4

c h aP t e r 8

B

izarre, unexpected things took place around me following the
Rainbow Gathering. I found myself caught up in a maelstrom
of unanticipated events that left me confused and shaken and
that, once again, managed to blow me wide open. I tried to get back
into my usual routine of working at the pizza joint, living in the city
in a house with three other people, and making occasional trips out
of town to find some silence and connect with the peace and quiet
of nature. But something that I couldn’t quite identify or figure out
seemed out of place. The inner peace that I sought always managed
to elude me. My spiritual quest seemed to have no eventual resolu-
tion, like some kind of cruel cosmic hoax, a carrot at the end of a stick
leading me always in some inexplicable direction.
Late one evening after work, a couple of weeks after returning
from the Rainbow Gathering, I got a call from Amy and Lisa. They
were in town right at that moment and thinking of heading up to
nearby Cougar hot springs for a few days. They wanted to know
if my brother and I would like to come along. I wasn’t sure exactly
what my schedule was the next few days, but I invited them to come
over and at least crash at my place for the night. They said “sure,”
they were actually hoping that I might make such an offer—they’d
be right over.
They soon arrived at my door, and I gave them both big rainbow
hugs. Besides the fact that they were beautiful young women, I was
happy just to see someone else from the Rainbow Gathering, since it
was beginning to fade into a distant, hazy memory, more like a dream
than something I’d recently experienced. Although we hadn’t spent all
that much time together there, just having the experience in common