Butterfly Bill <butterflyb...@grapevine.net>

The site of the Rainbow Family's third national gathering in Colorado
was all on what was wild ground before the gathering, trod on before
only by occasional rangers, animals, and their herders. Unlike in most
gatherings, the main trail was not a vehicle road. Instead, all trails
were created by repeated steps upon grass and in some places sagebrush
by increasing numbers of human feet.

The ground surface in all the meadows was covered by variegated lumps.
There were holes everywhere dug by burrowing mammals, perhaps prairie
dogs like the ones I saw a few hours earlier on the way in, or as
someone else suggested, moles. There were long mounds connecting some
of the holes. Elsewhere there were deep tracks left by cloven footed
animals like elk. The ground in late June was dry and rock hard, the
tracks had all been poked  during the months when the snow was still
melting and it was a quagmire of mud. Now the sun had been baking it
for about a month, and it was like the churned up and hole filled soil
had been put in a kiln and made pottery hard. And in the many sagebrush
covered areas, the soil was clumped up around the roots of the plants,
and valleys between the clumps had been made deeper by small running
animals. Everywhere there were lumps and  bumps.

So whenever I set foot anywhere on the ground, my foot never landed
level. It was always leaning one way or the other, and the muscles of
my foot and calf were exerting some kind of extra effort some opposite
direction to keep me from falling over. And after a whole day of
walking the muscles and tendons along all my toe bones could be in
throbbing pain. Likewise my calf muscles. There weren't very many steep
slopes to climb, but the extra effort of just walking made me more
likely to reject a trip up a hill to visit a distant kitchen. Walking
was hard enough even on level ground.

And the many feet of many people treading upon the hard dry soil ground
off a layer of dust that was half an inch deep in some places. Wheeled
vehicles and dogs and people running kicked up clouds of it that the
wind carried. Signs, banners, and the goods on Trading Circle blankets
became coated with a brown haze. It was not until July 7th that there
was a rain long and constant enough to turn some of it to mud. All the
rains up to then were brief sprinkles, and the drops of water hitting
the dust disappeared into the little craters they made.

And it was a hard walk in general for the Family. It was like all of
the progress I had perceived in relationships with the Forest Service
last year at the Seven Up Gathering had been gathered up into a large
plastic bag, closed up with a twist tie, and taken to a dumpster at
least 100 miles from the gathering. The LEOs tried any way they could
think of to prevent the gathering from happening, including a blockade
of the road leading in, and kept up with petty harassments of
individuals on the outskirts after the gathering had gained unstoppable
momentum.

No permit was signed, and the Forest Service refused to grant one even
when last year's signer offered to do it again. And the LEOs tried to
block off access to the resources rangers. It was almost thru
subterfuge that Family people managed to secure the contacts with
resource people that they did. It was a gathering of confrontation and
combat, where the Om circle was shown to be a powerful and effective
tactic, and cameras were principal weapons used by both sides.

I had been planning to leave Muskogee on June the 19th, with a night at
a motel and an arrival in Denver on the 20th to pick up the Rainbow
Guides that were being printed by a company there, then on to the
gathering on the 21st, my favorite day to arrive at a national
gathering. But my brake light was nice enough to start shining on the
15th calling my attention to the main brake feeder that had rusted out
and needed to be replaced. I had a Chevy dealer do it since it would
have been too much of a grunt to do myself, and it was on the afternoon
of the 19th that they had it done. So I left on the 20th.

The Rainbow Guide was almost not printed at all. I thought I had things
all set up with a printing company in Muskogee to get them done, with a
salesman who appeared eager to arrange the job for me, with a company
that does newsprint in Kansas. Not very many printing companies are set
up to print on newsprint, which requires a press that feeds the paper
in off a roll, rather than a sheet at a time like most presses. And
neither was this one, they farmed such jobs out.

I had the whole guide crammed into 32 pages and the copy ready to be
taken in on Monday, May 22, a month ahead of when I wanted to have them
done. But on Sunday evening I got a long distance call from
Flickerfeather in Florida, and he said he was sorry he was late but he
was caught up with a family problem (something to do with an ailing
grandfather) and he hadn't gotten around to sending me 40 more names
that he had gathered at some regional events. I might have told him too
late, but he also had $400 in assorted contributions he had also
collected. I couldn't turn that down. So I told him to send it to me
overnight delivery (which turned out to be the next day and then the
morning after), and I set about expanding the Guide to the next page
increment the printers had given me, 40. (They start out by cutting the
printed-upon roll of paper into sheets big enough for eight individual
pages.)

That took until Friday, so the next Monday I called up the printers
again, and was told by the receptionist, "Mr. ____ is on vacation this
week." I tried the next day with his superior, the owner of the
company, and he told me there was no way the job could be done by the
date I wanted. (The sales man said it could be done in a week and a
half, which I still had.) I was given another company to call about 50
miles from town, but the man who answered told me that the owner of the
Muskogee company had told him that he "had some concerns about the
subject matter of the book." This other man said that he didn't want to
either if this person did, even if he had not seen it himself. (The
Muskogee company had, in their sample display for customers in their
office, lots of church bulletins.)

So here I was with less than the three weeks that I would have expected
out of any company I was dealing aithe for the first time, and I didn't
know what I was going to do. Then like a deus ex machina, Marken of
Info gave me a call. I told him my woes, and he called me again the
next day to tell me that he had gotten in contact with a brother in
Denver. "Do you know Allen Butcher?" I answered yes, I had known him
from intentional communities conferences in Virginia when I was at
Shannon Farm and he was at Twin Oaks. I called Allen on the phone, and
he said he had found a printer in Denver who could do it. "They print
lots of radical political stuff".

I got my copy into "overnight" delivery as fast as I could, and I
called this company on the phone and the man said that the copy was
fine and they could do 2000 copies for 2000 dollars. And the scanning
and set up would be free. Not as good a price as newsprint might have
been, but this was an any-port-in-a-storm situation. I put the $1310
that I had in contributions, from last year's gathering,
Flickerfeather, and the online RG site, into my own checking account.

I parked by and walked into P&L Printing at about 1:30 in the afternoon
on the 21st, and said, "I'm Butterfly Bill, the focalizer of the
Rainbow Guide." A middle aged woman responded by holding up a finished
Guide and said, "We're stapling and folding the last of them right now.
We have about three hours left till we get it done. Her husband was at
another machine doing the stapling, she was at one that was creasing
and trimming.

I waited around and at one point helped out a bit by carrying boxes
around as they got them done, and the final product, 2030 copies, was
in nine cardboard cartons with another one open at the top and half
full. They weighed at least 40 pounds apiece. I piled then all on top
of the bed in the back of my GMC Safari, and paid with a personal
check. I crashed the night at Allen's house.

The drive out from Denver on I-70 the next morning took my van with the
extra weight of the boxes up a mountain slope that had me down to 30
mph in many places. To each side were steep rocky slopes and tall
coniferous trees. It capped out at the west end of the Eisenhower
Tunnel at 11,158 feet. Then down the other side to a river valley where
the road north to Steamboat Springs left the interstate. That road took
me thru sagebrush covered hills reminiscent of Nevada, then into the
trees and over another mountain pass at 9426 feet, then a long downhill
to Steamboat Springs.

The town took a while to get thru, it was mostly strung out along the
highway without much depth to the side streets. I finally got to the
downtown area, with many boutiquey tourist shops obviously trying to
appeal to a rich clientele. (There is huge ski resort 20 nearby.) Then
a few miles thru semi-country to Colorado State Highway 129, which
wound upward and ever upward thru forests and meadows and country
stores and wooden chalet houses. I also went ever northward; the site
was almost in Wyoming

At about 10 o'clock I left 129 onto the first of three Forest Service
roads, and soon found my first evidence of Rainbow activity. There was
a station wagon and a truck parked in a graded lot by the side of the
road, and as I approached a brother came up to my window. He recognized
me and called me Bill, but I didn't recognize him. He said he was an
infrequent poster on a.g.r. When he spied the open box of Rainbow
Guides I offered him one, and he accepted and responded with a donation
of a picture of Benjamin. (But I still can't remember names when they
are only told to me once.)

He went on to tell me, "There is a roadblock up ahead and you will be
given a warning that the gathering is illegal, and you will be allowed
to turn around. If you go on, there will be another set of rangers
further  on and you WILL be given a ticket." I said that this might be
the time for mine, and I made a gesture of pointing out a medal on my
chest. He said it was my choice. Then another car, a station wagon with
six hippies inside pulled up, and after they had gotten the same speech
that I did, I asked if I could follow them in. They said sure.

So we drove on, and shortly after the intersection with the next FS
road there was a light green SUV with the darker green stripe, and two
LEOs who walked out into the road and bid the car ahead to stop. They
talked with them for a while mostly ignoring me, then one of them came
back to my window and passed me a pink sheet of paper, and said, "Are
you here for the Rainbow Gathering?" I sad yes, and he went on, "I have
to warn you that this gathering has been declared to be illegal and if
you go on, you are subject to getting a citation."

The paper said:

"2006 NATIONAL RAINBOW FAMILY GATHERING

IMPORTANT NOTICE

THIS GATHERING IS IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS

USDA Forest Service regulations require that all noncommercial groups
of 75 or more people obtain a free noncommercial group use permit from
the Forest Service as required by law.

Participants and spectators involved in the gathering are hereby
notified that they are in violation of Federal regulation 36 CFR
261.10(k) and are individually subject to legal action.

The construction or maintenance of structures and improvements, such as
latrines (slit trenches), bridges, fences, water systems, and rock or
mud ovens or stoves is prohibited under 36 CFR 261.10(a) without prior
written permission from an authorized Forest Service officer. Violators
are subject to legal action."

I said to the officer, "I choose to go in", and he said nothing and
started back toward the other car. He had started out with me like he
was being interrupted and I was an afterthought. The other car looked
like it was being detained a bit longer, so I drove on alone, getting
all stoic and Buddhistic about whatever was going to happen.

Then I came to the third road, and I saw a small Japanese car with all
its doors open and its trunk lid raised, and bags all over the ground
beside it. I drove by slowly, looking at the three officers present for
any kind of move toward me, but they seemed preoccupied with the search
they already had in progress and I was able to drive past. I continued
unimpeded and unmolested all the rest of the way in.

I first passed a Bus Village in the making, with lots of four-wheelers
parked there as well, but the road continued, and so did I. I went thru
more still wild country until I saw two long lines of parked cars on
the sides of the road.

Eventually I came to a driveway leading off the right side of the road.
It curved downhill past one level parking lot to the left full of
vehicles, mostly big trucks and busses, and then down some more to
another flat area with more parking, next to a stream. At the top of
this curve where it left the road there was a campfire and a small
kitchen. I got a welcome home from a brother as I passed by, and he
told me they were trying to keep the lot below for supply vehicles and
people unloading only, but I could park for a few minutes while I
looked around.

The inner Bus Village to the left I heard one of the welcome home folks
refer to as Handi-Camp, and it reminded me too much of the Hong Kong
conditions of the Michigan gathering to look comfortable. When I got
out of my car, I heard a stereo playing rock music. There was also a
rope stretched between two poles straddling the entryway, with pink
origami birds tied to it, suggesting that somebody didn't want any more
people driving in.

I got back in and went back up to the road, and drove in the opposite
direction. I found a place a few blocks down where I was able to park
level with all four wheels off the road, near enough that it wasn't a
long walk, but far enough from what I imagined would be the commotion
of the welcome home camp to be quiet enough to sleep. I pulled all of
the boxes of Guides off of my bed in the back and piled them onto the
floorboards and driver and passenger seats up front, as I wasn't
planning on driving anywhere until after the gathering. Then I changed
out of my rayons into my cottons, put on my walking shoes, and filled
up my water bottle and set out exploring.

(to be continued)