Lutsen
June 1990 the Star Tribune ran a story about the upcoming Rainbow Gathering in the forest near Lutsen, Minnesota. It showed a bare assed young woman running through a grove of trees and mentioned that there would be free food and drugs. My girlfriend and I and about 10,000 other twin citians decided to go. We hitchhiked. A pedantic rainbow dipstick named Joby picked us up and drove us to the gathering.
Upon arrival, we walked for miles with hundreds of other people towards the drumming in the distance. The organizers of the event achieved a beautiful disorder for the whole thing. We walked by unconscious people being licked by dogs. There were lots of naked people. I watched a guy drink bug repellant out of a little camoflaged plastic bottle believing it was liquid LSD. "gahhhhh, GAHHHHHH.", he said. There were vagrants having fistfights. There was no clean water anywhere. An agreed upon acre of blasted land served as an open air toilet. Walking past people with dysentery leaning against trees, I dizzily stepped within sight of a buzzing mound of human waste when I had to relieve myself.
The free food amounted to a lorry of watermelons that we carried to a central spot for the interdependence day celebration on July 4. Picture a long line of people, many of them naked, carrying watermelons through the forest. Interdependence involved a huge circle of people holding hands in the forest with some non-charismatic guru saying too many words. I couldn't concentrate. It was so hot. I just wanted to run away with the watermelon I was entrusted with and eat it, which I eventually did.
Wendy and I failed as rainbow people. Joby told me that he was going to "Tune my negative energy right out" at one point. Wendy got all territorial about the little patch of ground we had claimed for our campsite. We kept our watermelon for ourselves. Still, it was the most memorable fourth of July I have ever had.
6:10:38 AM
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