At noon on Tuesday, there were 310 people at the Rainbow Family of Love and Light regional gathering, in the forest between Marienville and Ridgway.
According to Chris Leeser, Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Forest Service, the family “typically gather for about a week or so, followed by a culminating event.”
The forest service and the family, he said, have been working well together so far this year.
The family “chose their location with no complication with the Forest Service,” Leeser said.
A resource team evaluates the site for overall health before the arrival of the family’s “seed camp,” which will spend up to a month ahead of the official gathering preparing the area, building mud ovens, digging latrines, and otherwise setting up. The resource team also takes note of any archaeological sites or endangered species in the site chosen.
When those issues are involved, Leeser said, “we do offer them suggestions on how to treat that area.”
More than suggestions, the family also is given a list of “criteria” to meet in order to remain “without conflict” with the Forest Service. Mostly, Leeser said, it revolves around making sure the family makes good on their ideals – shared on their website – of “pack in pack out.”
The leave-no-trace mentality espoused by hikers and others recreating in natural spaces, Leeser said, has held true to the best of his knowledge, with family gatherings in the past.
“They’ve definitely been open to dialogue with us,” he said.
Information is also given, according to Leeser, so that those coming to the gathering can identify and be safe around local wildlife. At the current site, Leeser warned about ticks and rattlesnakes.
The family must also agree to “remediate” their space, when finished with the gathering and, according to Leeser, “they usually leave a group behind who are responsible for site remediation.”
Why Here?
“I mean, look around you. It’s beautiful here. How could you ask for a more beautiful place,” Massachusetts resident Robert “Bubbs” Ellis said.
He and his “high school sweetheart,” Jennifer Baran, came to the regional gathering near Owl’s Nest as part of an overall nomadic lifestyle. The pair, he said, travel across the country picking up odd jobs and moving as weather – and the spirit – dictate.
According to Ellis, the family isn’t a strict organization. It’s more of a collection of misfits and people who feel out of place in what most consider the “real” world.
“I get really depressed,” said an Arkansas woman who goes by the name “Alley Change” online and at gatherings. “I put pictures up on the wall, something different to look at. I feel like a caged tiger out there.”
When she’s in the forest, at a gathering, she said, “I can be myself. I can wear a costume every day and nobody’s freaked out. I can be how I wanna be.”
A family member from Indiana, who chose not to share her name, travels and gathers with her children – a 2-year-old and a baby – and has been living in her van for the past three years.
“I was so depressed,” she said, “I’d get so upset out there. I finally just decided, and sold everything, and since I’ve been in that van it’s the happiest I’ve ever been.”
The woman fed her baby while the child played with several others nearby. “Yes, all the time,” she said when asked whether she gets any push-back for her lifestyle because of her children. “From my family; my parents, my family back home.”
It’s that allowance for novel thinking and communal living, Change said, that keeps her in the family and going to gatherings.
“It really is a village,” she said. “You see a baby crying, you give it a toy. It’s not that anyone’s watching someone else’s child at a gathering. We’re all watching each other.”