The first story I want to tell about the rainbow gathering is an adventure I went on near to the beginning of my stay. There was a lot of hype going on around how beautiful a certain spot was called The Source. It was apparently beautiful, sacred, almost supernatural. The sight of the Rainbow gathering was at the meeting of two rivers: one river had gone through a small town and a fair bit of farmland and was warm and green with farm efluent. We called it the green river. The river it met with was a bit smaller, much, much colder and had a stunning mineral blue colour like Maleign Lake or Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. We called this one The Blue River. The blue river supposedly gushed out of a hole in the ridge, surrounded by spiky rocks and stalagmites and stalagtites. It is quite incredible that this river could emerge from the earth because of it's size: about 20 feet accross in most places and six feet deep and moving roughly the same speed as an able swimmer.
I woke up earlier than usual one day to discover this natural wonder and go on a
water mission at the same time (fetching drinking water for the Raibow kitchen). Chris was still feeling sick from a bug that I caught a couple of days later. He wanīt feeling up to it, so I set off on my own. I had not been on a water mission before and so did not exactly know what it entailed, and I had just missed three other guys who were doing a water mission that morning, but I was encouraged to catch up with them because there were still a few water containers left to be filled that they hadnīt been able to carry. I vaguely knew that I was setting out to get some clean water for cooking and drinking from a hole in the ridge, so I assumed that I would be visiting the mythical Source. Following some vague instructions I jogged along the path to catch up with the rest of the water mission. I was carrying four empty ~5L containers of various sizes and a length of rope to hold them together. I knew that I had to swim back, so all that I was wearing were my swim trunks and my imitation crocks, which I
had fitted with carribeners to clip on to the outside of my backpack, or in this case my water bottle rope. I was also wearing my glaces.
Keeping up a good jogging pace over the uneven terrain I caught up to the water mission just before they made it to the spring that supplied the Rainbow's water. It turned out that the source of our drinking water was just a little spring and that The Source of the blue river was further up. I asked if anybody wanted to come with me to the other source, but they had been picking their way gingerly along the path that I had been jogging, and didn't feel like an adventure. One of them said that it was pretty far away and when we established that none of us knew exactly where it was, they decided against it. Furthermore we had already reached a pretty special place. The spring that supplied our water consisted of water gushing out of a hole in the rock here too, but this one was about 15cm diameter. It too was surrounded by sharp jagged rocks and before the water made it to the river there was
a little magical pool. The whole area was dim and humid from the dense overhead tree canopy. The whole scene was straight out of some sort of tropical fairy tale.
Assuming that the source would be no more than an hour long hike, I set out on the simple task of following the river back from where it came. The trail became more and more ambiguous unitl it was nothing but a collection of cow tracks held together by my imagination and desire to see path. There were many cow trails, but they all lead to and from the river and the cow field, I guess for drinking purposes, so none of them followed the river consistantly. At one point I figured that I had found the source, because I heard some white water, but the river continued onwards and I decided that it must have just been a steep part of the river or a big log just under the surface, disturbing the water flow. I admitted to myself that my cow trail, now little more than a churned up river-side bog, was not leading me anywhere and decided to climb the ridge to get a big picture
view of the river. I walked along the ridge for a while and established that the river took another turn ahead and so I decided to cut past the loop by crossing the river. I found another cow trail that lead me back down to the river side and there discovered an old rusted machete mostly covered in mud. I washed it off, decided that it was too decrepit to belong to anyone and too it with me for the next leg of the journey.
I was picking my way down to the river when I heard a tremendous splash. I looked around expecting to see a person or a large animal, but I saw nothing. There was a branch overhanging the river that whatever-it-was must have jumped from, but no sign of life anywhere. I stayed very still and listened and looked for the culprit, but there was nothing to be seen. I slowly decide the coast was clear and started wading across the river with my rope tied in a bowline around my waste at one end and around the water containers and the machete handle on the other. The far side of the bank was at
a bit of an incline and was very muddy. Too slippery for my gripless rubber shoes. I took them off and squelched mud between my toes. I was buity enjoying the sensation whenSPLASH! There it was again! But this time I had caught it out of the corner of my eye. A huge iguana had falen gracelessly into the water. I had not seen it return to its perch and it had been camoflaged well enough for me to overlook it, but in it's split second of awkward airtime, it was unmistakeable. I remembered Cezar at the farm where Chris and I wwoofed in Puerto Escondido telling us to watch for Iguanas falling from the trees. I had laughed, but falling was the right word. It was definitely not a dive. It looked like the Iguana was dead in the air. The curious thing was that I never saw it swimming away. I imagined an agrevated prehistoric looking iguana swimming around underwater, masked by the sun's reflection on the surface. I vaguely knew that they were vegetarian, but I was a lot more certain that look badass, and there are a lot of vegetarian animals that you shouldnīt mess with. Since then I have been to a zoo where an information panel explained that when Iguanas feel threatened they jump into the water, swim to the bottom and often wedge themselves under a rock, where they can remain without breathing for as long as half an hour - not a very intimidating behaviour.
I squeezed some mud between my toes and set off up the ridge on the new side of the river to see the lay of the river beyond. The grass was very long, about chest hight and razor sharp. Also there were various spiky plants. I was glad to have the machete even though it did more pushing and separating than cutting. Under the grass, the ground was quite uneven and a sudden small drop off would take me by surprise and I would find my self stumbling in undergroath well over my head. I made it to the top of the ridge and found that the river made another snaking turn around a ridge on the other side. I was contemplating whether and how to cross the river for another shortcut when I heard a very low pitch humm. A single, very large, jet black hornet-like creature was buzzing towards me. Wanting to discourage it, but not aggrevate it, I swung halfheartedly in it's direction with the flat side of the machete. In one fluid move it backed off, arced around behind me and I felt a sharp burning sensation just above my swim trunks. In shock, I rubbed at it, swung the machete aimlessly and stumbled quickly away. The solitary creature must have been satisfied because it didn't persue me, but my mind raced with all the potential insect dangers. The poison was swelling but didn't seem to be spreading. There was no stinger to remove. I couldn't think of any giant lone wasp-born diseases. I figured that the best thing would be to get into the cold water. I made it down the ridge and across some shrubs that grew out into the river along the surface. I swam across and the burning soothed, but a distinct pain remained at in the middle of the swelling where the skin had been punctured.
On the other side of the river there were more cow trails that I followed along the river until I lost sight of water in the undergrowth. To get back in sight of the river meant hacking spiky vines and navigating dense undergroath on a steep downward slope. At one point when I thought I should once again be able to see the river, there was only a marsh. I backtracked and wandered cow trails fruitlessly in circles for a while. There were termites nests everywhere, though not many of them were in use. I have heard that termites and ants are very important to this ecosystem and that their presence is closely related to the health of the forest. I think that their main role is in breaking down dead wood quickly. Termite eaten wood in that forest was very dry, despite the humidity, and crunches easily when stepped on.
Frustrated with my cow trails, I decided another approach: to follow the bank of the river. Once I had gotten back to the river I made it about twenty feet before giving up. The flora was just too thick. My next brilliant idea was swimming and pulling myself against the current until the river bank opened up. This was very tireing and I soon gave up (the empty bottles and machete were trailing a couple meters behind me as well). I realized that I had no idea how much further The Source was, and figured that I had given it a pretty good go. Maybe I could come back with Chris another day and find a different approach. I held onto my bundle of empty water bottles for flotation and started to drift with the current downstream.
The float down the streem was a dazzlingly vivid display of life and greenness passing me slowly by. I was suspended in the water, floating effortlessly along with my empty water bottles on a fantastic tour, guided by a small, snaking, bright blue river. Akk! What the hell! I swished my hand around my back and legs, where I had just felt some small bites. Looking down into the water I saw some small fish- Pirhanas! No don't be stupid Ian, they are just little fish nibbling my dead skin, but - Ouch! Every now and then they could really get you!
I found that the fish would leave me alone if I slowly moved around constantly, but if I stayed still for two seconds they would start nibbling again, aggressively. I saw a few more iguanas jump into the river as I approached and I calmed my iguana fears by waving the machete back and forth under water to deter them from attacking me (not knowing that they were probably looking for a rock to hold their breath under). I never got a good look at the iguanas, just momentary images as they fell through the air. One of them was huge, its body at least two feet long plus tail, and some would drop from perches in the trees several meters up in the air.
I saw a little lizard apparently run across the water like the Jesus Lizard. I thought that only one kind of lizard could do that, maybe my eye was somehow tricked.
I got a big start when a large black thing appeared in the corner of my eye up in a tree, much bigger than an iguana. I don't know what I thought it was, but my shock gave way to laughter when I identified it as a big black goose. It looked way out of place to me somehow.
Carefully navigating the sunken logs and low branches, I made it to the white water that I had heard at the beginning of the adventure, but this was no sudden drop in the river level or sunken branch, it was a tributary stream, and breathtakingly beautiful. Along the sides of the stream were sharp coral like at the spring and The Source, and it poured down into the blue river at a decent incline and with it's treacherously pitted and spiked rock stream bed, it made a whitewater sound that I had heard on my cow trail earlier. The sides of the stream were just as treacherous as the stream bed, but covered with lichen and moss. I guessed thatnI had been mistaken about which river was which and figured that this must be the entrance to The Source, and that I had followed some other river that likely went on for miles. I put down the machete so as to have one less thing to worry about and picked my way carefully along the spiky rock. The special thing about the side of the stream was that the solid rock curves up and slightly over the stream like in a water-slide, giving the impression that it used to be a huge underground tunnel housing a huge river which would gush through it under pressure though I doubt that was the case. It was probably some other marvel of geology. Some people said that the spikiness of the rock was because it was ancient corel, but since then I have seen other ancient corel rock and it looked slightly different and more like living coral. With this stuff the word īvulcanicī springs to mind thought I donīt know why. It could well be a different kind of ancient coral.
Anticlimacticly the stream leveled off and slowed down, this was not The Source. It was however an enchanting series of pools and jungle linked by lazily flowing water and I wondered if this lead to a majic hole in the ridge too. It turned out however that of all the people that I talked to about it afterwards, I had ventured the furthest along it, and on my trip I found no indication of where it lead to.
I worked my way up the stream swimming through the ten-foot-deep ponds and wading through the connecting streams. There were some supernatural trees, growing gnarled our of the gothic features on the rock. There were fish in most of the ponds and several different types too, but what blew me away was looking at the canopy: vines connecting exotic trees into an intricate tapestry, continuous from the side of the stream up to the high branches of the trees and then up further still following the side of the almost vertical mountain/knoll which overlooked the Rainbow sight.
I kept on coming to apparent impasses, then scrambling over a log or ducking under water past a few branches, then would find the stream winding hapily onwards. I found a couple of springs trickling out from the side of the mountain, and then the stream split. The narrower rout was almost plugged by a boulder, though there was unough space for the water to trickle under it, or around it I imagine in the rainy season. I was hearing some squawking and screeching from the trees overhead, but I thought nothing of it, assuming that it was just a couple of excited bird of some species that I would probably have seen before. I climbed through a space at the side of the boulder and on the other side I was awed at the sight of my very first wild monkey.
It was well up in the whipy branches of a tall tree, maybe thirty meters directly upwards and three horizontally away from me. It was making a fuss, shaking the tree that it was in and the branch of another tree that overlapped into the first. The monkey had hold with all four limbs and it's tail. It was howling, and screaming, but not in any particular direction. I noticed that there was another one a way off, also making it's noise. Every now and then a small branch would land on the other side of the stream reinforcing how close the first monkey was to me horizontally. The monkey wasn't about to get used to my presence, calm down and stop yelling, and he wasn't about to run away either, he just kept shifting his grip on the tree now and then and shaking it vigorously. At one point something fell quickly into the stream with a plop. It wasn't a fruit, so I think it must have been poo. I sat down and quietly stared at the monkey, wondering how it's perception and thoughts and feelings compare to mine. I thought of how plentiful the jungle must be to support creatures that look like little people.
Everyone I tell this story to asks me what they looked like, how big they were, what colour and length their hair was, what the cry sounded like, but even though I got a good look and watche them for a few minutes, I am not sure. I'm not strictly sure that this happens to other people but it was the same effect as sometimes happens to me when I meet a stunningly beautiful girl and stare into her eyes for a timeless instant, then, carried away by the moment, I become aware that words have just been exchanged and I realise that their name has gone in one ear and out the other. Then I realise that I havn't even retained the colour of the eye which had me so absorbed. It was like that with my first monkeys. I do remember some things, it's body was probably about a meter tall, from head to butt, I think it was covered all over with medium length furr: bage I think, but I'm really not sure. I think they were shilouetted against the brightness of the sky. For the life of me I can't remember how the monkey's scream went. I remember that I thought it was more like a bird squawk than what you think of as a monkey noise, but I'm not sure how much of the memory has been reconstructed after the intense moment, because I'm not even sure if that description fits with a monkey species that lives in the area, but I have been told that they were 'probably howler monkeys'.
At any rate, I eventually admitted to myself that I was probably stressing the poor things out and so I carried on along the stream in a dreamy mood. The stream met back up with the part that had forked away before the boulder and after some more scrambling and swimming I eventually, reluctantly gave up on finding the rivers source and decided to head back for home. The monkeys were nowhere to be seen on the way back, but the canopy held renewed interest. On the way back I imagined monkeys on all of the magnificent features: vines, epiphites, branches, deadwood.
I want to talk more about the vines. Some of them grow downwards and then apparently decide that they are too impatient to wait for soil and somehow grow into sizeable plants suspended in air. Other vines hang tens of feet down from tall trees, almost down to the river, and then continue back almost as high to another tree. How could something like that grow? The gap they bridge is quite fantastic, and if they manage to reach accross, why do they then grow the big sag? My favourite vine though is the one that grows down to the river and then sprouts a plant. The plant does not send roots down to the river borrom, it just acts as a top-anchored floating island, then bits of debris catch on the plant and stick and start to decompose, eventually different plants grow out of this decomposed plant material and so you get an island of several plants that doesn't touch the river floor, tied to an overhanging tree, taught against the current.
I filled my bottles with water from the spring near the fork in the stream and made my way with the current down to the end of the streem. the las bit was difficult to navigate with the sharp rocks and my burden of water. I swam my way without incident all the way past the other spring to the Rainbow Gathering sight. With perfect timing I heard the fifteen minute food warning for our morning meal (early afternoon today). I had been gone for six hours and had Chris a bit worried, but I had brought back with me. Lots of nice scratches, bruises, some ticks from the cow fields and that strange insect bite. Oh and the better-late-than-never water. I had had such an adventure, thought, that it was probably the best day of the gathering for me.
Just for closure I will quickly mention that I went on a succesful expedition with Chris in the last few days that we were there to The (actual) Source with the help of a few instructions and pointers from someone who had been before including the tip: its a bit rough, don't take too many people with you. We did invite a few friends and after struggling to find the way at first we got there without incident.
Aesthetically The Source was no prettier than some parts of the third river, but it was it's uniqueness that was so fascinating. There were some boulders in front of a ridge and the river just poured out through them. not violently, but with a couple of feet of head so there is a bit of white water (It might be a lot more violent earlier in the season). To the side, and on level with the source's head, there is a pond with the same jaggedly sharp rocks in and around it, then behind the pond there is curious smooth rock and a few stalagmites and stalagtites in broad daylight that look like gargoils. To either side there are caves. they go deep enough to be really black, but are not very big. Above this strange geology is a pearly white flat cliff, then surrounding the whole area is of course the thick jungle.
Getting to the source proved to be relatively easy, but the swim back was quite nasty because the sun was setting and the water flowing out of the ridge was very chilly. At one point one of the guys with us wanted to stop, one of those irrational cold impulses, when you are borderline hypothermic and you will do anything for a short toerm heat gain. By standing up in a shallow part of the river he got his torso out of the cold water, but he was still soaking wet and we were running low on daylight, so we needed him to keep moving until he got to the camp where he could get dry and warm up by a fire. But it wasn't just him, all of us were losing circulation.
After suddenly finding that we were a lot closer to camp than we had thought we merged with the green river which comparatively felt like bath water and then warmed up by the two cob rocket stoves and bread oven at the bakery. Cob is an environmentally friendly building material: clay, gravel for heat stress resistance and a bit of stringy grass to help with the shear stressed (I think). Cob is now used as a building material in conventional homes as an alternative to concrete, wood, brick and those petrochemical construction plastics. Rocket stoves were described to me as an extremely efficient clay stove. I was facinated, but got my engineering hopes up a little. You can easily over-excite an engineer by saying 'extremely efficient'. Though not that efficient, Rocket stoves are a lot more efficient than an open fire and are simple which is key. You make a clay-with-a-bit-of-gravel structure in more or less the shape of a tube: the bottom attached to the ground and the top narrow enough to rest a cooking pot on. At the bottom you have an opening big enough to fit enough wood for your fire and at the top you make supports for the pot so that the pot can rest on the tube without blocking the escape of the smoke. The reason that it is efficient is because all of the air that leaves the fire upward out of the chimney because it is super hot, must be replaced by cool air flwong along the ground. In an open fire the cool air comes in from all directions, but in the rocket stove the cool air comes to the fire through your wood-stokeing opening and so with a smaller enterance then the 360 degrees of an open fire, the air flows in much faster and so concentrates with more intensity on the coals. The clay acts as insolation and most of the heat folows the smoke and connects with the pot at the top. I bet you could find the optimum rocket stove with a compromised stokeing hole size between too small to let enough air in and too big to concentrate the air flow enough... and a compromised chimny size between having a big enough smoke hole at the top to allow lots of 'draw' of cool air at the bottom and have the chimney size be small enough to concentrate lots of the heat on the pot, but I am just realising that most of you aren't engineers so I'll stop talking about that.
Aside from basics about rocket stoves, cob outhouses and a little gardening I didnīt learn much at the gathering about alternative technology, what the rainbow really seemed to be about was self-actualization. The vast majority of people came to the rainbow with at least some vague goal of self-improvement. This made for an intellectually and ... spiritually stimulating environment. The information that we had about the rainbow before hand indicated that it was welcoming all people of all cultures. This is indeed correct, but I would claim that the Rainbow has a very strong and distince culture of its own. It appreciates all contributions but is an entity in itself. It borrows from a vast array of religions and philosophies where complimentary concepts are eagerly adobted and integrated and conflicting ideas are more or less overlooked or set aside. There was a lot of buddhism, lots of Myan traditions and concepts, since it was traditionally their land, some Christian beliefs, some more northerly indigenous beliefs and bits of this and that that fit in nicely.
The logistics of the rainbow were interesting too. In accordance with various native north-american traditions, official community decisions had to be made by consensus with a talking stick. The stick would go around until the issue had been decided upon and then it would be made official when the talking stick had gone all of the way around the circle in silence, indication that everyone had had the opportunity to speak out against what had been agreed upon and nobody had oposed it. This is a beautiful way of decision making, but it is time intensive and requires a lot of self dicipline on everybody's part. It works better in smaller groups and with groups that have more experience with reaching consensus. Deciding when and where they are to be held can be contentious because that dictates who is able to attend, though theoretically everybody would be present. Less experienced talking circles they can often get off topic and bogged down with detail unless everyone is focused on accomplishing the task and thinking of the group as much or more than themselves. More effective circles will have a specific topic and several people will spontaneously take on the task of mediating or summerising as needed when it is their turn to talk. Focusing on diplomatic and constructive criticism also becomes an issue. It sounds daunting, but a succesful talking circle gives everyone in it a really tremendous fealing. The unity and fraternity in the air, is palpable. We had some talking circles about what to do with the garbage or to resolve arguments arround the camp fire. We also had one about peoples' views on global warming and one or two about anything that came to mind. In these vague circles and at the end of some of the more specific circles, there were ourpourings of emotion about issues close to heart and with everyone listening intently, people who were often quiet and introverted would say profound and personal things and extroverts who were used to dominating the conversation and cutting people off with volume and whit were out of their element and had to think harder about what they were saying and what others had said. To remain perfectly silent while each has his turn to speak (a talking circle rule) can be remarcably challenging, but when you are patient and intent on the speaker, you often find that someone else in the circle on the way to you says what you had in mind and even saw your personal thought from a slightly different angle which enriches the experience. I think this is the fealing to which a lot of Rainbow people refer when they say 'unity' or 'oneness'.
Another important feature of rainbow culture is the dinner circle. The dinner gets cooked on a voluntary basis by whoever wants too and is organized by a focalizer who is also just as voluntary and random. This is sometimes beautiful and majical and full of love and othertimes stressful and late and hungry. But when the horn is blown we gather in a circle and hold hands. Some people are particular about the direction of your thumbs because it 'directs the energy'. Next we sing songs together that are mostly about unity with each other and with the land: 'we are one singing in harmony, singing in celebration, we are one in harmony' 'water my blood and air my breath, earth my bones and fire my spirit' then we all 'Ohm' together, raise our hands and then some people do a bow-stretch, kneel and kiss the ground. This makes some people nautious (figuratively: their appetite isnīt spoiled), but it makes others feel really special and it makes a lot of sense given the culture of the Rainbow. If you want to live in anarchy, doing everything as volunteers on a voluntary basis with no rules, only a few conventions and practically no institutionalized consequences, you need a lot of feeling of unity and to feel that unity you need a lot of non-judgementalism and open displays of affection and acceptance, and as I mentioned, talking circles for therapy.
There was one guy at the gathering called Matheo who after the first week or two took a month-long vow of silence, I expect in accordance with a Budhist tradition, but for the rest of the time that I saw him I only heard him laugh and sing, though he did do hand signals. He attended the talking circle on global warming and of course said nothing when the stick came to him, but listened intently. At the end of the talking circle at least three people, myself included, independantly decided to do our own shorter vows of silence. One of us gave his reason for the vow of silence as something like the following: Matheoīs ever-listening and never-criticising or interrupting was a facinating, inspiring mental exercise and to treat life like the listening part of a talking circle would be an interesting exercise. One of the other silent people did it for 10 days and the other for 12. I did mine for 5, but I talked to some Mexicans who were interested in what I could tell them about the Rainbow Gathereing, I talked to some other people on the way to and from Cerro Nanchital, the nearest town with internet and telephone, and I spoke once on the sight of the gathering to indicate clearly which water bottle had filtered water and which was from the spring in the cow field.
The exercise was fascinating, challenging and a real mind job. A lot of the time the comments that I stopped myself from saying were later said by someone else or figured out in due corse: suggestions, corrections etc. and when they wern't it was more or less inconsequential. Then there were the annecdotes. Lots of conversations follow a pattern of each person telling a story about a more or less related topic. In not sharing my annecdotes, I got to hear hear a lot of others. This made me wonder why I tell anecdotes at all. Is it an attention seeking trait? Is it driven by ego: look what Iīve done/seen/know? Then there were the times when I was stopping myself from verbally steering the conversation towards things that seem more relevant to me. Letting go of the conversationīs direction allowed me the opportunity to hear about topics that I would normally not hear or think about. This was all part of what I called the Rainbow exercise in surrender (I don't think I came up with that expression). What I mean is that Rainbow teaches you to be less controlling, more humble, respectful, loving, calm and content even in adverse situations. Then there were biteing remarks that I didnīt say because of the silence vow. Although they seemed whitty and appropriate in the moment I was glad that I hadn't said them. There were also positive things that I prevented myself from saying, but unless very specific, they were usually expressed even better when done with body language: hug, big smile, hand on shoulder etc. Another aspect was that I couldnīt appologise for anything or explain myself, which was hard for me to get over, but I started to think of that as part of the exercise in surrender. I think that I wanted to appologise to make sure that my indesgressions didn't have an adverse influence on my social relationships, but most of the time it wasn't necessary and somehow not demanding or offering appologies leads to a fealing of family or oneness as well.
But thinking of the exercise of surrender as a purely positive thing, as I did at first, lead me to an unsettling series of thoughts which I will get into. If I was not to contribute verbal help and offer none of my opinions and not socialize, not worry that pesky, but ultimately harmless insects were having their way with my flesh, not look after my social niche with appologies and identity-building annecdotes, then what was my use? I could work silently and anonymously, I could show affection, I could listen. Affection and listening are always good things, but outside of the rainbow most of my work benifits myself. So what is to stop me from being removed completely from the world. A lot of the time, to stop myself from talking, I had to tell myself that without my opinion, other people got to explore their own paths more. Well if I was removed completely from the world there would be even more space for other people, physically and for their ideas and fealings. I could get a couple of dogs to fill in for all my listening and affection time. One lady told me that she was thinking of doing a vow of silence because she had been told that it lets you hear the voice of God. Other people too have commented to me about it as a spiritual experience. It makes sense that if it is an exercise in surrender then a believer would be surrendering to their God or their underlying energy of the universe. But for me, being more or less certain that there are no Gods, or capital M Meaning in life and that 'life energy' is a collection of meaningful human traits, actions and characteristics, communicated or read into the inanimate and animate surroundings, the experience took me closer to nothingness, not to God. It had me asked what is gained and what is lost by my presence in the world and what factors in my psyche have me acting the way that I do.
I just want to interject here because a common response to my thoughts about meaninglessness is - ooh what a bleak horrible world. But its not. If that is your view, you overlook the only thing that really matters (to me): your fealings and consequently the fealings of everyone arround you for whome you care, even a little bit. If your fealings and experiences and those of people you know and can imagine (example future generations and people you will never meet but have an effect on) are not worth living for, only then would life be bleak and horrible. (I always like comments)
So by temporarily removing my communication, in conjunction with surrender to the elemants, to points of view which wern't my own and all of the rest of my Rainbow experience, I psychologically deconstructed my world, had a good look at it and decided that I should put it back together. I do think that humbleness is an increadibly important skill to have, but that sometimes, when the situation is just right, it is better to stand up and speak out. I think that being able to surrender to uncomfortable situations both physical and psychological is an invaluable ability to have in your skill set, but that in the wrong situation it is just unnecessary suffering and no help to anyone. Another thought that came to while rereading that bit and editing, is that I should make an effort to be a good catalyst to thoughts and experiences of other people in my surroundings. That would make my communications less removable, because it would create space for other peopleīs thoughts and fealings, rather than take that time away from them.
I could talk mabout the drama of setting up a fresh water system for the ever-growing gathering or about the wonderful and captivating people that I met and ideas that we exchanged, about climbning a jagged cliff with Chris or about the 4 meter flood destroying peoplesī camps, about the new years eve party that was cursed by a shamen, about my first horseback experience or about being invited in to a familyīs house on christmas eve in Cerro Nanchital, but I was there for 40 days. There was just too much to write down here. Ask me about any of those things later. Or better still go to a decent sized Rainbow Gathering and have the experience for yourself. There were all sorts of people there, from a guy who just came for 5 days because he had heard about it on the internet and had never been out of the US before and wasnīt a hippie at all to chanting Harry Krishna devotees, street people from Toronto and performing artists from California. Tradespeople from mexico, travelling students, older adults and 2 yearolds, shamen and vacationers.
There was however a problem of sanitation at this gathering. There were a lot of hygene guidelines ('guidelines' because you wern't allowed to call anything rules... I mean you could but people would disagree) but there were still people not covering their shit in the shitpits (for protection against fly-born illnes) and not using proper hygene in the kitchen. Consequently there were lots of sick people and after not being sick for my whole trip (maybe once) I was decidedly sick 4 times at the gathering, though for very short periods at a time. Everyone had a strong opinion about food and sanitation and so they were the most political issues. Also in this location there were a lot of ticks and small black biting flies which were inciped. But like I mentioned, the little discomforts were somehow part of the big Rainbow lesson about surrender and humbleness and openness of heart and mind.
I had a hard time leaving the rainbow. For a couple of days I felt like I had gotten as much out of it as I was going to in the near future, and then a whole busload of people showed up and there was a huge elaborate series of fire dances that evening and then the next day, when I was planning to leave, there were a whole bunch of workshops that I wanted to go to including the one that I did go to about partnerships between alternative communities and social movements. The focalizer of this talk was criticized for being too academic about it, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed it :)
When I finally pried myself away I bumped into Chris who was just returning from a trip to Las Choapas to pick up his Christmas card delivered by snalimail that he had been waiting for for weeks.
I started walking up the gravel road out of El Desengaņo as Chris and I had done once before when we were picked up right away. I walked and walked and walked with no luck, but it was a neet way to say goodbye because I passed by at walking speed in full daylight all of the landmarks that told me that I was almost home (at the rainbow) on my way back from Cerro Nanchital or Los Choapas: huge beautiful mossy tree, a bridge or two, some haripin bends, the profile of the jungle-covered mountains. Eventually I was picked up by the only car that had come past: a police truck. That doesn't mean that I was arrested, on the contrary, the officer in the back moved his semi-automatic machine gun over to one side and made space for me, eager to pummel me with all of the questions about my lifestyle and the Rainbow Gathering's lifestyle that my shitty spannish could answer. He wanted confirmation that the women often walked around naked, but not for police evidence, for the interest of local gossip. I told him that we normally swim naked, but that most of the time we were covered and women are not nude any more often than men. After asking if I was single, which I affirmed, he asked me if I had a lot of sex there. I told him that I had not had any. He looked shocked. He told me that he was single and that he liked to screw babes (my rough translation of the lude hand signals and knowing looks he gave me to accompany his slang vocabulary that I didn't understand) and he said that if he was at the gathering he would be screwing babes all the time. I stumbled through a pointless explanation that men and women are seen as equal in the Rainbow Gathering and that the macho attitude wouldn't be well recieved. He didnīt get the message and wanted me to confirm that people were still having a lot of sex there though even if I wasnīt. I said that I was pretty sure that there was quite a bit of sex and that one night I had heard a couple going at it in their tent from my hammock. That was sort of awkward sort of funny. But I added that lots of people had come to the gathering as partners and as families. The police truck wasn't going the whole way so they let me out at my intersection where they left my rout and I started walking again. It was scorching hot in the midafternoon sun and I was sweating and drinking water like mad, but my water supply was running low. After a while I made it to a turn in the road where there was a waterfall that I had seen a few times driving by but never had the chance to explore. This was the perfect opportunity, I figured it would be good to drink because it fell from a mountain where there were no people polution or cattle. I hid my backpack and followed a few cow trails and hopped a couple of fences along the streem until I had climbed up the hill to the little pool at the bottome of the propper water fall. If I lived near there I would have come there all the time to cool off and take in the view, but there were no trails leading there, I had to bushwack the last bit. I dunked my head in the pool, soaking my hair. I filled my water bottles and splashed the chilly water on my shirt, which fealt increadible.
When I got back on the road I kept on trekking and trekking. There were a few people at the side of the road under the shade of trees eating lunch, working or waiting for the bus, but no cars or trucks came by. At one point I went the wrong way and three children walking home from school asked me where I was going and then set me back on the right track. They were probably 8, 12 and 14 years old and understandibly shy. We walked the same direction for a while until they turned off at their farm. I walked on a way further my feet had had enough. Exhausted, I collapsed under an orange tree and eat a few. Some motorcycles, people on horseback, bycicles and pedestrians passed me by, but no luck on a ride. I got back to my feet and kept trudging on. At one point a truck coming the other way slowed down and stopped next to me. Bewhildered I greeted him and asked him what was happening, then two Rainbow people jumped out of the back and yelled "Surprise!!" They asked where I was going and I told them that it was time for me to leave. Even though I barely knew them, they were Rainbow family and we hugged goodbye and it was sad.
In due corse I was picked up by a truck going to Cerro Nanchital. They stopped at one lady's house to sell some beens I think. Once I made it to Cerro I got something to eat and then hitched on to Las Choapas. Two older men had gotten in the truck with me when it had pulled over. They told me that the three of us had just missed the bus, but our driver was speedy and caught the bus and passed it before Las Choapas. In Las Choapas the old men paid the driver and I did likewise, a little bummed that it wasnīt free but not wanting to be rude and greedy. I wondered what was the indication that this was a paying ride and wether I should feel guilty for all of the free rides I had gotten.
I eat more in Las Choapas, devowering a roasted chicked and buying a hunk of cheeze afted being more or less vegan at the gathering, and I had a few cookies and sweet breads, after eating very little refined sugar at the gathering. I vaguely like to be vegeterian or vegan and avoid refined sugar, but I'm not convinced by the various arguments and I had such a strong craving that that I didn't see the point of resisting. I gorged with curiosity rather than guilt. Was I deficient in something at the gathering or was this just my psychological response to suddenly having all of these tasty options?
I walked out of Las Choapas and went a long way before being picked up. The car that picked me up in the end however was a small car filled with 3 middle aged woman and a fourth lady that was younger. They drove well past me and then reversed maybe 50 meters as I jogger up to meet them. I put my backpack in the trunk and squeezed ove to fit me beside them as the third person in the back seat. They asked the usual: where are you from and what are you dong here questions, which I answered as best I could and then they dropped me off at the toll booth at the enterance to the highway that leads to Mexico City. They told me to watch out for my valuables in Mexico City.
Without much of a wait I was picked up by a guy who I had more trouble communicating with. He had patience with me in that he would repeat himself, but he didn't seem to be able to slow down or ennunciate. He told me that he was driving on the toll highway because there were less federales, that there were less federales because they stick to the secondary highways to moniter the trucks, and that the trucks use the secondary highways to avoid the tolls. He was going a long way in my direction but told me that he had to drop me off near Acayucan because there he needed to leave the highway. He needed to leave the highway there because the next booth was one where federales usually hang out. What I didn't understand was why I couldn't stick with him as he left the highway and continue with him to his destination.
He told me that he was avoiding the federales because his car wasn't registered and that was a one hundred USD fine. I didn't try very hard to encourage him to take me the whole way because he wasn't on the right side of the law, who knows if it was really because of registration, and our broken conversation was a bit more awkward with him than with other people. He let me off at a truck stop and I climbed the dirt bank that lead to a field. I hopped a fence and found an out-of-the-way place to set up my hammock.
I awoke with the beautiful sunrize the next morning and walked to the toll booth by 8am. It was a great spot, people were going a long way, they were moving slowly, I was safely off to the side and the police were friendly. As my last ride had predicted the federales were posted there but rather than hasteling me they exchanged friendly glances with me, making eye contact with me when a strange vehicle passed by or something else out of the ordinary. I felt so unthreatened by the federales there that I felt compelled to wave to them when I was finally picked up. This surprised me because all the sories that I had heard about federales were bad to really bad. Who knows.
I was picked up after three hours of waiting at 11am by a middle aged man and his father in a nice car. They told me that the toll booth lady had said that I had been waiting there since 7am and that he should pick me up. Firstly it is cool that the toll booth lady was sympathetic and was actually soliciting rides for me when we hadnīt even met and secondly, why did she feel the need to exagerate my 3 hour wait to 4? In any case the long wait totally paid off. The driver was frindly, wanted to speak in English, was quite articulate, very generous and drove me all the way to Mexico City within three blocks of my hostel. Our first stop was at a pineapple stand and he bought me and his father freshly squeezed pineapple juice, then we pulled over for a coffee later on. For dinner he took us for a fancy traditional meal: Moler Pueblano, in a nice restaurant in Puebla and insisted on paying 'your money is no good hereī. He was a chemical engineer that owned his own small buisness that worked with the oil industry. He had two children in junior high that he was thinking of sending to highschool in Canada. Like the other wealthier Mexicans that I met he said that Mexico was a wonderful country full of wonderful people with lots of resources and potential but that poleticians and corruption were holding it back. I asked him about the idea that the truck driver in Salina Cruz had mentioned to Chris and I just over a month ago, about backing the Mexican Peso with silver to boost the Peso's value and push Mexico towards being a first world country. He smiled and said no. "They are thinking of guarenteeing the Peso with silver but that would be to avert disaster not to achieve prosperity". Like everybody that I met who found out I was Canadian and not American, he told me how much he disliked Americans and their politics and told me about some scenes from Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 911. He held Canada in great estime. I agreed that Canadians and Americans have a distinctly different attitude despite the surface cultural similarities, but I told him that there are still a lot of problems in Canada. I told him about the sponsorship scandal and that although they are working with NATO we do have troops in a mess overseas, about Canadaīs recent bad track record on environmental issues, about how our child poverty is way higher than in many other similar develloped countries, about poverty and adiction in our aboriginal communities and how although many Canadians are proud of not being racist against people with origins in different continents, there is widespread racism adainst our aboriginal peoples. I talked about how the Alberta government had been publicly threatened by a major oil company about increasing its taxation scheme when a public review found that the taxes could be raised by 37% without affecting the Athabasca Tar Sands as one of the most desireable investment opportunities in the world, and that the last review that was done had been internal and that the governmentīs reaction to it had been that all was well. My hitchhiking hostīs attitude was that this was nothing compared to Mexicoīs problems. He didnīt go into details but I donīt doubt him. I am very hard on Canada, but I am proud of what we have achieved. I just think that a country in our position has no reason to overlook the problems that he have and that we can solve with a bit of political will and innovation.
I had made it to Mexico City in good time and so I had two and a half days to see what I could see. The first day I splurged on a guided tour and checked out a few temple ruins including Templo Major. We visited the ancient city of Teotihuacan which, depending on who you ask, literaly means 'the place where men became Gods'. This is because the indigenous people who were living there at the time of European contact didnīt actually build it, they found it abandoned by a more ancient collapsed civilization. The Aztecs redecorated it and used it as the setting for their 'creation myths'. We visited a couple colonial era churches and a Pulke distillery/obsideon workshop. We also visited the lady of Guadalupe, who is the idol that all of the boys from Chiapas were making their pilgrameges to. I now undersatand that the Virgin of Guagalupe is the Mexican encarnation of the Virgin Mary. I was confused as to how the catholic church could have so many different holy virgins. There is apparently another encarnation in Brazil as well, but they are all one and the same. I felt like a bit of a chump for dishing out $26 for a series of things that I could probably have found my way to myself, but the guide was an archeology major and had a lot of facinating information. For example the spannish have two saints from arround the time of the colonization of mexico when they were fighting two wars, one against the Moors and the other against the Aztecs. The first saint helped the Spannish army defeat the Moors and was called Santiago Matarmores (Sain Kill-Moors) ad the other one Santiago Matarindios (Saint Kill-Indians). Even more disturbing is that there is still a monument to the saint of killing indians in one of the churches we went to in Mexico City. But the story of how the Aztecs were defeated is actually quite facinating, seeing as they did it with a boatload of 300 people and 40 horses or something ridiculous like that, when the Aztec city had 40,000 people. The way that the Spannish succeeded was that they had captured a couple of indigenous ladies and taught them spannish, then they had used them as translators. They next went around the country side to all of the other civilizations that the Aztecs were opressing and dominating and rallied a huge army of the Aztecsī enemies. Also half of the Aztec population was wiped out by the horrible European diseases.
In the last few centuries the Aztecs had been making rounds to the other civilizations and demanding payment. If they were not paid they would take human sacrifices and would cannibalize them cerimonialy, it makes it a bit harder to be sympathetic to the plight of the Aztecs, though what the Spannish did to them after achieving victory was humiliating, horrific and terrible and I really can't imagine a disease wipeing out one of every two of 40,000 people. The horror.
In the colonial times the Spannish were in the buisness of 'saving' as many sould as possible and one missionary was sainted for converting so many people in Mexico. He then went on to Japan to be a missionary once more and was killed. I donīt know what the moral of that story is, but to me is isnīt a sad story as it was presented in the church.
The following day I went on a free walking tour of the downtown core and we went inside the parliament building to see the big mural and get a summary of the history of Mexico. After it was over I kept walking and explored some markets, a free art gallery and a park and had a beer overlooking the third biggest square in the world after Tienamen and the Red square in Moscow: Zocalo. In the middle of this square was a huge temporary bamboo structure housing a fancy photo exhibition called Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert
www.ashesandsnow.org . The exhibiton is being updated as Colbert does his work and the Bamboo structure gets packed up into train cars and shipped all over the world. Most of the time the entry fee costs about $20USD I think, but in Mexico City it was put on for free. The theme of the exebition was more or less the human beauty of wild and exotic animals and it is full of pictures that look photoshopped, but then you see movies with the same actors and annimals and you realise that they could in fact be unmodified pictures as they claim. As a fellow hostellor said, this kind of photography requires a person to be independantly wealthy in the first place and is a bit elitist, but none the less I went to see it and it was beautiful and fascinating. After visiting the exhibit I walked around another event that was going on in the Zocalo, the 2008 world development forum or something like that. I didnīt get much out of it though because it was mostly in very advanced Spannish. I was a bit disconcerted by the overt Che-worshipping though. Revolutions are exciting but lots of people die and suffer too. Che was really bad ass, for example he was livid that the Soviets did not bomb the USA in the Cuban missile crisis according to the biography I read. He was totally willing to give his life and sacrifice everything that he had for his view of freedom which is amasing and inspirational, but he expected the same of other meek and moderate people that he was leading in Cuba and other parts of the world. The fealing of this forum seemed to be more about getting irate with the injustices in the world than critically thinking how to fix them. But like I said, I didnīt understand much so that might not be fair.
That afternoon I took the train to the airport and was in good time for my flight, but Iīm just realizing that I havnīt explained the wheres and whys of this flight, so here we go. My Dad and a few other masters (35 years old +) sailors from Alberta were attending the 2008 Laser Masters World Championships in Terrigal, just north of Sydney, Australia ('Laser' is the type of sailboat, a small one person, one sail dingy, sailed in the Olympics). They wanted some coaching support and asked me. I obviously agreed and coached in exchange for a return ticket to Sydney from Mexico City and I was going to stay and eat with them. Unfortunately they wernīt able to get me a coach boat which left me as a bit of a lame coach, so I volunteered for the race committee so that I would at least be on the water and have an idea of what was going on and who they were up against. I ended up on mark-set 3 and did my best at off water coaching. But I am getting ahead of myself. I figured that if I was going to make it all the way to Australia I should also visit my cosin who lives a few hours south of Perth. That ends up being a LONG way from Sydney, like almost the width of Canada, but Iīll get to that in the next blog. I left a couple of weeks before the start of the regatta to spend some time with my family over there.
The flight to Sydney was via Los Angeles, and the boarding of this first flight was about half an hour late, but then we spent about an hour and a half sitting in the airplane while repairs were apparently being made to mechanical problems. The flight was uneventful, but we didnīt make up for lost time and so arrived in LA just as my (and 5 other passengers) plane to Sydney took off. I went to the departure check in which still read LA to Sydney, but nobody was there. I asked a janetor and he said that there wouldnīt be anybody else there tonight as it was 10:30pm and there were no more international flights from that desk tonight, but he didnīt know who I should talk to. After lots more run arrounds, I found myself in line with the 5 others behind three people who had missed their connecting flight to San Fransisco. The man was irate, yelling at the lady at the customer service desk and demanding that they get another flight this instant. He kept repeating that he had PAID for this flight and that he NEEDED to be in San Francisco by tomorrow to meet a court date, and that it was up to United airlines to figure out how to get him there. "Theyīre your planes, DO something about it." "Sir there are no more flights leaving tonight and we donīt control the planes down here." I felt bad that he was missing his court date but he was a big idiot. He just kept shouting instead of figuring the next best option to being on the plane that had long since left. I had a private chuckle, but everybody else seemed to be realy stressed out, even though they didnīt seem to have well defined reasons, kind of like road rage. It was really Rainbow culture shock because while there were conclicts at the Rainbow Gathering everyone was way, way more laid back and in the end wanted to get along in harmony. Personally I wasnīt missing anything by being in Sydney a day late and I was kind of looking foreward to a complimentary hotel. We got our hotels and some complimentary meal vouchers and were told to be back at the departures place bright and early. I had my first propper shower in over 40 days (the shower in the hostal was cold and grimy and I had no shampoo) and just as I had gorged on food in Las Choapas and street vendors in Mexico city, I zoned out to mindless stupid LA television and drank complimentary coffee. I had a wonderfull sleep on a comfy bed and was a half hour late to the departure station, after polishing off the last of the coffee.
I got there and it was a familiar scene, angry passengers and stressed out desk workers. It turned out that my half hour of lateness meant that I couldnīt be one of the 5 of us who caught the next direct United flight to Sydney. Instead I had to fly with a different airline and go via Melbourn. I agreed and inwardly jumped for joy.
I was excited because I had arranged a train ride from Adelaide to Perth and I was flying in to Sydney. I had left myself just enough days to hitchhike from Sydney to Adelaide, but it was going to be tight and it is never fun hitchhing with a time constraint. Melbourn is about half way between Sydney and Adelaide, but quite a way further south. So by skipping out on my connecting flight from Melbourn to Sydney and Hitching from Melbourn to Adelaide instead, I could cut out 700km of the 1427km trip. This would gave me the hitchhiking leeway that I wanted. I also knew that there was a good chance that the new airline I was flying with would be nicer than the flight I had booked.
My new flight left at 11:00pm and the flights of my fellow waylayed travellors did too. They decided to split a taxi into town and go shopping in LA. I had no American money on me and no budget so I gave it a miss and they gave me their airport food vouchers. I spent the day studying spannish, reading and eating copious amounts of expensive airport food courtessy of United Airlines.
The airline was indeed nicer than United and it had a movies on demand feature and a simple chess program. Unfortunately the chess algorithm wasnīt very good and I could beat both medium and hard handily, though I found medium more challenging. I got bored of it after I started conciously avoiding good moves that I knew the computer would miss. Iīm not that good at chess, the algorithm was actually low quality. A side note to that is that I was fairly well practiced. If there is an official game of the Rainbow Gathering it would be Chess. I played against at least five people not including Chris and there were at least six good chess players there that I knew of.
The last thing that I want to mention before I touch down in Melbourn is a really good documentary I found on demand in the airplane, ironically about our addiction to fossil fuels... here I am doing one of the most negative things that I could be for the worldīs CO2 levels: flying accross the pacific ocean on a non-essential trip. But this documentary really pulled a lot of issues together for me and presented the information in an objective scientific way. The points I want to outline are as follows (from memory):
-When there is more carbon in the atmosphere solar energy gets trapped in the lower atmosphere and warms the earth
-As the earth heats up, more fresh water melts and ends up in the ocean (and in the clowds, increasing the greenhouse effect). The added fresh water in the ocean decreases the oceans salinity levels.
-Oceanic currents are driven by high salinity levels, and as fresh water dilutes these levels the oceanic currents will slow or stop.
-In the Jurassic Period the world was much warmer, had higher water levels and lower salinity. The oceans were warm like in the Gulf of Mexico.
-Warm water canīt hold as much oxygen dissolved in it as cold water and warm water is also an environment that promotes the groath of algae.
-If the oceanic currents stagnate, the oceans will warm up all over the world, which will kill fish, promote the groath of algae, and screw with our climates which rely on the movement of cold water south and warm water north.
-When too much algae gets into the water it uses up all of the oxygen and aquatic life dies all together, because below the green algea ther is no oxygen and little sunlight. Dead green algae sink downward and are decomposed by anerobic bacteria, making a black petrochemical type goop. Examples of this are in Central park, New York and in the Gulf of Mexico where nutrients from farm effluent from accross the US are promoting algae groath. -This goop either turns into crude oil hundreds of millions of years from now, or into the tarry rock that can be found at the bottom of the cliffs on the south coast of England with all of the fossils in them. These fossils are so abundant and well preserved because in the Jurassic period the algae suffocated seas and then layered this tarry goop on them, preserving them. the benefit however was that the carbon in the goop was taken out of the worldīs carbon cycles until we used it for fuel.
-What apparently kickstarted this whole process in the dinosaur days is extreme vulcanic activity spewing carbon dioxide and other things into the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect. This effect is mimicked by the burning of fossil fuels.
-According to the comparison between modern pore counts (which corresond to CO2 concentrations) and fossilized pore counts on a plant that has been arround since the Jurassic/Cretacious period, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in those days was about 5 times what if is now (I canīt remember if 5 is the right number, but it was something like that)
-If all of the readily available petrolium reserves were burnt and used up, they would raise us to a carbon dioxide count similar to those during the mass extinctions of the Dinosaur days, according to those pore counts. Granted we are only half of the way there (peak oil happens at the half way point of the oil reserve curb) but demand is rising exponentially and that calculation doesnīt take into account less available sources like deep sea drilling and the Athabasca Tar Sands. I donīt know anything about deep sea drilling, but I know that the tar sands keep getting more efficient and that they have now been found to spread well into Saskatchewan. So if we burn all that we have without changing something we are bound to repeat history: Jurasic style natural disasters, the climate change to get there and the eventual death of the oceans.
-But while they are pretty sure that we will be in trouble by the time we make it up to Jurasic CO2 levels, they donīt know at what point before then the ocean currents will stop flowing.
-Also by dumping farm efluent into the oceans we catalyze the groath of green algae.
Now I know all of that, but I canīt promise you that Iīm never going to take a flight again (one of the worst CO2 problems). In fact I am pretty sure that I will, if I want to get serious about sailing and do the European circuite one day, or to visit my family overseas for that matter. I am going to do my best: live as much as possible without a car, eat organic food as much as I can (farmed without petrochemical fertilizers), wherever I see an opportunity that seems doable, but no promises, and that is just the issue of individual effort. Will our power structures allow such a lucrative comodity to be phased out? Iīm betting on unlikely but not impossible.
Anyway that is what I was thinking about as I touched down in Melbourn.
Mexico's Flag
Map of Mexico