July 7, 2010

Rainbow Gathering

Every ten years since I was a teen, the Rainbow Gathering has set up camp for a week in the Allegheny National Forest. These international meetings draw thousands of people. I’ve checked it out a couple of times, which requires some effort. The drive into the forest on paved road is an hour, then another half hour on a gravel road. After parking, the hike into the main circle takes at least an hour depending on what shoes you’re wearing (Note to self: Birkenstocks are not meant for hiking a ravine). I arrived at dinnertime, when a community kitchen was feeding the entire gathering.

The Rainbow People’s main ethos is to practice living in a green, eco-friendly way and the meeting lets them create a completely self-sustaining society, at least for a couple of weeks. Of course, there’s always an element attracted to counterculture because of the drug use, and that tends to give the entire group a bad reputation. People in my hometown were unkind to the Rainbow People this year, and spread rumors that were half-true at best, peppered with personal bias. You can read some of the fair and balanced coverage in the local Warren newspaper here, a refreshing departure from the opinions of the general population.

When you grow up in a town of ten thousand people in the middle of a forest, you expect some lack of progress because of the sheer isolation and size. I moved twenty years ago and have always gone back. The more I see of the world I realize that Warren may have wifi but what has really changed?

I have always tried to give the people in my hometown the benefit of the doubt but I’m really disappointed with the closed-heartedness I sometimes witness there.—Michelle