Why all the harshness, you never heard of a public library for computer and internet access? So if you're not "rainbow" then why post here? We love you but no need for the negativity or Flaming. Sorry but till you have a clue keep your crappy comments to yourself and post elsewhere. Now any more Ocala reports?
always funny to see the tides of conversation turn.. i think your a bit defensive, did my comment touch a nerve? sorry by the way did not know i had to be in the ( rainbow club ) to post here.. who do i talk to for membership? you? oh yeah, here is a report on ocala, if you dont drink rainbow light beer.. wtf are you doing in the forest? where did i see love at? jesus kitchen and from grandpa.. other than that i wasted a month there.. loving you, prick.
Just grow up, get a life and go somewhere else with your FLAMING. No membership required but let me throw your words back at you... So again I ask, why post here? All you want to do is FLAME and hijack a thread. People that write things like that need help, and I hope you get some. WRONG AGAIN! We dont HAVE to love you we CHOOSE to. You have a lot of growing up to do. How about another Ocala report? arty:
plumberjohn, people will try and stir up shit sometimes. I apologize for that element of humanity. We all have it and it came up here thru our brother. It is ok. I am sure we all appreciate your sentiments but arguing can be so negative sometimes. This is a wonderful thread! It is great to see the experiences we have had at this year's Ocala has been an exercise in injecting a needed shot of Love into a sore spot. I agree with the earlier poster that it is a time for the older family to share wisdom of the Rainbow way. There may be a time when the Rainbow way is the only way and leaders of tomorrow must be taught.
Glad I did not WASTE my time going to what would have been my first gathering. Better off staying home and hanging with brothers and sistas who are not destroying Black Elks Visions.
Wow its always fun to watch true colors come out, while people try to stress why they think flaming is wrong. flaming is good in a sense, one mans stress is another mans fuel for thought.. plumberjohn has shown us all what not to do when someone is having anger issues.. on to other things... ocala regional.. personally for me it was a downer. i tried really hard to find true family there, but they were few and far between. aside from all the steely 211 and spun 16 year olds, it went ok.. but when did beer drinking become a main circle event? i dunno, glad i went, glad i saw, glad i left. no more ocala's for me.. but for those who had a blast, right on! loving you family!
this is bull i have been in the woods for 12 weeks holding camp was a big a camp movie yea you had the idiot local kids who brought booz in but they were asked or screemed to take it to a camp there was a lot of bunk drugs kids handing out doc and sayin it was lsd but all in all the main circle g funk iris fat kidz kid vill area was so laxed it was grate we had a hudge forest fire that a 13 and15 yr old kidz started we fought that fire till it was dead it kind of reminded me of the wyoming nationals when i was a rainbow baby(well i was like 4 or 5) there was no brewery at the gathering (there was at the holding camp at 25a) they made sangrea wine at the gathering but the purpose wasnt getting messed up to MOST. many blessings to kemo (g funk)for being the only person in rainbow with hot dishwashing station 18 hours a day. he is the only person i fully trust not to give me the shits
This has been a self test for me. Im trying to change the way I react to people like that. One thing that bugs me is thread hijackers. If you have a bitch, and want to change the subject start another thread, dont ruin the one you dont like. Personal attacks are wrong, period, and I just want to point out to this person where he contradicted himself and really made himself sound uneducated in the peaceful ways. Im in no way even close to perfect and never will be, but trying to be better every day. Everyone has "bad days" but when I realize I have been in the wrong I acknowledge my wrong and apologize, unlike this person who continues his personal attacks on the entire community. I forgive him tho and hope he has learned a little and in no way want to change the topic here, and thats why I always end with: Any more Ocala Reports? arty:
ocala is ocala,,,always has been a a bit rough around the edges,,always will be.. when ya have a "gathering" where every carney,festy kid,and tramp east of the mississipi winters,, yer gonna see a lotta shit.. i wernt there this year,,an havent heard from anyone that i know that was there yet.. although i do know lazy an grey,,an i find there statements a bit hypocrytical,, as they are far from high holies in the rainbow world.. all i got to say is,, yeah,, it was ocala,,again.. or,, this gathering sucks,,whens the next one? love n light
hillbilly you are very right im no high holly,every one that knows ol lazy knows i drink,but ive also learned theres a place and time for everything and i dont think main circle is the place ,im only repoting what i saw and had the pleasure of hearing others say the same things about yes ther is beutiful brothers and sisters in ocala and i didnt mean to come down to hard earleir ,but the fact is the general consensus for the 4 weeks i was in ocala was to let it go ,and hope for a change,i dont agree with that i believe in council,yes many young kids will eventually learn along the way but if we can help them by council ,shoulnt we?overall my stay in ocala was very good and ill be back next year ,and hope others will to because the only way things will change is if we change them,
you are an all or nothing thinker! if there is a little bit of schwagness the thats what needs to be said. iv been in the woods for12 weeks the good totally out wayed the bad when people brought booz in rainbowland they were yelled at by everyone and most of the time dumped it in a greywater pit i know cuz i was doing it other people got the idea and if they didnt go to a camp they stayed in there tent(about 90% of them)
ok im lost in the point of this thread.. is it to report your expierence of the ocala gathering? or is it only to tell those people who did not have the greatest time that they are lieing and have no care but for the bad that they saw? please let people tell what they expierenced and let that be that.. if you had a good time tell us about it.. and lets all stop targeting others just because they did not see or expierence all the good things that you may have.. loving my family!
i went to ocala this weekend and had the most amazing time! i met so many beautiful people and had the opportunity to reunite with old friends. we got in fri night and knew only that the fam that we were gonna camp with was by bear necessities...mmm pancakes...and since we came in the south gate it was a looooong way. as we were coming in we were greeted only with love and compassion. even one of the brothers from a camp that helped drive a car in the woods and into a tree and a lake twice helped us find our way. the next day we hiked all over venturing off to all the kitchens, the trading circle and different camps. about half way through the day a massive fire broke out. it got a little scary but it was amazing to see everyone working together to put it out. according to grampa woodstock peace, love, and hippy power!!! all in all it was a great experience and to short! i'm ready to go back home already but i guess i will have to wait until nationals hopefully in Arkansas. LUVIN YOU FAMILY!!! ~peace~love~hippy power!~
Got this e-mail this morning and welll, hmmm. Anyone else have any other takes on these stuff written about in this article? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/default.asp?issueDate=3/1/2007>3/1/2007 Email this story <http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features//util/printready.asp?id=11372> Print this story Comments: (2) WELCOME HOME! A Rainbow Family weekend of peace, love, fire and drunk aggro hippies in the woods [] By <http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features//archives/browse.asp?byline=Bob+Whitby>Bob Whitby How many hippies does it take to put out a forest fire? All of them, which in this case means the 300 to 400 who are nearby when a blaze ignites – probably from an errant campfire – and threatens to scorch a remote, tinder-dry campsite that is their temporary home. It takes hippies in a quarter-mile long bucket brigade dipping water in pots, pans, coolers, empty milk jugs, five-gallon buckets, plastic carboys and anything else that will move water from lake to tree line, where the flames are halfway up 50-foot slash pines and spreading fast in a gusty wind. And what a psychedelic firefighting crew it is: one woman dipping vessels in the lake is naked, others are wearing flowing dresses. A lot of people battling the blaze are barefoot, many of them are high. But only a few hesitate when the call comes to “save our house.” The fire is the most adrenaline-pumping scene of a strange and twisted weekend at the Rainbow Family of Living Light’s annual Florida Gathering in the Ocala National Forest. All Rainbow gatherings are a chance for “Babylonians” – Rainbow slang for those of us who don’t live in the forest full-time – to get a glimpse of a nomadic, non-hierarchical lifestyle predicated on love, acceptance, freedom and the barter system. This weekend, however, offers the added excitement of a peak at how even neo-utopian societies splinter into “us” and “them,” and how hippies pull together to save their collective ass. Take a walk There are two ways to get to Rainbowland, which is called Farles Prairie the other 50 weeks of the year. The South Gate, also called the back gate, is where Forest Road 595 intersects with the Florida Trail. Walk past the hand-pumped well the Rainbows use as a water supply and turn right at the sign that reads “welcome home.” Here the Florida Trail is a narrow, curving hiking path carved out of a stand of pine and saw palmettos on the eastern shore of Farles Lake. It’s just wide enough for a couple hippies on foot to pass. Think of it as Rainbowland’s driveway. Rainbowland is pretty spread out; it’s about a mile and one-half from Forest Road 595 to the Main Circle. On the way you pass camp Burnt the Fuck Out, That Camp, Camp Fuck Off, Shut Up and Eat It and other sites. Be on the lookout for hippie roadblocks. “Joke, toke or smoke,” slurs a dirty faced young man with bare feet a couple hundred feet along the trail. “Or you can’t pass.” He’s easily distracted though, and if you don’t have a toke or a smoke, and can’t think of a joke, just walk by. “Everybody’s bypassing,” he shouts. “Lame!” Rainbows are a friendly family, though. “Welcome home!” is a common greeting; “lovin’ you!” is another. Turn right off the Florida Trail at camp Woodstock Nation and you’re in the Trading Circle, the economic beating heart of Rainbowland, if there could be said to be such a thing. Cash is no good in the forest; the Rainbows discourage it and selling things can get them in trouble with the park rangers. But if you have camping gear, rope, knives, cigarettes, books or musical instruments to trade, you can make a deal for a pipe, artwork and pamphlets on everything from DIY repairs to DIY gynecology. RAINBOWISMS A guide to communicating with The Family A-Camp: Alcohol camp, where drinkers congregate, usually separate from the main camp. Babylon: The “real” world, i.e. everywhere outside of a gathering. Bus Village: A group of large, live-in vehicles, generally distant from the main camp which is typically not accessible by road. Focalizer: A volunteer who helps coordinate and organize regional family events, and also helps publicize them. Guns in the woods: Cops on patrol. See also six up. Kids’ Village: Where parents with young kids and expectant parents camp at a gathering. Lovin’ you! Rainbow greeting, used like “hello.” Magic Hat: The collection plate used to buy food and supplies. Movie: What’s going on around you at any given time; a scene. Om: The mystical syllable in Dharmic religions, used by Rainbows to help calm and focus. Also spelled “aum.” Six up: Cops on patrol in the woods; refers to the number of lights on top of a police cruiser. See guns in the woods. Welcome home! Rainbow greeting used when you are on your way into the woods from Babylon. – Bob Whitby Five more minutes and you’ve arrived at Main Circle, a large fire pit framed by logs. Main Circle is where the action is; at night the fire never goes out, the drums never stop playing and there’s usually somebody doing the mechanistic dance of the hippies until dawn. Main Circle is usually where you’ll find Grandpa Woodstock, the oldest and perhaps least inhibited Rainbow in Ocala. During the day when it’s warm he strolls around in his red felt hat and nothing else. At night he sports a flowing red robe that gives him the air of a bedraggled wizard out of Lord of the Rings. His hair and beard are plaited, his fingernails are painted red. He’s the unofficial historian of the Rainbow Family, shooting everything on his video camera and playing it back on a marine-battery powered TV monitor lashed to his bicycle. He says he’s got footage from gatherings dating back to 1999. “There’s a lot of love here,” he says. “I travel around the country spreading peace and love. Google me. You’ll find me all over the place.” Main Circle is also where you’ll find Darrin Selby, 46, and his Cosmic Grasshopper, a human-powered carriage that uses the weight of the passenger to lever the driver into the air in 10-foot hops. Selby’s Grasshopper is constructed of aluminum tubing covered with intricate weavings. It looks like you’d break it by stepping on it, but it’s rock solid. The cavernous interior features slings in which you can recline or sleep. It’s the latest model of Selby’s line of “Skedaddlehoppers,” which are part art and part social statement. “My message is simple,” he says. “Slow down. Slow way down. Have it all with you so you don’t have to go so fast back and forth to get it all.” Back in 2002, Selby and his contraption were a little too slow for the authorities in his hometown of Woodstock, New York, however. They cited him for impeding traffic, a minor flap that made the The New York Times thanks to Selby’s counter-cultural lifestyle and his knack for whimsical engineering. North past Main Circle the trail passes camps Sit Down & Kick It (along with Sit Down & Side Kick It), Bear Necessities and On Your Way Café before ending at Forest Road 599A and A-Camp. Bring comfortable shoes; a walk from one end of Rainbowland to the other is about five miles. There’s a reason the two entrances are far apart; each draws a different kind of Rainbow, and the two don’t always mix. Coming from the South Gate it’s all peace and love; at the north entrance the party never ends. The drug of choice at the Main Circle is pot. A-Camp awash in booze; the “A” stands for alcohol. Arjay Sutton, one of the Ocala gathering’s “focalizers,” talks often about the differences between the Rainbows drawn to each camp. Gatherings aren’t parties, he says; they are family reunions, the point of which is to learn to live in peace and love one another. He fears the sides are drifting apart, and resentment is building. There’s evidence of that on the Internet. The web site for the Florida Gathering described A-Camp this way: “Bus village, Raven’s Nest Bar, agro drunk block likely. … Individuals at this camp believe they need to stop and inspect every vehicle entering. … Watch the sugar sand and beware of aggressive intoxicated people stopping cars. Best not to use this entrance at night.” Rainbows and The Man The first Rainbow Gathering was held in Colorado in 1972. It was supposed to be a one-time, four-day event. Instead it happened again the next year, and in subsequent years, on federal land in a different state. Last year’s national gathering, in the Routt National Forest north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., drew 20,000 people. It made headlines when two Rainbow Family members were sentenced to six months in jail for stealing spoiled produce from behind a grocery store. Their sentences were later reduced to a week and both were released with time served. Ocala is a regional gathering, and a lot smaller. The National Forest Service, which issues permits for the Rainbows, estimates that between 500 and 700 people will attend the Ocala gathering during its two-week run Feb. 14 to 28. “Ten years ago we’d see gatherings of 1,200 or so,” says Denise Rains, a Forest Service spokesperson in Tallahassee. “It’s dwindled.” Back in the day, the Rainbows refused to cooperate with the Forest Service by getting permits. That led to clashes between the feds and the hippies. Roadblocks set up by the cops on main arteries leading into the were common, says Sutton, as were feds patrolling the camps. But for the last five years the Rainbows have pulled permits for their stay in Ocala, which seems to have increased the peace. “Nobody expected the permit process to work,” he says. “But it does. What it does is set up rules of engagement between the Forest Service and the hippies.” Sutton reports that some hippies have been stopped by cops this year. But law enforcement presence is negligible on the last weekend of the gathering; there isn’t a cop in sight on the roads leading into Rainbowland or in the camp itself. Only one call of “guns in the woods” – Rainbow slang for rangers on patrol – goes through the camp all weekend. Rains characterizes the relationship between the feds and the Rainbows as non-adversarial. “That group has been coming to the forest for 10 years. We have a longstanding relationship with them. We sort of plan for them to be there and we don’t really have a lot of problems.” And Sutton has changed his mind about working with the government in the last few years. He is part of a new branch of the Rainbows dubbed the American Rainbow Rapid Response, a sub-group of hippies who put their skill of feeding a lot of people with few resources, learned in the woods over decades, to work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The idea of hippies doing anything “rapidly” sounds like punch line fodder, but the Rainbows were feeding 3,000 to 4,000 meals a day in Waveland, Miss. They worked alongside evangelical Christians in a cooperative effort the Los Angeles Times dubbed “A gospel and granola bond.” “Waveland has really influenced the way we see the government,” says Sutton. “We used to see them as the enemy. Now we see them as a partner.”
Here's more (too long for one post): Trouble in paradise Every night at sunset when the call “circle!” goes up, hippies wander alone and in groups to the Main Circle. After forming a circle, or something resembling one, the Rainbows hold hands and “om” three times; three deep breaths in, three long “oms” out. Then a cheer goes up and everyone sits down on the ground with their plate and utensils in front of them. Two women carry the “Magic Hat” around the circle, singing a tune about how it turns money into food. It’s the only time Rainbows will hit you up for cash at a gathering. If you don’t have anything to contribute, that’s fine too. It’s entirely possible to live in the woods for weeks with the Rainbows and not have a cent to your name. [] A handful of the camps are also kitchens, and each kitchen brings a dish to Main Circle, enough to feed a couple hundred people. They walk the circle, scooping food from huge pots or coolers on to people’s plates. Rainbow food is hearty and bland. If you want spices, bring your own. Friday night’s menu is pasta salad, rice and beans, chopped lettuce salad with a squirt of oil and vinegar, and a five-bean salad. Rainbow food is also vegetarian; at least the fare served at Main Circle. On Friday one kitchen brings a chicken and rice dish – reportedly containing a pinch of ganja – and all hell breaks loose. Someone starts yelling about the sanctity of the circle and how it’s never cool to bring meat, someone else joins in and the offending kitchen is shouted out of the circle. That’s the Rainbow way; there are no leaders, only people with ideas. You put your idea out there and if it attracts a following, it’s probably good. A group will coalesce around a good idea, and something gets done. If your idea is met with silence or shrugs, it’s not so good. After a few of those nobody listens to you. Of course non-hierarchical decision making has its drawbacks, as is demonstrated after dinner Friday. What do you do if, say, a group of drunk, agro A-Campers is on their way to the Main Circle to air their grievances, in a car? “Ninja mission to block the trail!” suggests a Rainbow named Doc. “We put a log down in the trail 10 feet in front of their car! Then another one 10 feet after that!” “There’s no way they can make it,” suggests another family member. “Let ’em stay out in the woods. You can’t bring a car to Main Circle.” “We can’t leave a car in the woods!” shouts a third. “It’s not like it’s going to decompose. We need 15 hippies to pick it up and carry it out.” Finally a consensus is reached: A small, calm party will confront the A-Campers, hear what they have to say, then help push the car out of the woods. But as a few hippies leave to hike down the dark trail to where the car is stuck, more join in. Soon there are 30 to 40 of them clustered at the spot where the car is wedged between two saplings, its headlights still burning. They made it within an eighth of a mile to Main Circle on the twisting, narrow trail, but they aren’t going any further. If the Main Circle hippies didn’t stop them, the lake right next to the muddy footpath would. The scene quickly takes on the feeling of an angry mob storming the castle, except this bunch is armed with bongos and chants instead of pitchforks and torches. One of the A-Campers jumps on the hood of the car, beer in hand. “We’re fucking loving you, you fucking assholes!” he shouts. “Get out the duct tape,” someone else yells. (Duct-taping an agro hippie to a tree is one way of getting them to settle down.) “Everybody help me pick it up and turn it around!” yells someone else in the crowd. “The problem is there is nowhere that the car will fit, it’s just not possible,” another person counters. “And you can’t back it up all the way to Front Gate.” “Way to steal our peace!” It’s complete hippie pandemonium in the woods, with barking dogs, calls for cigarettes, laughing, drumming and one woman shrieking, “I love you! I care about you! You are part of my family! Please make me safe. Is there anyway you can make me safe?” The A-Camper on the hood jumps off and into the crowd. In any other situation that would have touched off a fight. But this mob begins chanting, “We love you, we love you” in unison. There is no fight. In the end a few people help free the car by pushing it backwards toward A-Camp. People filter back to the Main Circle where the drumming and dancing resumes. There’s tension at all gatherings between the A-Campers and the rest of the family; the former want to get out in the woods and get fucked up, the latter reject society and are earnestly trying to live with as few of its rules and limitations as possible. Many of them travel full-time with the family, moving from forest to forest in a series of never-ending gatherings. Sutton says later that the car incident Ocala A-Campers felt slighted by the description of them and their site on the Internet. He and others hope the situation doesn’t deteriorate into a war. “They’ll come after us with sticks and we’ll be sitting there going ‘we love you.’” Fire! Hippies, you might be surprised to learn, can be industrious. Take Rainbowland’s water supply, for example. Five-hundred people and several kitchens consume a lot of water daily, and every gallon of it has to be hauled from the hand pump near Forest Road 595 to two plastic 275-gallon containers located near Main Circle and A-Camp. The best way to get it to Main Circle is across Farles Lake by motorboat, and there’s a boat making the run back and forth all day long. Getting water up to A-Camp means driving it there in a truck. [] A few family members moved to the site early to start preparations. They built a dock out of dead trees on the Main Circle side of Farles Lake, and they constructed an eight-foot tall stage out of the same material by lashing it together with cord. (“It’s ROSHA approved,” jokes Sutton.) Festival entertainment includes a dog show, a hippie parade and a talent show. After the gathering family members will stay on site as long as 10 days to make sure everything is cleaned up. The goal is to leave the place better than they found it by clearing out deadfall that could stoke a fire. Speaking of fire, one of the few rules in Rainbowland is that all campfires have to be in a proper pit. But there are no safety inspectors, as that would imply some kind of hierarchy. Shit happens, as it did on Saturday afternoon. When the call of “fire!” first goes around the hippie grapevine, no one seems overly concerned; it’s impossible to understand the gravity of the situation until you’re confronted with it. But the situtation is serious; the fire is in a line of trees that is burning fast and hot. All that stands between the tree line and Rainbowland is a field of grass as dry as straw. Depending on which way the wind shifts, the flames and smoke could quickly cut off access to the trails, leaving no option but the lake if things get out of hand. Once the situation is clear, non-hierarchical decision making is scrapped. Time to follow orders. “Get buckets!” shouts a bare-chested man in dreadlocks. “Form a line family! If you want to live, form a line!” Anything and everything that will hold water is produced almost immediately and people charge into the lake and start filling them. It only takes a few minutes for the first buckets of water to reach the fire. It’s dangerous work at the front of the line; if the wind shifts people up there could be trapped. Someone on a cell phone has already called the Forest Service and a helicopter with a water bucket is on the way. The news brings confusion. Will the hippie bucket brigade get in the way? Should they just let the man put out the fire? “The chopper is coming, everybody back!” shouts one man, and the line starts to shrink. “No, we need to get water on the fire!” shouts another. Somebody else says the helicopter is going to drop chemicals on the fire and will be here any minute, speculation that sends people running back to camp to get out of the way. When the chopper shows up and starts making runs between the lake and the fire, a cheer goes up and the line reforms. What was a formless gathering of dropouts is transformed into a ruthless water-moving machine that is bringing thousands of gallons from the lake the fire a quarter mile away. One woman walks up and down the line with drinking water for the hippies while a young man mops brows and offers hugs. Axes, picks and shovels materialize and there is no shortage of people willing to use them to make sure that hot spots don’t reignite. Meanwhile, the chopper continues to make runs between the lake and the trees. It’s a solid hour before the first Forest Service ground crews get to site, and when they arrive there is little left for them to do. “You guys outperformed some of our crews,” says of the Forest Service firefighters. “The guys in the chopper said, ‘Damn, I think they’re going to get it out.’” Two hours after the fire started the call “all hippies out of the woods!” finally comes. The Rainbow Family gathers once more around Main Circle for a round of oms and a few cheers of “hippie power, fuck yeah!” “Give us the end of the world and we perform great,” says family member Aaron Funk, a coordinator for American Rainbow Rapid Response. “Otherwise, we are kind of a headache.” <mailto:bwhitby@orlandoweekly.com>bwhitby@orlandoweekly.com >Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 12:48:27 -0800 (PST) >From: Arjay Sutton >I think you'll find this interesting reading..... ><http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=11372>http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=11372 >Much Love, >Arjay ><http://floridagathering.info>www.floridagathering.info >www.REMARelief.org
wow! that about summed it up. that kind of put everything into a layman-friendly fairly accurate picture of ocala. that brother did a pretty damn good job of writing that article, for a babylonian. ocala, as usual, was a beautiful consciousness-raising sunset-watching drumming dancing pancake-eating dishwashing cold-at-night hugging happiness that i'll carry with me as one of my favorites. could we use a little more organization and a lot more people pitching in? yes. should we worry about this division between the "a-campers" and the "real rainbows" that seems to be getting bigger and more volotile? most definately. but that's rainbow. there will always be group dynamics and heros and drama queens (male and female) and a call to be a more conscious being. but we are the vanguard for a new society and that position is never easy. loving ya'll. special thanks to sid (@welcome home), chemo, bickle (for reteaching us our oral history in the form of our chants), and forkman & susan (who went WAY above and beyond to make sure both sides of the fence had drinking water & supplies & no one got hit by a tree during the storm), cowboy ogre, zac monster (for adjusting my karma), woodstock esp. cody & timekeeper, flickerfeather @ info, atrayou, kind and little bear, hummingbyrd, casey earthican, moose, and of course seed & buckaroo - my tribe. can't wait for nationals!! in love and light, chime
i thought ya'll might like this story too. http://www.weblamer.com/2_19_2007_From_hippies_to_punks_in_a_single_day.html
It never ceases to amaze me how different people can attend the same event and have such radically different experiences. About Ocala 2007, I wish I could say that a good time was had by all but, judging from this thread, it appears that is not the case. Personally, I was there for about ten days and had an awesome time. The gathering was, for me anyway, peaceful and relaxing. I saw a handful of old friends and made a handful of new ones. I chopped wood and carried water and all that good stuff, hell yeah. I spent most of my time hanging with the fat kids and helping around their kitchen. Those fat kids freakin' rock. One thing about Ocala: Sometimes it seems like there are large numbers of first time gatherers and not that many experienced gatherers. We get dozens of young, college-aged, kids from Gainsville, St. Augustine and Orlando coming to the gathering and many of them have no clue as to where they are when they get to rainbowland. To further complicate matters, sometimes there is nobody around to offer them an intelligent explaination of rainbow. But, for the most part, they are bright young adults who are easy to talk to and are usually eager to get along with others. For example, I approached some folks who came from Gainsville to their first gathering with a huge boom box. They were blasting Bob Marley while hanging around the camp that they made within earshot of main circle. I asked them politely to turn off the tunes and they were totally chill about everything. They weren't trying to bother nobody but they just didn't know any other way to camp than with a cd player. There were some problems with alphabet crap and a few injuries (burns, snake bite, dog bite) and a few arrests. I missed the forest fire and the car in the woods incident because I left well before the 28th.
one question for the guy who said "pretty good for a babylonian"....where does the food come from that you eat at the gathering......hmmm I guess babylonians grow it........freedom isn't free my friend. I guess a babylonian built your computer too.
