Rainbow Family's free-form campout draws thousands to Gifford Pinchot forest

GIFFORD PINCHOT NATIONAL FOREST, Skamania County —

There is something about the smiling, contented, mystically philosophizing members of the Rainbow Family that gets a reaction from outsiders — whether it's befuddlement, scorn or maybe a little envy.

They're camping out, happily chanting — and you're what? Worrying about your next mortgage payment, and getting an ulcer?

By Sunday morning, the Forest Service says something like 12,000 to 15,000 people who call themselves members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light had trekked to remote, mushy meadows here at an altitude of 3,200 feet, as "one human family gathering together on the land."

The narrow dirt roads leading to the Skookum Meadows site were clogged with at least 1,700 parked vehicles with license plates from all over the country, and an updated count was almost impossible because of the congestion.

Although people started arriving days earlier, the event officially began Friday and goes until Thursday, with the highlight being a giant om-ing "Circle of Peace" that begins at sunrise Monday and lasts until about noon.

They didn't mind when it rained, didn't mind having to walk through ankle-deep mud in a meadow still wet from the late snow, didn't mind squatting over footwide trenches used as latrines. They just repeated their mantra, "Welcome home," sometimes followed by, "We love you."

They were proud to be associated with something out of a time capsule from the 1960s: Some even looked the part, with dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirts and transportation consisting of an old school bus or a VW van.

That's right, hippies. They never went away.

And now there is a new generation of 18- and 25-year-olds talking about how there's nothing wrong with peace, love and understanding.

This is the 40th annual national Rainbow Gathering, held each year in a different part of the country, but always on national-forest land.

For some making the long drive, it meant lugging backpacks, water bottles, food and even babies a mile or more, as hundreds packed a narrow, dirt Forest Service road that leads 5-½ miles uphill.

Event veterans brought along everything from carts to wheelbarrows to carry all that weight. There also were a few pregnant women and at least one person in a wheelchair.

Eventually, a makeshift shuttle system was set up, consisting of volunteered pickup trucks and whatever vehicle was offered.

"Building sand castles"

The Rainbow Family is proud that — with no spokesmen, no official leaders, no formal structure — decisions are made by "free form counsels" open to anyone. Just show up and start talking.

Consuelo Holguin, whose children grew up going to the annual Rainbow Gatherings, explains her 34 years of attendance.

"It's a pilgrimage. I have five kids, all coming here. We teach survival skills to kids that've never been out of the city. We come from all the world and we pray for peace," she says. She's got the earth-mother look, that kind of earnest gaze.

Some of her family is staying in a large tepee made from 26 poles, each 20 feet long. The poles were strapped to a Ford pickup and driven here from Colville, where some of the family live.

When the kids were young, the family would form a caravan to travel to the gatherings.

Now, one of the sons, Josue Holguin, 32, a pizza cook in Montreal, flew in just to be here. He's been to 16, 17 of the gatherings, he says.

He remembers being little, and his parents carrying him, "Nice and warm and cuddly in a little backpack."

He keeps returning. "You can look people in the eye instead of staying in a bubble," he says.

You interview people at a Rainbow Gathering, and you also get a lot of one-name monikers.

"Is a hippie someone who is tolerant of all types of people? Celebrating and praying for world peace and healing? Then I'm proud to be a hippie," says a guy who identifies himself as Riverstone.

Riverstone doesn't look much like a hippie.

Just a 39-year-old, clean-cut married guy with four kids, a wife who has a cleaning business, and who is plenty busy as a farrier — a horseshoer — in Eugene, Ore. He'd fit right in as a cowboy, but his heart is with the Rainbow people.

The family had driven up here in their Dodge Ram diesel, and Riverstone had let all his customers know the name of another farrier while he was on vacation. He is overjoyed to be out of cellphone range.

He says the two weeks he took off from work is his longest vacation in 10 years. But what he's doing here sure looks more like work.

He has set up a kitchen.

Out of logs and soil he packed, he built a 7-by-6-foot stove, brought along six big cooking pots and a grill, and set up "Camp Eugene" to serve free food. He cooks up rice, beans and heated-up tortillas. He makes salsa and salad.

At Rainbow Family gatherings, there are no commercial booths, and no money is exchanged except when a "Magic Hat" is passed around to buy provisions.

As people line up for free food, Riverstone says he couldn't be happier. For just a few days, he says, "We're building sand castles."

Quieter than rock

There are no portable generators for electricity, so forget about a resemblance to an outdoor rock festival. It is acoustic guitars, sitting by a fire, bartering for trinkets, jewelry. And plenty of pot.

The gathering, however, frowns on booze.

Down the road, there's an "A Camp" for "chronic alcohol drinkers."

The national forests that get chosen as that year's site for a Rainbow Gathering don't find out until a few weeks before it happens.

It is not a lottery they look forward to winning, but after 40 years of sometimes-contentious dealings between the two, the Forest Service has developed an operating plan that it presents to the free-form counsels.

With no leaders, nobody from the Rainbow Family actually signs the document, but the service says it expects the gathering to adhere to it.

The rules include using only dead or down firewood for campfires; using slit trenches 12 to 18 inches wide for latrines, which are covered with lime or wood ash, and then dirt; and keeping dogs on leashes.

The Rainbow Family likes dogs, and Christy Covington, spokeswoman for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, says the agency estimates one dog for every three people.

That would place the dog population this year at 4,000 or more, a rather astounding estimate. Among the concerns for the agency, says Covington, is that dogs might trample the creeks where threatened bull trout live.

Police draw attention

There seems to be a ritualized dance between the Forest Service and the Rainbow Family.

When someone like Covington, or a Forest Service botanist walks through the site, people yell out, "Seven Ups." When they spot an armed law-enforcement officer, they yell, "Six Up."

A sight familiar to those who remember going to festivals in their youth is the police traffic stop.

Forest Service law enforcement is here in force on the remote roads of the forest.

Barb Severson, special agent in charge of the Pacific Northwest region, says the agency has brought in Forest Service police from other regions.

On Thursday night, on one of the roads leading to the gathering, you could drive by one Forest Service police SUV, lights flashing, making a traffic stop of a van loaded with camping gear. A minute later down the road, there'd be another police SUV, and another stop. A short distance later, another police SUV, and a third traffic stop.

The Rainbow people say they are targeted for such minor infractions as a bad taillight, just so they can be searched for pot and other drugs. Severson says the Forest Service stops vehicles for "appropriate probable cause."

Cleanup lauded

After the gathering ends, volunteers remain to clean up and reseed with approved Forest Service native seed mix.

A July 9, 2008, story in The Oregonian says that a year after a Rainbow Gathering of 27,000 people in 2007 at the Ochoco National Forest in Central Oregon, the site "shows no sign that they were ever there."

The story quotes a ranger, "I'm impressed. I never thought this place would recover so quickly."

As for the locals this year, although some were apprehensive at first, they seem to have taken the Rainbow Family in stride.

Adam Burhop says that in the past week, he ordered $40,000 of extra pop, water, produce, tobacco and, yes, rolling papers for his Cougar Store, all of which he sold for around $55,000.

A June 20 story in The Daily News in Longview quoted Beth Rogers, who with her husband, Howard Rogers, owns the Lone Fir Resort & Cafe in Cougar, Cowlitz County.

"I'm nervous as a business owner," the story quotes Rogers, adding that, "Rogers said she's heard of the visitors blocking the road, defecating in public, abusing a dog, even urinating on the produce in a Woodland (a town by I-5) grocery store."

Then the Rainbow people actually started arriving.

There was one incident in which a group of four used the cafe bathroom to wash up and left water all over the floor, and clogged the toilets.

But also, four or five families rented rooms at the resort, and others ate at the cafe.

"They were very nice, very respectful, told us about their camp," says Rogers.

She also noticed something else about a group that she has heard shuns technology.

"They were plugging in their cellphones and checking their email," says Rogers.

You can only carry laidbackness so far.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com