The Rainbow Gathering

Within a week after realizing that it was time to go, I had re-connected with an acquaintance from UNH. She was driving to the Rainbow Gathering that was happening that summer in a state park in North Carolina. From there, she was going on to California and I was welcome to come too. I took this bit of serendipity as a sign that I was on the right track and we made plans to leave about a week later.

On the morning we left
Portsmouth, NH

We left Portsmouth on a cloudy morning in June, stopping for the night to stay with my family in Philadelphia, PA. From there, we drove through the Great Smoky Mountains and camped out along Skyline Drive in Eastern Virginia. In the morning it was a short drive from there to the small two-lane country road outside of Bryson City, NC where we parked the car and hiked into the Gathering.

At The Gathering

The Rainbow Gathering has been called a lot of things, but essentially, it's a weeklong gathering of people coming together to live according to Woodstock-era ideals of peace, love, and community. Each year a new site is selected and a weeklong commune is set up in the woods. It was quite an experience: drum circles, communal meals, naked people, and the occasional overdose. I came down with a food borne illness of some kind and spent 3 delirious days in my tent. Meanwhile my traveling companion got into a horseback riding accident and spent the last half of the week in the hospital with a very deep cut in her thigh from her hip to her knee.

Hanging out at the Rainbow Gathering
near Bryson City, NC

At week's end, I struck camp, loaded all of our stuff on my back, and headed down the mountain, riding with all our gear on the roof of some ageing hippie's ancient VW Microbus. I sat on the roof with nothing to hold onto as we careened down a mountain road and felt perfectly at home in a state of complete non-equilibrium for the first time in my life. Plans were changing and I was headed back to New England to take my traveling companion home and beyond then I had no idea — and that was OK with me.

I loaded the car, picked up my traveling companion at Bryson City hospital, and drove back the way we had come, retracing the all too familiar route up Interstate 95 all the way to Southern Maine. Two days later, I dropped her off at her mother's house in Kittery after a welcomed night's rest at a cheap motel directly across from the main gates of the Quantico Marine Base in Quantico, VA.

Back Where I Started

Less than two weeks after I'd quit Portsmouth for good I was back sitting on the same bench in Market Square that had launched my journey. Once again, I had tried to achieve escape velocity from the East Coast and failed. I went back to my friends I'd said goodbye to, told my story, and asked if they knew anyone else headed West . . .