You're Perfect

June 21, 2017 2:01 PM

Rainbow Gathering photographs by Kate Harnedy.
posted by The corpse in the library (27 comments total)

I was at Rainbow Nationals in 2001 (Idaho).

One afternoon, I found myself sitting in the shade of a jack pine along a path with a Krishna faithful named Hilary and a hobo named Rex. A man playing a guitar approached us on the path from the right, and a woman playing a guitar approached us from the path on the left. They met on the path in front of us. Without a word, their music merged and they jammed for about 10 minutes. Then with a nod of their heads they moved along, each going their on way down the path. Nobody said a word. It was the most perfectly beautiful moment that ever, ever existed.

It looks like they're going to be in Oregon this year, kids. Info here! Would anyone be surprised if I said that website had not changed ONE BIT since 2000?

That being said, I sure hope that the folks in Kate's pictures were okay with having their picture taken. Maybe things have changed in the last 16 years but back in the day cameras were definitely frowned upon.
posted by Elly Vortex at 3:10 PM on June 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm definitely not part of that clan or tribe, but I love them for just being nonetheless.

The next national gathering is at the end of this month, AFAIR.
posted by loquacious at 3:27 PM on June 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I used to work with a dude who attended these. He liked getting naked at work parties.
posted by jonmc at 3:36 PM on June 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hey I was also at the gathering in Idaho in 2001. I saw and was seen by my doppelgänger but we were able to walk past each other and not fight to the death so that was nice. Holding hands with couple thousand other people in a meadow was pretty cool.
posted by Uncle at 3:37 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

> back in the day cameras were definitely frowned upon

I don't know one way or the other, but page you linked to has photos from back in the day.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:46 PM on June 21, 2017

more clothes than expected.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:54 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

True, corpse, but a quick glance at those photo albums show a lot of scenery and structures. Most of the people in the older pics are either posing for the picture, or in large, anonymizing crowds. Not many candids, which is what made me wonder.
posted by Elly Vortex at 5:15 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

My parents, original hippies, took me to my first family gathering in the 70s, and I went regularly until the 90s when my life changes made it not as feasible. Like any group, there are missing stairs, but as a rule, I always felt safe, and loved, and welcomed. I'm happy that the tradition carries on.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:58 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

It must feel nice for these folks to be around more people who they are similar to. It's likely they feel like outcasts in the "normal" generic city. The smiles are huge in those photos.
posted by curreta at 9:56 PM on June 21, 2017

I am blessed for having recognized friends, family.
posted by Mike Mongo at 10:57 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

What's the word for recognizing the naivety of certain people and still being entirely sympathetic to them?
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:41 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yay!!! It continues!
posted by haikuku at 4:40 AM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am weird. I have tons of hippie friends who love the Gatherings but I only have two bad associations.
I saw the devastation of the Carson NF after the '95 gathering. I think that year led to them actually being more careful and developing plans to minimize impact and pick up trash in future gatherings.
The other was the blood-coughing crud my people brought back to me from that gathering. I am convinced that sharing pipes is a wonderful vector for disease. It would have helped if we hadn't gone on a work run the day they returned from the gathering. Fourteen days of manual labor getting progressively sicker; working our asses off and covering large numbers of miles with heavy packs is no way to recover from what was probably a minor infection.

I don't think my hippie wife understands why I cringe and become anti-social at every festival we go to. Trauma!
I see these pictures and I want to like them.
posted by Seamus at 6:57 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I got invited to one of these (I think) by an old housemate (friendliest person I've met bar none, also constantly high and mowed a peace sign into the lawn). It's not my cup of tea. I didn't end up going, because our discussion went something like this:

J: "how about you come with me to this hippie thing in the Outback? Everyone gets high and spends their time wandering around naked and playing music."

Me: "Not big on the getting high thing. As for getting naked in the Outback, sounds good, but are the people there actually attractive?"

J: "Err, not really. Lots of overweight older folk."

Me: "So it's just the music then... which I'm too rusty at"

J: "We'll get some bongos" (eternal optimism)

Me: "In the event no bongos are located, how about we got out to some pubs those weekends and spend the daytime skateboarding"

J: "Yeah sick. I'll definitely be able to find some bongos though"

(No bongos were located. I didn't get naked in the desert.)

Happy this thing is a thing, though.
posted by iffthen at 8:01 AM on June 22, 2017

Its like a Gathering of the Juggalos for the reactionary petit bourgeois class. Actually has Thomas Frank or the Baffler ever written something on the relationship between 18thC bourgeois Romanticism and the hippie movement?


I went to something similar once years ago in Australia. I don't think I enjoyed it that much since I left as soon as I heard someone else I knew was leaving could give me a ride home.
posted by mary8nne at 8:10 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not really sure the Rainbow People types that I have met are very "petit bourgeois". Doesn't that mean like little shopkeepers and small business people, who serve the interests of capital?
posted by thelonius at 8:36 AM on June 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Rainbow used to be a big part of my thing. From 1996 to 2000, I went to 9 gatherings : 3 nationals and 6 regionals. It was an essential part of my development as a human being. I had been basically an outcast in every possible way; bullied at home and at school, I eventually dropped out. The Rainbow Family were really the first people to be nice to me. I have no idea what it's like now, but at the time, it was an important, yet uneven experience.

On the one hand, Rainbow was a way to experience a different sort of society, in a very real, authentic way. Lots of people who go to Gatherings live off the grid, in one sense or another, for better or for worse. Going to a Gathering and doing the hard work -- cooking for hundreds of people, building shelters, digging shitters -- and having that hard work rewarded with love from the community, that was a truly phenomenal experience. I brought good energy in with me, and that energy was magnified and returned. It reinforced my love of nature and belief in the goodness of humankind. At the same time, those were my first real road trips on my own, and they filled me with a sense of independence that I could have never achieved had I stayed home and safe in the Midwest.

On the other hand, Rainbow was not a sanitary environment. Almost every Gathering I went to, I got some kind of sick. At one of them, I caught bugs and had to cut off my beloved dreadlocks. I also met some sketchy folks -- some were essentially just drunk/crustypunk kids, others I think may have actually been bad people. The Rainbows talk a good game about cleaning up after themselves, and I think they often make every attempt to do that, but come on, a forest is always going to be better off without hundreds or thousands of hippies stomping it around and making it their home. And of course, there were the constant clashes with law enforcement. Being pulled over, searched, busted for weed, hearing about others who were busted with worse. The Rainbows need to do a better job of staying out of the surrounding towns. Rural America is NOT hippie-friendly.

So yeah, kind of a mixed bag. I will say that years later when I attended Burning Man, I was mostly unimpressed. Maybe it used to be different, but to me, Burning Man seemed like a bunch of well-payed tech workers partying for a week and then going back to their hoodie-clad life of "disrupting." It didn't seem real to me. Rainbow seemed more like a lifestyle. If you're the kind of person who makes it to a Gathering, there's a good chance you're on some kind of spiritual quest, or maybe you just live life a bit differently.

I guess if you didn't spend your late teens at Rainbow Gatherings, maybe Burning Man could be life-changing. If I had a kid, I'm not sure I'd be thrilled to see them go to either one, although maybe I'd be a little more proud to see them attend a Gathering. I feel like they might get more out of the experience.
posted by panama joe at 8:40 AM on June 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

The first time I heard about the Rainbow Gathering, it was in 1987 by a young woman telling me she got dysentery there while preparing food. She told a lot of tall tales and Lord knows if it was true, but it's interesting how illness is definitely part of the lore.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:48 AM on June 22, 2017

Referring to these gatherings as "nationals" and "regionals" makes me think of competitive car shows or amateur sports competitions. Incongruous, man.
posted by scratch at 10:19 AM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

(Not a criticism or snark, just an observation and my opinion.)
posted by scratch at 10:20 AM on June 22, 2017

O yay, I went to photo school with Kate and haven't really kept in touch, cool to see her on the blue!
posted by elr at 10:29 AM on June 22, 2017

Panama Joe, I attended Burning Man the same year I went to Rainbow Nationals (Rainbow came first). It was jarring. I hated Burning Man's chaotic, frenetic energy...yeah, just a big escapist party. Give me a mellow jam in the woods any day. There were over 20,000 people in Idaho but it was so...delightfully calm.

That being said, I didn't get sick at Rainbow but man, did I ever smell bad afterwards. My friend and I stopped at a Dairy Queen in Jackson Hole on the way home, and the manager kicked us out because the other customers were complaining about how bad we smelled.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:33 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Haha, yeah, I think I went a month without showering once when I was on Rainbow trail. Definitely had the "Rainbow Tan", LOL.
posted by panama joe at 10:37 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was taking a Greyhound in the late 90's as a college student, and so was a group of hippy kids my age on their way to the Rainbow Gathering. They were seated all around me, and chatting over the back of seats. At one point a girl asks a question of the group loudly, I can't even remember what about, and I was bored and they were RIGHT there with me as an unwilling member of their amoeba. So I answered her question, which led to them all looking at me weirdly and then ignoring me like I was invisible, just carrying on amongst themselves. So I kinda always have assumed this 'Rainbow Gathering' they were going to was just some unwashed group of assholes.
posted by Windigo at 1:36 PM on June 22, 2017

Yeah, it's really weird how people feel uneasy when a stranger abruptly inserts himself into the conversation. thoughtfulemoji.jpg
posted by Lexica at 3:30 PM on June 22, 2017

Yeah, it's really weird how people feel uneasy when a stranger abruptly inserts himself into the conversation.

Well, it is pretty weird when the conversation is among people who pride themselves on an ethos of open-hearted loving and caring for all beings and all walks of life and embrace the serendipitous and reject artificial boundaries. Not only weird, really, but totally hypocritical.
posted by Miko at 7:44 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it's really weird how people feel uneasy when a stranger abruptly inserts himself into the conversation.

Oh, really? And here I often talk to people I don't know.

I just got back from an equine event in John Day yesterday. The clan is gathering, and the natives are Not. Happy. to see them. One *gentleman* walked around the horse trailers warning all the single women camping with horse trailers at the Grant County Fairgrounds to keep an eye out for 'weirdos."

Yeah, he was pretty weird, and I wasn't particularly impressed with his concern.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:37 PM on June 26, 2017