or eight people crossing the bridge at all times, one or two abreast. At one point some fool decided that he was the Generalissimo and began shouting orders about how to line up and cross the bridge. He was having no effect, shouting orders for people to do what they were already doing, and after a few minutes he shut up. A couple of people stood right in front of us and whispered for a while about video cameras and such, but somebody hushed them by holding a finger in front of his mouth and they soon went away. There was one man with a couple of boys about ten or twelve years old who kept talking with them. When somebody motioned him to be quiet he went into a rave about how he didn't have to take orders from anybody. All the thousands of other people I saw were keeping silence.
From where we were sitting we could turn our heads in one direction and see the crowds of people crossing the bridge in silence, or we could turn our heads in the other direction and see upstream what could be peaceful and empty forest. I guess we sat there for about two hours, and several thousand people crossed the bridge. At one point some of the horsemen rode off up the hill but several of them stayed where they were.
About noon the silence was broken by a huge shout from the crowd on the other side of the river. It came from further away than I expected. We stood up and walked up the hill until we could see the crowd on the other side. They were gathered on a flat area a couple hundred yards to the right and above the knoll where the horsemen were.
Later I talked to someone who had been on the other side and he said that they did an AUM, but all I heard was the shout. Another person told me that he was engaged in silent meditation a little apart from the crowd when a couple of horsemen came and gave him a ticket for being in a closed area. He said he intended to fight it in court.
We stopped at the lunch counter in Watersmeet and ordered the traditional post-rainbow meal of root beer and milkshake. The tables were large and the place was rather crowded, mostly with young hippies. A couple of local men sat with us and we talked about the police and the Rainbow. He confirmed the Videotaped Water Dump story. He told us that at the start of the Gathering state troopers had hung around the grocery store until the owner told them to go away. The Rainbows brought more customers to the store than he had seen in a long time and he didn't need police protection. He told us he had personally called the local police chief and asked why they were causing trouble for the Rainbows. I went to use the men's room, but the only toilet was clogged with paper. It won't take much of that to turn the locals against us.
We liked the upper peninsula. We drove through the forest stopping from time to time to look at Lake Superior or Michigan. The hotel was cheap. We had an interesting breakfast of smoked Menomini and pasties. Then we spent hours stuck in traffic jams trying to get over the bridge to the lower peninsula and again somewhere north of Detroit. Along the way home we stopped and rinsed our hands in all five of the Great Lakes.
This is the Forest Service web page that describes their plans for the site. The following quotes are taken from the ``Cover Letter''. There are also a few maps showing the plans to clearcut large areas. You can read it and form your own opinions, but archeology is never mentioned. The closest it ever gets is to say:
``Selectively removing vegetation from the old town site of Choate to maintain the open condition.''Some other interesting quotes:
``The Proposed Action is expected to include modified clearcut harvesting on approximately 1000 acres...''
``Some of these actions (e.g. tree harvest) are expected to generate revenues via sales of wood products.''
``The desired condition for this area is to maintain recreational opportunities such as hunting, mountain biking, and ATV use...''
``...experiencing impacts to the soil and water resources as a result of roads crossing wet areas and associated passenger vehicle (4X4) and ATV use in these wet areas.''
[2] Welcome Home
This is the web-site of some random who knows something about the Rainbow Family and posts some of it. It's a pretty good collection. Here you can find basic information about what the Rainbow Family does, official FS reports on past gatherings, the story of the three people now in jail for camping in the woods, and an interview with Special Agent Malcolm Jowers, head of the National Incident Management Team.
[3] 2002 Rainbow Family National Gathering Great Lakes Region DAILY UPDATE, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service
I have an incomplete collection of these in the form of paper copies. They have the title next to the words ``National Incident Management Team'' over a cheesy bit-mapped graphic of a lightening bolt in front of a lumpy triangle which might be a thunderhead with a pointed top, or a mountain with a flat bottom. They are one page each, with consecutive dates from Monday, June 24, 2002 to Sunday, June 30, 2002, and another from Sunday, June 16, 2002. They give the Public Information telephone number as 906-358-4310.
[4] Constitution of the United States of America
This is the basis of all legitimate federal power in these several United States, and reads in part:
Congress shall make no law
abridging the right of the people
peaceably to assemble
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