Here's a timeline documenting our Summer so far:
June: Cleaned house, Had a yard sale, filled storage in philo, Moved out, house sat with Ishka's mom, Donnamarie.
June. Left for the rainbow gathering. On our way south we saw our good friends Jen and Brockelle on the beautiful long winding road to San Francisco. Took our sweet time down the middle of California on route 5. Slept in the car at rest areas. Got on route 40, which is mostly historic route 66 (get your kicks!) Searched for a camp sight to sleep one night by the river (after hours and hours of Mojave desert. Stopped in a camp ground around Lake Havasu, on the border of California and Arizona. Payed our dues in the morning... after sleeping outside in sleeping bags on the beach.
Eventually arrived in Santa Fe, not realizing how close it was to Albuquerque. When we got there we stopped at the visitor center for a while, filling our water bottles and using the wi-fi to find some cool places to go, places to stock up on supplies we'd need, etc. We enjoyed the town but our first impression was "it's like Disney Land for adults!" (- Ishka.) Found a place to stay with a new friend, on the way to the gathering no less, after thoroughly enjoying this raw and ayurvedic (read:healthy indian) foods cafe called Annapurna's, a must visit if you ever get to Santa Fe. They do traditional indian cuisine, with many vegetarian, raw, vegan, gluten free options and specialties.
South of Santa Fe in a town called Los Cerillos:
We arrived at our friends house. That night we slept out on a trampoline, although a woman next door was yelling at her dog in a most cruel manner, and it kind of set up the sleep wrong. The stars were beautiful however, and by beautiful i mean very visible. Coincidently there was another guy, who seemed like one of the more grounded central folk at the rainbow gathering who was staying there also.
That morning we headed up to the Rainbow Gathering, it would be about 2 hours of driving, around the city of albuquerque, then up north eventually hitting the back roads, mountain pass and forest roads that you take to get up into the mountains. The hike in wasn't too bad this year, although Ishka was struggling a little bit with improper equipment. It lead to some cool experiments...
The Rainbow Gathering!
We had a blast this year. It's always a big mix of reuniting with old friends, making new ones, singing lots of songs, eating lots of good food, reasoning with others, sharing ideas, doing yoga, helping out in the kitchens, etc.
This year we both set camp behind and with A Honu Way Cafe. It was set up to be a raw foods cafe for everyone, and if you don't know about rainbow there is no money used. Donations are offered but the idea is to keep a lot of commerce out of it, and keep it a small-fealing centralized family oriented affair without businesses cropping up and ads being thrown in your face. You can imagine how nice it is to co-create an oasis of freely given goods and teachings. A variety of different economic ideals are in the minds of rainbow gatherers, but whether you are capitalist, socialist, or whatever...it doesn't really affect how you might enjoy a commerce-free environment and thats the point more than a political statement as some might interpret it. Personally I love the idea of currency, as representing an equalized exchange of goods and services. I may not be in favor of many policies surrounding this currency, for example a banking system where the banks only have to have 10% of the actual money being invested in them at any one time, because these things lead to instability. I am in favor of the use of money though, and i am willing to actively contribute to alternative forms of it that are not directly tied to current mainstream world banking and governmental legislation activity.
Anyway enough about money. The rainbow gathering is a time for meditation, being free from your previous constraints, doing some healing, that allows you to grow into a new inspiration for the Harvest cycle ahead.
July 7th. Most had left rainbow from our camp already. The camp had been taken down over the two days before and we were heading onward to the mission. The late campers do a great job every year of cleaning up the area and "naturalizing" which means doing things like returning rocks that were used around fires into more freeform patterns, and distributing the fire wood etc. to prevent fuel for forest fires. They return the land to as close to a pre-gathering as possible. It's pretty remarkable actually, some people have been documenting, going back to the land after a year or so and it appears that no one was there....a great goal to aspire towards for any woodland group.
From Rainbow, we headed north east to Taos, where we were invited to Tony's Circle House. They had a great performance of music, and so many of our friends got a chance to dance together before a final parting of ways. The house is beautiful and big, with a tall central ceiling made of wood beams in a spoke like a Chinese bamboo hat. Peace Tribe, Human, and MJ Greenmountain performed, top rate national acts. I was invited to play human's saxophone with him and also called on stage for peace tribe. Well it was a hit and I ended up playing a few more shows with them throughout the western festival circuit. We stayed there overnight along with a few others, and in the morning we jumped next door to...
The LAMA Foundation
Said to be where Ram Dass wrote "Be Here Now" we visited this beautiful community, one road down from the circle house. They have a full time crew of people living, working in the garden, and people on retreat. They have a most beautiful library of thousands of books, crammed into a room. Cob architecture with sparkly mica in the walls. A music room full of different instruments from guitars and mbiras to mrindringam and sitars. We didn't stay too long, and as we were driving down the path a whole band of teenagers were walking up for some sort of youth program. The cool kids were hanging way back in the pack of course...
Tribal Vision Festival
From the LAMA foundation, we headed to our next festival. A mom&pop festival (haha) set on the dusty desert lands outside of Taos for Four days. There was a gap the first day when we didn't have enough water. Not a lot of people came, i would guess a hundred or more at any one time, but I had a lot of fun. We kept describing it as Mad Max meets burning man or something of that sort. It was a bit unfocused and spread out, and the music acts were plentiful, but you had some old timer musicians going 'Why am I here?' when it was there turn to play to the crowd of 50 people. Then there was the dust. Although there were a few kind attempts to keep the dust down by spraying water, the dust on the dance floor was a health hazard really, and not so great for the singers who had to perform through it. Nonetheless, Ishka and I made the best of the whole time. I played with Human Revolution and Peace Tribe, made a new sound engineer friend who runs a company up in Durango. We also spent some real quality time with all there. The Casbah Teahouse set up there lounge, which was a combination chill performance venue, a tent fully rugged with lush pillows and beautiful middle eastern tables. they also provide good food and tea for the festival. I spent some quality time with some hare krishna's, and the food from them was great of course. I sold some imported jewelry there and we also generally slept in our friend Sunshine's Teepee. Thanks Sunshine!
Dreamtime Festival
Although Ishka had gone several times, this was my first time. We traveled up to I had heard and always wanted to go to this one. It is packed with tons of workshops, performances, lectures, food, etc. In exchange for tickets, we volunteered to work at the Maté bar. Upon arrival however, we queued for 2 hours as we waited to resolve our ticket situation. They had mailed our tickets prematurely to our mailing address in Mendocino, which we wouldn't have access to during this time period. So we waited and asked in as many ways we thought possible if we can gain access to the festival, and eventually this situation was relieved and we gained admittance. After that initial setback we were golden and smooth sailing the whole time. The Maté bar was a lot of fun, but because of absentee management some of the time, i felt like we were managing a lot more...We got all of our work done the first two days so we could enjoy the rest of the festival after that, and oh we enjoyed it alright! Some of my favorite things were the Astrological Drama... where astrology signs were acted out and seen from a variety of different angles annunciating in order to show their relationship. There was a beautiful golden and brass Buddha which sat about 5 feet tall and one night I had this amazing experience of communion sitting and praying and doing mantra in front of it. I developed a deeper faith and connection with him and my practice through that moment. I also had a great time playing saxophone with many bands...
The highlight was getting to play with one of the main acts, Lunar Fire. If you aren't familiar, they combine really wild and intensely enchanted music with fire performers creating a huge celebratory event wherever they play. I was called on stage with Fantuzzi as a guest performer and got such a rush. The crowd was at its peak with hundreds of people in the audience dancing in front of us. This was one of my favorite moments playing saxophone ever... and it was well received by the members of the band too.
to be continued...
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