The grungy man, who looked like he hadn’t showered in weeks, drifted sleepily over to our car window and peered inside. “Hey, man. You know you’re still seven miles away from the trailhead, yeah?  Huh… is that dried fruit?”  No, it wasn’t, and I wasn’t sure whether to believe the guy about our distance from the trail that led to the Rainbow Gathering.  His mind was definitely under the influence of something, and it wasn’t just hippie tranquility and brotherly love, I would hazard to guess.

Ivy and I were still some unknown distance away from the Rainbow Gathering – an annual event where 30,000 hippies of all ages converge on a site in the National Forest somewhere in the United States and create a temporary community, one where people can live out their ideals of love and harmony away from the corroding effects of capitalism and modern consumer culture. This was the 40th such assemblage, and the announcement that the weeklong event would happen in the state of Washington was made several weeks ago so that people could start hitchhiking and caravanning across the country in the general direction of the gathering.