1 ... Gabriel Morrisnewspapers, some photos of the land, and an assortment of colorful,
sparkling plastic stars and confetti that poured out of the envelope as
I opened it up. He also said that I was welcome to stop by and visit
and to just give a call whenever I rolled into town.
I spent altogether just two months in Arcata having decided not
to commit myself to school in the fall. Though it was a brief stay for
all the trouble of moving my stuff twice, it yielded some important
insights there, and was able to give a little order to my otherwise
gypsy life of the past year and a half.
I also was finally able to get into a consistent sleep pattern, in
which I had many colorful, complex and intriguing dreams. The
sense that I was working with spiritual beings in my sleep became
almost a norm during that time. Though part of me felt drawn to
contact these beings in a more conscious state—perhaps to learn
their identity and my role in relation to them—I was also hesitant to
make that leap. As with my experiences in the out-of-body state, I
felt that I wasn’t yet ready to handle these other realms; and it was
better not to get involved in something I didn’t understand than to
become overwhelmed by it.
Towards the end of May, I started getting the travel bug, curious to
check out the two communes I’d selected and see what they were all
about. Once again, despite submitting an application, I couldn’t quite
see that I would be going back to school at HSU that fall. And around
that time Amy moved back to Austin to pick up the pieces of her life
there, leaving me with little reason to stay in Arcata.
Summer was fast approaching. I also started making plans to at-
tend a music festival I’d heard about in western Washington, at a
place called Rainbow Valley. Rainbow Valley was a piece of land out-
side of Olympia, owned by hippies who lived in buses parked during
the winter and followed the Grateful Dead throughout the summer.
Since Jerry Garcia had died the previous summer, they wouldn’t be
following the Dead anymore. Instead, they had a number of festivals
of their own scheduled on their land.