A-Camp
Bees on Earth
Bhagwan Village
Bliss
Bread of Life
Brew Ha Ha
CALM
Camp Kitten
Carnivore
Casual Encounters
Chico’s
Death Camp
Dirty Kid’s Corner
Doughnut
Dreem
Early Bird
East Wind
Everybody’s
Faerie Camp
Fat Kids
Front Gate
Goat Camp
Granola Funk
Green & Purple
Green Path
Handi-Camp
Hobo Alley
Hummingbird Cowboy’s
Instant Soup
Iris
Jah Love
Jamba
Jerusalem
Jesus
Katuah
Kid Village
Krishna
Lovin’ Ovens
Magic Bowl
Milliways
Montana Mud
Mudd ‘n’ Butts
Mudder Earth
Musical Veggie
NERF
Nic@Nite
Not a Fucking
O-ji’s
Paonia Peace
Popcorner
Posties
Purple Gang
Rainbow Crystal
Rough and Ready
Rumorz
Safe Swingin’
SCROLL
Shining Light
Shut Up and Eat It
Simply Wonderful
Soaring Turkey
SPOT
Sundog
Sweet Om Alabama
Taco Mike’s
Tea Time
Trading Circle
Turtle Soup
Warriors of the Light

Inside the gathering, someone seeing you drinking out of a beer can might even go so far as to take it out of your hand and dump its contents on the ground in front of you. At American gatherings this prohibition is strict, and enforced spontaneously all gatherers around where any open consumption in a public place occurs. Drunken behavior usually ends up either in Shanti Sena calls, or gentle voiced people slowly trying to escort the offender out of the gathering. Some international gatherings are more permissive, and many American gatherers will not interfere with discreet consumption in a private camp.

The reasons for this intolerance can sometimes be observed in the behavior of the inhabitants of A-camp: rowdy talking and screaming, loud arguments filled with cussing and name calling that one can't help but hear when passing by, and sometimes physical fighting. The camp is usually located on the road coming in so that it's easy to go to the nearest town to buy more beer, and it is often the first sight seen by people making the final drive in. They sometimes stop these incoming cars and ask for money, and sometimes react threateningly if you turn them down.

The reasons for the tolerance of this place at the gathering are many, and any organized attempt by one group of gatherers to drive them out of the gathering runs into opposition from others who come to their defense. Some people say that they are some of the few gatherers willing to be out at the front gate for long time periods handling the parking. Some say they act like a filter; drunken local visitors stop at A-Camp instead of taking their carousing into the gathering. Others say that most of the A-Campers try to act responsibly and it is only a small minority that is causing the trouble. (There has been some lamenting in recent years over some of the elders in that community, such as Kegger Dave and Little Hawk, passing on and the new young people not getting any more guidance.) And others point to the ideal of the gathering being open to anyone who has or has ever had a belly button, and that everyone should be reacted to with love and a desire to aid the healing of any person in distress. And the A-Campers themselves like to point out how everyone else in the gathering has their pot, but they can't get high in their own way.

So they remain as an ever controversial presence at the gathering. Many years there have been active attempts to have a continuously operating Welcome Home kitchen by Front Gate to counteract the negative impressions that A-Camp can give to first time visitors, but this has not happened continuously.

In recent years there has been concern about alcohol appearing in anarchist kid kitchens further inside the gathering.

(There is a historyof A-Camp written by Plunker on this site, and a story by Carla Newbre about her interactions with them.)

BB  LG

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Every morning they served coffee and oatmeal and had a meeting at 10:00 (exact time) that lasted for about an hour and a half. They had a structure they set up at several gatherings. It had a top frame made of iron that had eight tubes radiating from a center, which they filled with the whittled off ends of eight logs. The other ends of the logs they set on eight upright posts, then they covered these rafters with a fitted canvas canopy. Outside railings were then lashed to the uprights and big logs are set inside for seating, giving the structure the look of a bandstand in a park. In the center was a firepit dug in the shape of a Swiss cross, and they started four small fires at each of the tips.

There were usually more young people than old sitting in that kiosk, many of them parents of preschool kids. There was a large playground area, with ropes and swings and sometimes a seesaw made out of a dead tree trunk carefully balanced on some upright pivots. Much was said about this camp being a "safe haven". This was a place where the only drug done was caffeine; no joints or pipes were ever passed, and the few people you’d see with cigarettes would have the look of outsiders. At the meetings the brothers were advised to look out for the sisters, and the women were told they should not go out into the rest of the gathering alone. If they were not with men, the sisters should always travel at least in pairs.

A conch shell was blown, and the meeting started with all of the camp under the canopy There would be maybe 30 people there. A brother named Chuck was usually the one to get everyone's focus and say some words to start off the service. He talked like he was an experienced pastor in Babylon, but he definitely did not stay in the pulpit. They all stood in a circle, and anybody who felt moved to speak was given the freedom to. People shouted out some prayers of petition, or words of praise for prayers answered. There were testimonials of blessings received and difficulties conquered. There were a few people with five minute sermonettes, sometimes quoting Bible verses. It was not unlike a regular heartsong circle in a main meadow.

In between the talking were intervals of music. One guitarist or more would sing songs in moderato four-four with lyrics like "God is so good to me", with choruses that everybody joined in on with phrases that ended in long drawn out notes with undulating harmonies beneath. Accompanying them were drummers with djembes and ashikos. The drummers subdued their volume so that they played in balance with and did not drown out the guitars. The guitarist singers also varied their volume, doing many crescendos followed by sudden diminuendos, and all the drummers and other singers followed along with these changes.

The songs expressed a very affirming kind of Christianity, with no hellfire and damnation because you are a sinner. They conveyed sentiments like those that were stated in a line of hand drawn signs taped to the bottom of a serving counter, all starting with "I AM": "your strength", "the liberty you seek thru my spirit", "the dispeller of all fear and doubt", "man's friend who sticks closer than a brother", "the healing you seek". This was a warm fuzzy expression of Rainbowly love quite opposed to the condemnatory Christianity many of them had experienced in their childhood churches.

After dinner in the evening, where they were not opposed to occasionally serving meat, there would be a general jam session with guitars and drums which lasted well into the night.

This kitchen recorded a video in California in 2004.

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Commonly treated ailments are headaches, foot problems, cuts and scrapes to the skin, heatstroke, poison ivy, digestive system upsets, flu, and colds. If something arises that needs hospital care, they can summon ambulances or transport patients with their own personally owned vehicles. They also spend a lot of time with people undergoing bad trips or other adverse reactions to recreational drugs. At the 1997 annual in Oregon, they had to deal with several people who ate a local plant called false hellebore after being told it would make them high, but which really produced violent psychotic reactions.

At the 2006 annual in Colorado, Forest Service LEOs went on a campaign to take out by arrest or intimidation the “leaders of the Rainbow”, with the apparent intention that the gathering would disintegrate when these people were removed. As part of this they did a raid on CALM where they illegally searched the tent of Jane Lightwaryr, a nurse practitioner, and when they found her emergency medical stash they tried to charge her with illegal possession of drugs. Stone, an emergency medical technician, was ticketed while on a run to town with some local EMTs and they were all ticketed for interfering with law enforcement. Stone was also cited for group camping without a permit. All of Jane’s medications were for life threatening situations and as a legal prescriber she was able to present the proper paperwork when she went to court. Stone was found guilty of the interfering but not the camping, since they ticketed him outside the gathering.

BB  JL  Hwk

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At the 2010 annual in Pennsylvania they came into the Silent Meditation on the 4th talking loudly and playing a tambourine, which prompted several people who were sitting to get up and form a circle around them and try to shush them, but they responded with remarks like, “You’re a bunch of Nazi punks” and “You’re all a bunch of child molesters.” Other people started protesting the attempts to silence them, saying, “Let the children speak”. Finally there was a complete circle around them and someone started an Om. One of the kids said to another, “You’re being Omed over”, and she responded by saying, “This is getting too weird for me”, and she walked out of the circle, followed by all the rest.

They came back to the main meadow a second time, and one of the children had a trombone and was making blasts on it. Another threw a smoke bomb on the ground that started a little clump of dry grass on fire which was quickly stomped out. Several people got up and a mob of people formed around them, and the girl who had thrown the bomb was herself thrown to the ground and people piled on top of her. Thruout they cried out mockingly things like, “Get your hands off me!”, and, “You call yourselves peaceful. You’re really a bunch of violent punks.” Another Om started up, and people got up from sitting and started holding hands in concentric circles, starting the big Om perhaps prematurely. The trombone was severely damaged in the melee.

There was a long Shanti Sena council near Info that afternoon that for the first time included them, and the mother had lots of things to say about this. "I think this shows what kind of monsters you really are. You talk about peace and non-violence, but here you go attacking little girls." As she spoke further, it became more and more apparent that she had decided to use her children to deliberately provoke some kind of violent reaction to prove what she thought about the hypocrisy of hippies, and she was acting very smug in having succeeded. The kids said things like, "We're just doing this to see if we can get a reaction out of you. If you don't give us one, we'll get bored and stop." Someone from the circle said., "So what is the solution?", one of the kids said again, "Just ignore us and don't give us a reaction" The mother said, "Come to our camp and talk with us an get to know us. You'll find out that a lot of the stories people tell about us aren't true.” (And indeed Fat Kids had managed to achieve a state of being not attacked by them, and some in that kitchen empathized with their anti-Rainbow establishment feelings.)

There was contrition among some of the other people in the circle, and a few went so far as to apologize for the severity of the reaction. One person produced a bicycle horn in the shape of a hunting horn, with the rubber squeezer missing, and gave it to the kids to make up for the destruction of the trombone.

The mother and father ran into marital difficulties and the family broke up soon after, and they have not appeared at gatherings as a unit since 2010.

You can read this for more about Death Camp.

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Some of the older gatherers have called these people “dirty kids”, because they are usually young – in their teens, twenties, or early thirties – and their clothes get pretty dirty living in the woods and this doesn’t seem to bother them. This has been used as a derogatory term by some of the olders, but many of the dirty kids themselves have taken this as an appellation of pride. Sometimes the phrase gets shortened to just “kids”, with the tacit understanding that it doesn’t mean the people that Kid Village devotes itself to. Some of the dirty kids prefer “crusty kids”, and some of the olders who really don’t like them call them “gutter punks”, a term more often used for homeless kids who live on the streets in big cities.

Becoming apparent by the 2008 Wyoming annual gathering, the two sides have increasingly segregated themselves from each other, with a hippie side and a dirty kid side emerging as the kitchens arrive and choose places to set up. In many recent years three of the largest and longest existing of their kitchens, Fat Kids, Montana Mud, and Shut Up and Eat It, have located themselves near to each other in a place that has been called Dirty Kid’s Corner. Other dirty kid kitchens set up around them, and the whole area is sometimes called Dirty Kid’s Meadow.

The names that the dirty kids use for the gatherers that call them that name are several, with “yuppie”, “hippie”, and “high holy” being popular. In the most extreme dirty kid view, yuppies live in houses, have jobs, and only visit the gathering one week a year. Dirty kids are travelers and casual laborers who often live on the road or the street and are free to spend months at gatherings. Yuppies are weekend warriors; dirty kids live the Rainbow life fully.

Relative to the hippies the kids tend to be more practical and pragmatic, and not so much inclined to trust in spirits and spend long times in ceremonies. A lot of them like to eat meat some believe that alcohol can be used prudently by responsible people, and don’t feel so much the need for absolute prohibition. Some of the kids can be just as rebellious against their parents’ generation as their parents were against their grandparents’, and both sides complain of not being treated with respect by the other. An increasing amount of time at Vision Council is being spent in discussing ways to bridge this generation gap.

In recent years the dirty kids have taking over many of the vital parts of the gathering’s infrastructure, such as the main supply tent, the water pipes, and especially cleanup. Many of them take pride in being the muscles and backs of the gathering, and being able to face dirt that other people can’t.

BB

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Most importantly, it is a place where they are greeted with a “welcome home” and vibrations of love and peace, and not given the impression that rowdy drunks from A-Camp can provide.

In some years there has been a strong Welcome Home presence, like in 2008 in Wyoming, where there was a large kitchen at the main trailhead and a satellite in the form of a step van parked on the road before the turnoff to A-Camp. Other years there has not been so elaborate a setup, but there still has been a cohesive Front Gate crew that could keep it covered and get the cars to the right places 24 hours a day, like in Utah in 2003. Other years it has been practically nonexistent, as in Montana in 2013. (And there have been many years where the first thing newcomers encountered was a blockade of Forest Service policemen.) It has always been hard to find people willing to come out of the womb of the gathering and spend long periods of time on the fringes of Babylon, and miss out on all the fun going on inside.

To the relief of some and the dismay of others, A-Campers have been the kind of people who would want to do this, and some of them have been able to perform front gate and parking chores responsibly. But some of them haven’t been, and this has been a source of conflict. The ideal has been to have enough sober people at Front Gate, especially the ones going up to cars, to overcome any bad alcohol energy, and pleas are made regularly at Dinner Circle for people to volunteer an afternoon or an evening to help out at Front Gate.

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On the 3rd is the “Gong Show”, where anybody can perform doing anything, and in addition to the usual singing and guitar playing there might be people playing other instruments, stand up comedians, people reciting their own poetry or telling stories, acrobatic acts, even dog tricks. On the stage, or more usually on a perch above it, is a person with a large Chinese gong, and when that person beats it, the performer on stage has to leave.

They can be merciless, seldom letting anyone go for more than three minutes. Sometimes the audience groans and boos their disapproval to the gonger, and the act is allowed to proceed a little longer, but more often the crowd heckles the performer. Ribbing, along with occasional calls of “show us your butt” are common. Rainbow Presidential Candidate Vermin Supreme has hosted the Gong Show many times, but in recent years has MCed under protest – there are folks who don’t like the ferocity of the heckling and feel it adds an inappropriately negative tinge to the space. One year the MC was so offended at the crowd’s heckling that he quit mid-show. Usually, however, there is a balance between good-natured catcalls and genuine appreciation for talent.”

On the 4th is the “Variety Show” or “Talent Showcase”, and the performers are allowed to finish their acts unimpeded. On the 5th the stage and everything they have built around it is dismantled and disappeared.

The shows always start at “dark thirty" which usually means when all of the last of the blue had disappeared from the western sky. The audience always sits on the ground. There is never any electronic amplification, and there is an advantage to showing up while there is still light to get a sitting place near enough to the stage to hear clearly.

Their stage structures are known for their elaborateness. At the 2012 annual gathering in Tennessee, they built an Egyptian pyramid framed with logs covered with white cloth. In Pennsylvania in 2010 they built a structure that looked like a cross between the Frontierland fort and the Fantasyland castle at Disneyland – a wooden stockade with a pair of round turrets with conical roofs in the middle, and a wide door overlooking a small stage that resembled a drawbridge. In Wyoming in 2008 it looked like a giant white bird with a long neck extending out over the stage, and in 2006 in Colorado they built a pirate ship with masts and rigging.

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Recently, Green & Purple was getting a reputation as a wild party kitchen, but that was not the original intent, and G&P olders are trying to re-steer the focus of the kitchen. They still do not allow alcohol in their kitchen and bliss fire area. Over the last year, the kitchen has been beset by setbacks and tragedies. In September of 2012, Green & Purple lost a sister named Coco Ouden in a bus crash. The driver of the bus is also facing legal charges over the accident. Soon after that, Sky’s mother passed away. Soon after that, a long-time Green & Purple participant, Chu Bbakka, was arrested in Texas for making a wide turn in his bus, and was charged for his pot and paraphernalia. Then a travelling sister who had ridden the bus that crashed, Sparrow, died in Texas to alcohol poisoning. An October California Memorial Gathering in 2012 brought back six of the members of the bus together, including Coco’s ashes. The ashes were spread on the hills at the gathering in a quiet ceremony.

Though Green & Purple’s kitchen equipment was borrowed for this gathering, they didn’t actually attend as a kitchen. Green & Purple’s next gathering was a Spring California Gathering in May of 2013, a gathering that some felt was a cathartic healing gathering for the past seasons of hardship. At that gathering Sky was presented with a bundle of feathers tied with a piece of dental floss that Coco had used to sew on a patch, with feathers that had each been gifted specifically to honor her. There was a picture of Coco at the peace pole in Montana on the 4th of July.

Fnc  Sky

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When you walked into the gathering from the parking areas, you climbed two very steep hills then continued on a narrow trail until you reached Welcome Home and where the trail fanned out into the rest of the gathering. Hobo Alley was one of the first places you encountered after reaching the top of the second hill. On the night of July 4th, three men managed to climb the hills on motorcycles and started to threaten some of the Hobo Alley campers. People came in from surrounding kitchens until about a hundred confronted them and turned them away. One of bikers got into a personal argument with one of the Rainbows and cut him with a knife, but no weapons were brandished by any of the Family, and they were finally chased off only by words. There were threats by them to return with more of their friends, but these never materialized. Non-violence on the part of the Family was maintained thruout.

Change and Yoda parted ways shortly after the gathering, and Yoda said he was going to take the name of Hobo Alley with him. Change was gifted a school bus that another kitchen was kicking down after acquiring a newer one, so she is continuing the kitchen by going to regionals, but so far it is now named simply, “The Alley”.

BB  Fnc

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For the following four years they set up only at the Ocala gathering, where they often served as a kid’s camp, attracting families. In 2006 the kitchen set up with Granola Funk, where a classically trained pianist played on a leopard print, upright piano.

Due to vehicle issues, Iris only built the kitchen in Ocala and Georgia in 2011, but its cooks and crew helped out with kitchens at the Apalachicola, Cumberland, Heartland, and Colorado regionals and the Washington annual. In 2012, Iris served at regional gatherings in Ocala and Georgia and the annual gathering in Tennessee, where they had gluten/allergen-free side kitchen, and in 2013 they went to Ocala and the Montana annual.

They usually have a heart-shaped bliss pit that they encourage music around, and at some gatherings they have been known to create living room type furniture out of downed logs.. They like to create specialty food like meatless sushi rolls, Greek salad, and Indian food. They strive to be a very open kitchen, friendly to families and folks new to Rainbow.

BB  Ovb

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Katuah has had only one gathering for many years: the Summer Solstice. They used to have a May Day gathering, Blueberry gathering, and fall gatherings (often called Piedmont). At the 1993 Thanksgiving council they consensed not to have the blueberry gathering anymore since the site was getting heavily impacted and becoming more public – so they haven't held that one since. The May Day gatherings stopped after Raven lost the land they used on Round Mountain, and the fall gatherings ended mostly for lack of energy.

At the 2012 Tennessee annual, Katuah was regarded as one of the high holiest of the hippie kitchens by some of the hard core anarchist dirty kids, and they were singled out for pranks, such as breaking the early morning silence by hollering “nigger”. When some kitchen workers objected, the kids argued that it was to help “desensitize” them and get them to the point that it didn’t bother them anymore. The older folks acted like they weren’t very successful.

Hwk  BB

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There is a handwashing station that you pass in the line just before you are served, and they are strict about you doing it every time before you hold out your dishes. Unless your hands look like they just got wet, the servers are instructed not to let you have anything, even if you are just filling your cup with water.

Before serving the breakfast there is a circle where everybody holds hands, and Felipe give a talk of encouragement that is often filled with Native American symbolism (he was born into the Yaqui tribe). He often goes around the circle with a small bowl of burning sage and wafts the smoke over the participants with a feather as a rite of purification. Then they go around the circle clockwise and anyone who has a concern, a prayer, or a heartsong can speak. (No feather or other talking implement is passed.) There are lots of reminders to wash hands, use the latrines and compost pits, and help out with the serving and food chopping. The circle usually lasts about twenty minutes and it ends with a call of “We love you” and finally an Om.

The children usually are kept to the same bedtimes they have back in Babylon, and quiet is enforced after sundown. There is no all night drum circle. However this is one place where the silence is not kept on the morning of the Fourth, because it is next to impossible to get small children to understand it. No drums or musical instruments are played, but adults talk at low conversational volume.

Kid Village was the scene of a major confrontation with the Forest Service law enforcement officers at the annual gathering in Wyoming in 2008. Some LEOs pursuing a Rainbow brother that they wanted on marijuana charges caught up with him as he was approaching this kitchen at the time the rest of the gathering was at Dinner Circle. When he got there with the cops in pursuit, several gatherers saw what was going on and started yelling insults and threats back at them, while other gatherers tried to do Shanti Sena by moving in between to hold these threateners back.

A sister was listening to her Shanti Sena radio and said out loud, "Did you say ‘fire’?", when what she heard was really "shots being fired". Someone else heard her and shouted, "Fire!", and other people repeated the call. It was heard over at Dinner Circle, and many people started to run in the direction it came from, which was Kid Village. Some of the police had riot control guns, which shot paintball-like pellets that released pepper spray on impact. When they saw the mass of people coming in they opened fire, shooting hundreds of rounds before it was all over. There were children present, and some of them got the red welts on their skin that all who were hit by the pellets were afflicted with. Several videos of this were recorded, one of which can be viewed here.

This was the high point in what had been a long series of escalating confrontations with the LEOs. The Incident Commander sat in a council with Rainbows two years later and said, “God forbid that we should ever have to go thru something like that again.” It sobered Rainbows and LEOs alike, and all began on the path toward reconciliation that has now gone so far as the Incident commander coming into the gathering to talk with gatherers in civvies with no gun in 2013.

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Before and during the serving of the food they practice a form of group chanting called sankirtana. A leader sitting on the ground plays a harmonium, which is like small organ with black and white keys, powered by an accordion-like bellows on the back. He sings the Hare Krishna mantra over and over to any of a variety of Indian melodies, then the audience sings the mantra back to the same tune the leader has just sung. This is repeated over and over again, sometimes changing the tune but not the words. Another devotee might be playing a mridanga, an Indian drum like a conga but with a big head on one end and a little head the other. It is played sideways with both hands. But often you will hear the whole range of Rainbow drums, since the chanting is open to outside musicians.

The leader is most often a “he”, but the Arizona group sometimes has sisters leading. That group also uses guitars instead of the harmonium, and their melodies sound more like American jazz than Hindu traditional. The composite kitchen in Colorado was another place that sometimes had sisters at the harmonium.

The Arizona group often has devotees roaming the gathering with 5-gallon buckets asking, “Would you like some Krishna cookies?”. There is another devotee named Soaring Turkey who comes by himself to gatherings, sets up a tipi, and gives classes in quitting smoking.

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Due to an injury that prevented her from further crossing the creek, Josie moved in with Cowboy at the Hummingbird Café. As Cowboy and Gary were doing supply that year, and thanx to Aire Faire, Milliways had access to supplies to feed main circle and meals out of the kitchen daily. Freeman would often bake zuzus during the night, and David Shane set up Milliways on its own water system. Milliways was noted for its bad British accents, human television (TV Mike), non-traveling traveling band (Walter), ice cream (Jasper), and ever increasing levels of sanitation and cleanliness (Erin)

Milliways appeared continuously at annuals until its gear and bus were lost in a wildfire while stored in Colorado in 2002. Highlights of that period include appearances by celebrities Douglas Adams in Arizona 1998, and a 6 hour drum circle led by Mickey Heart at the bliss pit go-go cage in Pennsylvania 1999.

In 2006 two defunct Colorado regional kitchens (the Colorado Kitchen, and Phatty Platter) donated gear and Milliways reappeared. Milliways spent 2007 in Colorado at the regional at Hat Springs, and returned to the annual in Wyoming in 2008 and New Mexico in 2009. At this time rumor has it all Milliwavians are dead, or never really existed at all. Another and probably more credible rumor is that those limey bastards are just waiting to ground score more gear at the next rest area, and we’ll see them at a gathering all too soon.

LTD

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If you happen to come at a time when they have run out and are preparing a new pot, and you ask them how long it will be before it is ready, the answer will always be “twenty minutes”, no matter how near it is to being actually done.

They have been renowned for their drum circles at night. The crew has been mostly young and dressed in the blacky-khaki style, and they have a tradition that when someone joins the circle with more gray in his beard than someone who is sitting, that person should offer the guest his or her seat.

When the Forest Service supervisor refused to grant a permit and the LEOs evicted all the gatherers from the originally intended site of the annual gathering in Michigan in 2002, forcing them all to move to the eastern side of a river that ran past it, Montana Mud held out and refused to move. For a few hours the Forest Service tried to stop all deliveries of water into the gathering until they left voluntarily, but public outrage at a “town meeting” in the nearby town of Bruce Crossing persuaded them to allow them in again. Finally the LEOs approached with horses and shotguns and surrounded their camp. All were given a last chance to leave, but 13 refused, and those were arrested. Some used nonviolent civil disobedience tactics, like going limp when arrested and making it necessary for them to be carried off.

Montana Mud was started by a brother named Jimbo, who focalized the kitchen until 2002 when he passed the kitchen name onto a brother named Heybob amidst the controversy over the “West Bank” incident which resulted in the 13 arrests. Heybob eventually left the kitchen so he could raise a family, so in recent years a principal focalizer has been Useless. He left to help start Mudder Earth in 2013, and passed the Montana Mud name back to its original founder Jimbo at thanksgiving council 2012. Jimbo erected Montana Mud at the 2013 gathering, but brought the kitchen back to its roots – though Useless had focalized Montana Mud as a full-on kitchen which served food AND coffee, the kitchen at the 2013 gathering was only a coffee kitchen.

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At meal times, Question Mark would have attendees gather around before dinner as he gave the camp news of the day, established the rules of washing hands before dinner and dishes after, and asked for people to gather firewood for the cooking and showering. The group would then hold hands and Om. Dinner followed afterwards, with women, children, and families being served first. Breakfast was commonly oatmeal with fruit in it, sides of fruit, and whatever else was available that day. There was always very strong coffee (REAL coffee!) available at every meal that was specially ground and brought for the national gathering. Lunch and dinner (from what I experienced) featured mostly cabbage prepared in a variety of ways. On the morning of the 5th I think breakfast even included some cabbage. (I really had my fill of cabbage that week!)

The camp also maintained their own shitter with a two-seater box over the pit, which was very enjoyable. Regarding the “musical” part of the camp name, I don’t recall any major playing going on aside from some nice guitar music in the late evening with an occasional mandolin, drum, or some other type of riddim maker.

Msx

My first encounter with that name was at the 1988 Texas annual gathering and at that time it was “Musical Vegetarian.” They have been to almost every national gathering since, usually setting up in the outer reaches of the gathering. They have offered hot showers nearby many times.

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There are multiple origin stories for N@N, but allegedly their first physical camp was in 1999. Possibly there was an individual named Nick that “did” Nic@Nite a year or two prior to the original camp. After that a sister named Pixie (who I hear no longer smokes) was the original focalizing energy.

In the early days of N@N, people had to come to their camp to get tobacco, but after a few years the concept of the “satellite” was implemented. Nic@Nite campers now wear a “busket” (an empty plastic coffee container, usually a large Folgers) around their neck with twine. Inside the busket are papers and rolling tobacco. They roam the gathering providing tobacco to major camps and kitchens and people on the trail as they go. There is also a constant presence of workers and tobacco at the Nic@Nite camp, so people can find it if they don’t know where the satellites are.

N@N is pretty fairly organized regarding regionals, even smaller road-dog regionals, and will try to make sure at least one full-fledged N@Ner can be at each one. Each one can accommodate about a hundred gatherers comfortably.

At the 2013 gathering in Montana, N@N had a consensus to have at least one worker on duty at their camp 24/7, meaning if a N@Ner wanted to go to sleep he needed to wake up someone else and make sure they were on duty rolling and handing out cigarettes to people walking by on the trail. They also made full rounds of the gathering every day-visiting every single kitchen and camp, from Front Gate to Fat Kids, and everywhere in between. Nic@Niters could be counted on to know their way around all the ninja trails in the woods, and also served as good Shanti Sena, acting as the “eyes and ears” of the gathering, able to go to every camp at any time of night with impunity and respect.

Nic@Nite takes consensus seriously, and regularly has council.

Tobacco math: After conversations with one long-time N@Ner, and subsequent questioning of others, most N@Ners estimate they can roll about a pound of tobacco per day into cigarettes to and out while at a gathering. At just over a half-gram of tobacco per cigarette, this equates to about 800 cigs per day, per N@Ners. This is enough to give 100 to 200 people their tobacco fix for a day. For larger regionals, more N@Ners than one may be needed to serve the entire population. At the May California 2013 regional, four ended up showing up, and serving 300 to 500 people. Since N@N is sort of a splinter concept, the entire camp does not need to show up for Nic@Nite to have a presence at a gathering;-even one person is sufficient to serve the function.

Nic@Nite has three(ish) levels of participation. The first is “probie”. Like in fraternities and motorcycle clubs, a prospective member of the camp must go thru a probationaty period. A full-fledged N@Ner has to sponsor a legitimate probie, and that person is given a smaller, usually half-sized, busket. From that period on, the probie is expected to act as a N@Ner: never have an empty busket, roll cigarettes quickly, and generally put up with a lot of ribbing from other N@Ners and folks who get cigarettes from them.

It is generally considered good form to good-naturedly harass probies along the trail. (“Hey probie! Gimme a goddamn cigarette! Faster! I could have smoked two by now already! I’m telling!”) The probate is expected to do Nic@Nite full time through all regionals attended throughout the year, and through one entire annual Gathering, at which point a Nic@Nite council will either consense to accept or reject the probie as a full Nic@Niter. If accepted, the probie is presented with a full-sized busket.

Probies are often made to do annoying repetitive tasks like rock stacking, and the reaction sometimes expected is for the probie to finally say, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this anymore”. They are also tested on speed and aptitude regarding tobacco rolling. (I have heard of probies being ordered to roll cigarettes blindfolded or to roll cigarettes out of sand). Reasons to reject a probie have included bad attitude, having lost their busket or put it down and leaving it unattended too often, having been found to trade tobacco or expect something in return for tobacco, having a specific issue with a specific N@Ner, etc.

The next level is Nic@Niter. Then they are expected to always have cigarettes ready, and to always have a busket around their neck. They are expected to be able to be loud and boisterous, and to be able to solicit tobacco donations as well as give out cigarettes. Each N@Ner’s busket is usually personalized over time with stickers and photos attached to the coffee can. The loss of a busket is a big deal, and sometimes grounds for dismissal from Nic@Nite status, or sometimes grounds for having another one regifted by a longer term N@Ner

The final elite level is ‘mafia’. This is a small club, and mafia can pretty much do what they want in the camp, regardless of Nic@Nite traditions (though they generally choose not to abuse the power). Mafia can only be made through camp consensus, and very very few actually claim it.

Nic@Nite prefers American Spirit rolling tobacco but they usually have a busket full of pipe tobacco, because it is cheaper in bulk and can be bought by the pound. Sometimes a N@Ner will have pipe tobacco in the busket, and a separate pouch for American Spirit donations, so the “good tobacco” isn’t mixed in with the rest. Occasionally “tailor-made” cigarettes are donated (factory rolled, from packs), and they are usually handed out and smoked quickly.

Occasionally other people call themselves “...@Nite” and this makes Nic@Nite irritable. They consider it “their” label, and ask people to change their name if they are doing something independently. Occasionally regionals have happened where people have wanted to distribute tobacco but hadn’t been given a busket by Nic@Nite. Often, to avoid conflict or confusion, these folks will go by a different name, using a pouch of tobacco instead of a busket and going by “Nick@Now”, or “Shut Up and Smoke It”, or some other name.

However, Nugz@Night was recognized and allied with Nic@Nite at the 2013 Montana gathering. That was a camp that provided the same service as Nic@Nite, but with marijuana. Nugz had specific self-imposed fairness rules. Nugz workers did not smoke any of the pot that was donated, and only allowed other people to smoke it. That encouraged donations because people eventually caught on to Nugz@Nite’s reputation and didn’t think they were being scammed. Adherence to this policy was one of the prerequisites for being a consensed Nugz@Niter.

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The crew was the very first vehicle on site. Setting up a camp in the parking lot, they started cooking and feeding people. When asked if they were a kitchen, the response was “We’re not a fucking kitchen, but we’ll feed you until one gets here.” After a few days, other camps had lent or donated their cooking gear and food, the crew were serving hundreds, and no kitchens had set up yet. When other kitchens finally arrived, the crew of “not a fucking kitchen” had planned on donating the gifted kitchen gear to the crew that was working the Front Gate. However, several people appealed to the crew, asking if they would continue serving food if their equipment was moved into the woods and set up. Not A Dave and the kids said okay, and so about thirty dirty kids hauled the kitchen into the woods and set it up, and helped run it as well.

The kitchen specialized in dirty kid recipes- chili dogs, cheeseburgers, deep-fried zuzus wrapped in bacon, fatty sugary and greasy goodness. One night they emptied out the entire supply tent to cook a feast for everyone. Finally there were no supplies left but some sugar and cooking oil and things of that nature. About that time, a pizza delivery worker arrived at the kitchen with a hundred pound donation of pizza dough. The kitchen was back in action - they made donuts with the sugar and oil, and when more food appeared they wrapped everything in pizza dough and fried it.

On the last day of the Shawnee Gathering, a group of kitchen workers had a powwow and wanted to keep the kitchen going, so they convinced Not A Dave to promise to buy a bus and take it on the road. After asking around, Dave found a long-time rainbow in Illinois with just the bus he needed - it had already been on the rainbow trail before and used to carry tipis into the gatherings in the ‘80s. The asking price was $1500, but after getting better to know the crew of Not A Fucking Kitchen and their vision of feeding the homeless nonstop around the country, the asking price was generously reduced to $500. After the crew got rid of the Honda and manifested the rest of the money, the man with the bus decided to simply donate it for free after all. The bus, named Not A Fucking Bus, which some said was short for “Not A Fucking Bus (It’s A Fucking Spaceship)”, and its crew headed towards New Orleans by the end of October.

In New Orleans, the bus served food daily on the streets during a Halloween celebration called Voodoo Fest. Because of the influx of craziness and strange people, it tended to be difficult for travellers to be able to get out of New Orleans after this celebration - all the gas stations were unfriendly to juggers, all the cops were wary of spangers, and there were too many kids trying to find the same few rides out of town. As a result, the Not a Fucking Bus ended up picking up a huge number of youth trying to leave. By the time it left, the bus contained 47 kids, 20 dogs, 3 cats and a ferret.

On the way out of Louisiana, the bus had a transmission breakdown and managed to roll into a Target parking lot in Lake Charles, LA, before completely dying, on November 11, 2010. In a strange turn of events, the manager of the Target gave the crew his - and Corporate’s - permission to stay there until the bus could be fixed. The bus family -which had now dwindled to 33, and added 8 new puppies - immediately set up a campsite and full-fledged kitchen in the parking lot, and thus began one of the most unusual six-day gatherings ever seen in the rainbow tribes. Word got around town that a free food kitchen bus had broken down, and suddenly kind people and food and supply donations started rolling in. By the second day, the Target manager’s mother was bringing the kitchen fresh hot donuts each morning, another local couple was bringing them handmade lunch each day, and local charities and families were going into the Target and Walmart and coming out with things for the bus and kitchen - the kitchen fed each other and the community nonstop with the food coming in. On November 12, the local news also covered the story, leading to an even more massive outpouring of generosity from the city of Lake Charles, and a viral interest in the bus family on facebook. Some of the news generated can be viewed here, here, and here.

By the sixth day, a stranger came up to the bus, had a look under the hood, and told Not A Dave, “You don’t need a new tranny. You need a new bus!” He drove some of the kitchen crew to his nearby property, waved his hand at a whole row of school busses in a field, and said to pick any one they liked. With a new bus, 4700 pairs of fresh socks, and dog food lining the floor three bags deep from the driver’s side to the back door, along with cases and cases of food and drink donations, the crew was ready to head out - but first, the Mayor of Lake Charles came by and presented the kitchen with an official commendation from the city for outstanding work with the homeless, and the key to the city. Triumphant, the crew headed toward Texas.

In November 2010, the new bus, Not Another Fucking Bus, used its donated food and supplies to help feed at a small regional gathering in Texas, and then went to Austin, TX and fed on thanksgiving at the Church Under the Bridge Thanksgiving Feed.

At the end of November, the bus and crew headed to Hippie Hill, in Tennessee, where the crew agreed to part ways. The bus was given to the family at Hippie Hill, and soon passed hands to the Shut Up and Eat It kitchen, which took the bus to regional gatherings until its eventual demise at the end of summer 2012.

In May, 2011, a Southern Michigan Gathering resulted in a revival of the kitchen with a skeleton crew and no vehicle, and the crew reunited at the Annual Gathering in Washington and served at its first and only Annual Gathering to date as Not a Fucking Kitchen. Since the kitchen maintained that it was Not a Fucking Kitchen, it refused to take food from Main Supply, and refrained from serving Main Circle, preferring to simply cook on its own and feed whoever was hungry in the vicinity. At the end of this gathering, the kitchen took a leave of absence for over a year.

In September of 2012, Not a Dave procured a new travel vehicle, an RV. He took it to Morrison Colorado for the Furthur shows at Red Rocks and he and his girlfriend Cindy and his dog Not A Dog began amassing a new crew. The RV slowly made its way to California where it plugged into the Black Sheep Solstice Gathering. Dave and his crew then took the RV to San Francisco to the Furthur New Years Eve shows. From the start of January onward, Dave and his crew plugged into the scouting and early focalizing movies for the All-California Spring Regional Rainbow Gathering 2013. At a Groundhog’s Day council in Mendocino, the RV crew met Travis Trip for the first time and helped him and his friends learn how to manage a kitchen. After that weekend’s council came to a consensus to gather in California in May, the RV headed out to Colorado again, to rendezvous with more family at the winter Furthur shows. From Colorado, the RV headed towards Oregon to borrow water pipes from the Northwest Tribes. With nearly no brakes left, the fully loaded RV returned south with water pipes sticking out of its rear end and landed at the Scout Rendezvous/Holding Camp near Fresno.

After unloading the water pipes and strapping them onto the bus of some local family in Fresno, the RV did a town run in which its brakes finally gave out. The bus zoomed down the mountain road in freefall mode, and finally went off a cliff. 40 feet down, the RV landed on a road and drove up the side of a steep hill to come to a rest. After putting brake fluid and gas into the RV, Dave and the several shaken passengers were able to limp it back into the woods. After this incident, the RV was dubbed “The Flying Dutch Oven”.

The RV was repaired, and when it returned to the woods for the regional gathering the crew set up Not a Fucking Kitchen in all its previous glory. By the end of the gathering, the crew had begun setting up the meals buffet style so hungry hippies would go down the line to eat - the kitchen was renamed “Not a Fucking Drive-Thru”. Travis Trip was also at this gathering, and he and his friends set up kitchen they called NEU (New Earth Union). On May 3rd, at NEU Kitchen, Not-a-Dave and Cindy were married. The ceremony was officiated by the Constable of Cascadia, Patrick Pinkerton, and the couple were surrounded by a small semicircle of their closest family and friends, and then a larger circle of everybody else. In an act of spontaneous enthusiasm, after the vows the crowd christened Cindy: “Not a Cindy”.

At the end of the California gathering, Not a Fucking Kitchen combined gear and crew with NEU and the whole group caravaned to the annual gathering in Montana, where the combined crews formed the new kitchen Mudd N’ Butts, which served food from the first day of seed camp through July 6th.

After the Montana Gathering, the Flying Dutch Oven had one more mishap which sent it off another cliff. It is currently out of commission but there are eventual plans to rebuild it.

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The next morning there was a meeting near the parking lot at Welcome Home between family and the resource rangers, and their leader made it clear that he didn’t like the huge boogie pit near O-ji’s and asked if we couldn’t fill it in partially, reducing the pit’s diameter. A discussion ensued about what number of feet would be a good maximum, and 10 was suggested but rejected for 12. He was able to accept it as a fait accompli, but he didn’t want it to start being a precedent for future ones, as a pit under construction near another kitchen was starting to show. It was finally agreed to by the family to talk to the kitchens near the pit and try to persuade them to fill it in partially, reducing the diameter to 12 feet.

Spring Ogre was the first person they tried to talk to later that day inside the gathering, and he talked to them at length when asked. Neither he nor his kitchen wanted to take responsibility for building the pit. He said “a bunch of kids came in the night and made it”, and he didn’t want to take any part in dismantling it because “a hundred gutter punks will come around and take it out on me for doing it.” At another point he said that there were people who had come around in the morning to work on it, “but the presence of all these cops scared them away”

Another brother from the yoga camp came over and started cutting apart some of the lashings on the outside rails, saying “I don’t want this thing here because it brings around all these cops.” Then another brother came around with a wheelbarrow with three shovels piled in it, and set it down and took one of the shovels like he was preparing to dig with it, and Ogre came over and stood in his way. This brother responded by attempting to hit him with it, not really succeeding in landing a blow, and Ogre grabbed it out of his hand and threw it to the ground, tipping over the wheelbarrow, while a few other people rushed up to restrain both of them.

Ogre then started bellowing about how he was going to have him charged with assault, naming another brother who had to go to jail for what he did and saying this one should too. The brother was gently persuaded to leave by the people who had surrounded him, and the wheelbarrow was taken back to Info.

On the 6th of July the pit was filled in. The rocks that had been around the back of the raised ring were thrown into the pit, then the 4th of July watermelon rinds were thrown over them before being covered with dirt. The inner fire ring was the last to be taken apart, and all the logs that had made the railings were burned up in it.

Next year at the 2009 New Mexico annual the biggest boogie fires were lit on top of areas of flat rocks laid end to end, without digging any pit at all, and this has become the preferred design.

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There, popcorn production is a labor of love. It takes more than a press of a button to get the bubble of oil heated to the point where it bursts the hard kernel into fluffy whiteness. The temperature range between a hard seed and blackened carbon is thin and requires delicacy. Each kernel must be separated from the scalding heat of the unstable chaos of fire to avoid blackening. But it must get near enough.

This means furious shaking. They fill buckets and buckets this way, enough for the streams of passersby to fill their bliss with not just one flavor but a multitude. There are always at least two. Raspberry cheesecake popcorn, cinnamon toast popcorn, and turmeric seed and apple cider vinegar popcorn (as yet officially named), were some that I saw among the savory and sweet continuum.

Before this article ends, I want to relate a small story. Annie said she was feeling a new anxiety, bordering on depression, because of a conversation she had with someone from the Popcorner. I am not sure of his name, but he told her that he no longer loved it. He had been eating popcorn three meals a day for three weeks. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner he lived the life of a popcorn lover and inhaled it in all varieties. But for some reason his interest waned. He was not as into it as he had been before.

This greatly depressed Annie. The very idea that anything could change her love of popcorn was a horrible thought. That someone who loved popcorn as she did could stop loving it brought about a lurching sense of sickness.

We talked about this. What do you think? Is it sad to overindulge on your favorite food? Is it possible? Like cows eat grass, popcorn-love (for those so consumed) is identity. The connection between food and self is all encompassing. It seems normal and invisible or arbitrary, but what one chooses to prefer becomes locked in. What you eat for breakfast is not just incidental. Food saturates, penetrates the individual.

I’ve often wondered what people might look like if they ate only one food, a favorite food. What would the people who subsist only on donuts look like? What about those whose diet was limited only to bananas or legumes? At Popcorner you can see people who dedicate their selves to consuming the highly specific food they love.

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Mail can be sent by handing it to a Postie, but there is also a Rainbow postal outbox that can be found on the counter of Information and Rumor Control. It fills up with letters and the contents are frequently retrieved by the posties to be delivered.

Beginning in 2013, the Posties began reading “mail call” before the announcements at Dinner Circle. They took their undelivered mail, and read off all the names of intended recipients to the circle.

The Posties each have different standards regarding what type of mail they prefer to deliver. One will not deliver nonconsensual hate mail (before delivering it, or reading it aloud, they say “This is hate mail. Do you want to receive it?”). One will not deliver junk mail (mail addressed to “everybody”, “anybody”, or similar nonsensical or nonspecific targets). They all encourage love letters.

The Posties, like Nic@Nite and Goat Camp, tend to walk the entire length of the gathering daily, and stop at every camp and kitchen, allowing them also to be eyes and ears for the gathering, increasing their ability to facilitate communication from one part of the gathering to another.

In 2013, in a possibly precedent setting move, the Posties fired the Rainbow Gathering as their clients on July 3. There were too many people, too many letters addressed to ambiguous first names, and The posties were getting tired and burnt out. They decided that Seed Camp and early Rainbow were the most useful times to do the postie system, because there are fewer people, more important messages to convey, and everyone for the most part knew each other and where campsites were.

After the firing, the postal outbox remained at Info where it became a de facto “General Delivery” box that people could browse through to see if they had mail. One or two “renegade Posties’ decided to fill the vacuum and try to help deliver the last pieces of mail.

The Posties are a young tribe, and well-received by the established rainbow kitchens and camps. There has been discussion at Info about trying to facilitate a Post Office, or P.O. Box type of system in years to come.

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Some examples are:

little biscuits and pastries
slices of baked apple with lots of cinnamon
olives of different kinds on toothpicks
little shish kebobs on toothpicks with slices of vegetables and Swiss cheese
cole slaw in Thai style peanut sauce
“sushi”, which is not fish but vegetables wrapped in rice and nori seaweed.
things that look like crepes, but are really scrambled eggs
real crepes

Its reputation has spread around the gathering and it has attracted more than 600 people. Garrick Beck has often played a principal role.

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There is never any bliss rail; anyone can come thru the kitchen area and even sit down in it. And he grants acceptance and encouragement to anyone who starts working and doing it well, and this is enough for him to assemble an adequately sized crew around him at every new gathering

Gary is also known for his confrontations with Forest Service policemen. He has minced no words when he expresses his disapproval to their faces of the strong arm tactics they often use, the arbitrariness of their restrictions, the mess their horses make, and the guns they carry into the gathering. At the 2004 California annual gathering, he was ordered to move his kitchen because it was allegedly too near a stream, even tho he had been given oral permission in a conversation with a resource ranger before the start of the gathering. On the 29th of June, the Incident Commander gave him a ticket for “non-compliance with permit regulations: kitchen too close to water source”, and ordered him to move his kitchen within 48 hours. Two days later at noon, the IC returned with 5 cops on horses and asked for him, but he was not there as he was in the nearby town of Likely making a plea in court on his ticket. His good friend Marty Heartsong took responsibility and had about a hundred hippies dismantle the kitchen completely, move the pieces to a pile about 200 feet away, and disappear the site in the space of 17 minutes (someone with a watch timed it).

Gary lost his challenge to his ticket and was ordered to stay out of all National Forests for two years. At the 2006 annual gathering in Colorado, he set up a soup kettle on a side of the road coming in, outside of the limits of the National Forest. Many of his crewmembers joined Marty Heartsong when he set up Paonia Peace Kitchen (aka PPK); This kitchen first appeared at the 2005 West Virginia annual, which Gary did not attend because of his banishment, and because he has long refused to go to gatherings in the eastern half of the country.

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In 2013 they had a “rumor of the day” posted each day that they spread with zest, for example “Rumorz Cafe will have zuzus all night with topless servers”. During the 2013 annual gathering their rumor of the day came true without fail. Their fundamental idea was positive manifestation in the rumor of the day, being something that they wanted to see happen. so the rumors were intended not be flippant, but intentional.

They have a consensus never to serve lines, so they always bring their food out to their bliss pit and serve around the circle. Next year they have a vision of talking with other kitchens that don’t like lines and setting up a community circular sort of area with several kitchens around a meadow, and have a big common bliss pit that gets served by all the kitchens

At the 2013 Montana gathering, Rumorz hosted Shanti Sena workshops each day at 4:20, usually facilitated by Piper who is professionally trained in conflict de-escalation, with a good amount of help from Carla Newbre. They served Occupy Portland for the whole of its existence, and worked with many individuals in that community there to support the Cascadian regional in 2012 as main kitchen.

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Tea Time is a loud and raucous kitchen that can be heard from far away. Tea Timers like to yell. The most common call and response yell is “What time is it?” to which the response is always “IT’S TEA TIME!” Other yells heard include “If you can't sleep, you're camped too close!” and “If you can’t sleep with all the yelling, you haven't worked hard enough today! Get a job!” Tea Timers also have vuvuzela-like plastic “tea horns” that they blast at frequent intervals. From a distance, sometimes the tea horn can be mistaken for a conch shell. The noise serves a function. Tea Time likes to set up on the far edge of a gathering, partly to avoid offending camps that are sensitive to noise, like Kid Village, partly to be away from the sound of the main drum circle, and partly to act as a “net”, catching gatherers who are lost and about to wander out of the gathering. The rationale is if you're wandering around the gathering stoned or high or confused, you can follow the sound of the tea horn to find a kitchen and have a warm cup of hydrating tea.

Tea Time has two long standing rules. The first is no drums. The second is no politics. Tea Time ignores Council and doesn't get involved in gathering-wide politics, preferring to be autonomous.

There are several types of tea fires, and a Tea Master is expected to know how to build all of them. Tea Master is a “rank” at Tea Time that indicates that a person is competent enough to focalize a teahouse. Tea Masters have a rigorous initiation process, including demonstrations of physical and mental stamina, being made to work for multiple days without sleep, and other “tests”. The Tea Time fire is considered the “center of the universe”, also “the hottest thing in existence”.

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The goods on display often include:

camping equipment like flashlights and batteries, Swiss army knives, hatchets, tents or tarps,

books, magazines, and bumper stickers advocating liberal causes, eastern religion, or New Age medicine,

paraphernalia for smoking cannabis products, like glass and brass pipes, bongs, hookahs, pipe screens, or alligator clips decorated with feathers,

jewelry, especially necklaces and bracelets, and the materials to make them like beads and thread (there is a lot of trading of raw materials like this from one trader to another),

pretty rocks , like turquoise, agate, or polished granite, and lots of crystals, usually of clear quartz (there are some New Age theories going around about how crystals have powers to direct healing energy, and many a high holy’s walking stick is topped with a large crystal),

drums, ukuleles, and guitars, and sometimes more expensive instruments like fiddles, accordions, or saxophones,

and lots of clothes, sometimes utilitarian jeans and jackets, but more often tie-dyes and cotton prints from India, Guatemalan weaves, or batik dyed saris.

The goods on display can often be like a black market, things that are scarce and can’t be obtained in the kitchens, and are contrary to the health conscious morals of those who work in them – items like canned meat, packages of ramen, soda pop, and candy bars. Tobacco is also sometimes offered, but in recent years Nic@Nite with their free tobacco ideal has made this more difficult. One item frequently on display is Snickers bars, and Snickers alone; a Milky Way or a 3 Musketeers or anything else is not anywhere near as desirable. (Nobody knows any good reason for this; it’s just the way it is.)

Often it can be frustrating trying to trade. There are no hard and fast rules about what items will be accepted in trade for what; it is solely up to the individual desires of persons. If there is any soft rule, it is like for like: books for other books, rocks for rocks, clothes for clothes. Often the price of something in Babylon enters into people’s considerations; an expensive item will not be traded for a cheap one. But sometimes an object’s rarity at the gathering can bring something that requires more money in Babylon; a trader will not let a Snickers bar go easily. (Some people have tried to sabotage this by bringing large cases of Snickers bars and giving them away in the middle of the circle.)

But most of the time there is no telling if someone will be interested in what you have. And if that person isn’t, there is nothing you can do, except maybe trade with someone else for something this first person wants. Often when you ask, “What kind of things are you looking for?”, you get the answer, “I don’t know. What have you got?” This no-money environment can sometimes make you appreciate what money is good for on the outside. It is something that everybody accepts, and it is something that can be measured exactly and you can know whether or not you have enough of it. However marijuana can often be as good as money in terms of universal acceptance; lots of people’s wish list signs have on them “nugs”, short for nuggets, little cannabis buds.

Frequently a reason given for prohibiting money is that it “protects our Constitutional right to gather on public lands”, meaning that if money were exchanged the gathering would be a commercial event and not an event dedicated to free expression, which is protected by the First Amendment. However, Sec. 251.51 of Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations defines “commercial use or activity” as “any use or activity on National Forest System lands (a) where an entry or participation fee is charged, or (b) where the primary purpose is the sale of a good or service, and in either case, regardless of whether the use or activity is intended to produce a profit.” Money exchange as part of a secondary purpose could still occur without the gathering becoming a commercial event and subject to more regulations and restrictions.

But the aversion to money is more than legal. For many gatherers Trading Circle is materialism and commercialism creeping into the spiritual sanctuary. Contrary to the spirit of sharing and giving that the gathering is supposed to be based on, where no money is needed and everything one needs can be obtained for free, and where everyone offers the fruits of their labors out of love, these traders are demanding specific material things in exchange for what they offer. Many of the people who spend long hours working in kitchens disapprove of how many of them sit at their blankets all day. They regard the traders as parasites on the gathering, taking food and water but giving nothing in return. This place is also a favorite hangout for people looking for drugs. You often see people walking up and down the trail with signs around their necks that say, “Dose me”, in the hopes that someone will give them some LSD. Another thing you often see is a guy sitting by the side of the trail with a dope pipe tied to a string that is hung from the end of a stick held like it was a fishing pole. He gets a bite if you put a nug in his bowl.

And there are practical reasons. The traders usually want to set up on a heavily traveled trail because there they find the largest number of potential customers. When they are on both sides of the trail, there can be large numbers of people standing in the trail looking at the blankets, blocking the way for others passing thru. This can interfere with CALM people trying to get injured people thru, and people carrying large boxes of supplies to kitchens. There can be a greater than average concentration of dogs, some of them walking around unleashed and getting into fights with other dogs.

But like A-Camp, there are people who defend it. Some people like to just walk around and look at the variegated and colorful displays the same way one might go to an art museum. Musicians like the audience the place provides, and sometimes good jams happen there. And it is a place where one can find necessities that the communal giving system sometimes fails to provide. Often small children get practical experience in the principles of capitalistic investment by going in the morning with a small cheap item and after a series of trades come back with an expensive toy. And people like to haggle just for the hell of it. Trading Circle comes up at Vision Council as much as A-Camp, and as many times people fail to come up with solutions that satisfy everybody, so it also remains as an ever-controversial presence.

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