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CLEANUP STARTS WHEN YOU ARRIVE AT THE GATHERING. Remember: if you pack it in, you're going to have to pack it out. so travel as lightly as you can. Always pick up any litter or cigarette butts you find on the trail. Separate all trash for recycling at your neighborhood Garbage Yoga Station. Tote a bag or two of garbage anytime you leave the site. At the end of ou[r] stay, please help clean up by carrying out more than you carried in. Work crews are needed to stay on the site for cleanup, to reseed the meadows, and retum the land to its natural state. It is our tradition to leave the gathering site cleaner and even more beautiful than we found it. -Howdy Folks! (NERF 1991) Rural communities faced with the prospect of a Rainbow Gathering or, as the first media reports usually portray it, an "onslaught" of "hippies" "invading" their area, are understandably apprehensive. They fear bad physical , social, and economic impacts, ranging from the destruction of the forest to the possible loss of tourism revenue and the corruption of local youths. Rainbows are generally sensitive to these concerns. Since they view the Gatherings as a model for a new society, they want them to be well received by all who come in contact with them. Hence, restoring the environment, removing trash from the site, and creating and maintaining good relations with their neighbors are Rainbow priorities. Land Stewardship and Community Relations • I 7 I Cleanup One reason the U.S. Forest Service has failed to legally bar Rainbow Gatherings is the Family's quarter-century-Iong track record for respecting the land on which they hold Gatherings. Some Rainbows work cleanup year after year-a difficult and often thankless task. The Seed Camp (setup) crew finds rewards in watching the Gathering grow, with new faces arriving every day to appreciate their work. The cleanup crew, by contrast , is left working in a postapocalyptic environment. The Gathering site, two weeks after the official end of the Gathering, resembles my neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo, New York, where old-timers sometimes think they still hear music and conversation from boarded-up taverns and vacant lots. Both are ghosttowns, haunted by memories of better times. A key difference, however, is that while in the city buildings decay and eventually collapse, at former Rainbow encampments, animals return and flowers grow. Nature replaces the colorful celebratory decor ofthe Rainbow camps with a Rainbow of wildflowers, growing in to erase trails and camps as the natural environment reclaims the Gathering site. Despite stated egalitarianism and environmentalism, the Family, like their counterparts in Babylon, leave the dirty work of cleaning up after the multitudes in the hands of a small group. A member of the Minnesota cleanup crew, while hauling trash from the site, explained how he hoped the Family will one day "evolve" and realize its ideals: "Here we are living in industrial America. We do produce this garbage, and here we are trying to figure out what to do with it. One of these years we are going to have a Gathering and everyone's going to take home what they brought, but the Gathering hasn't evolved that far yet" (Nelson 1990 Video). The Family disseminates Rap 70 I (see Appendix), the reciprocal of Rap 107 (see chapter 4). Where Rap 107 welcomes people to the Gathering and gives a crash course on Gathering etiquette, Rap 70 I wishes folks "Happy Trails" and provides instructions for breaking camp. In 1990 the Forest Service created its own "Rehabilitation Plan" for Rainbow Gatherings. The plan, which they devised to give "general guidance" to the Rainbows , is essentially the same as Rap 70 I and other Rainbow Family cleanup plans dating back to the I970s (Superior National Forest 1990). At the 1990 Gathering, for example, Rainbows who remained on-site after July 8 automatically became part of the cleanup crew, as in other years. The July 9 Council named a tool-keeper to facilitate efficient use of tools, and a massage therapist to restore workers' energy. The Cleanup Council felt that no one should go home drained. Volunteers also formed an automobile mechanics' crew to tackle the problem of dead vehicles in the parking areas. CALM and Banking Council continued to function, as their services were needed until the last of the cleanup crew left. The Minnesota cleanup impressed Paul Flood, the Forest Service liaison to the cleanup crew...

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