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At around 10 A.M. Sunflower looks out of his tent and examines the cold morning mist. He's on Rainbow time. He doesn't really know it's ten. He just knows it's still morning and it feels like time to get up. He knew it wasn't time to wake up a few hours ago when the mechanical thunder of a police chopper ripped through the forest air. That was something he learned to live with and sleep through. Such rude interruptions are routine at Gatherings. It's just America knocking at the door. Sunflower, sitting up in his tent, surveys his immediate environment; a dry tent. The green walls make his skin look somewhat yellowish, but a dry tent is still a real luxury, especially since a much-needed rain filled the night air, stopping at sunrise. Life doesn't get much better than a dry tent on a wet morning. In the distance he could hear drumming, the heartbeat of the Gathering. Drummers had been playing around the clock now for seven days, rain or shine, since June 27. The voice of the drums is reassuring-it means there's family out there. Like the heartbeat of a lover, the drums comfort him each night, lulling him to sleep. Each morning they call him to rise and join the day's activities. Still, Sunflower longs for the nightly howling of wolves. He hasn't heard them now for over a week. He even misses the regular destructive visits from the bear who rudely demands valuable items-things that a Rainbow anticipating a Gathering can't frivolously feed to wildlife; staples like cooking oil and cigarettes. The absence ofthe bears and wolves, however, signals the beginning of the Gathering; wilderness is being transformed into city. Still yearning for the lost wilderness, 'I • Sunflower's Day Sunflower welcomes the city; especially this city, for he knows that by month's end it will revert once again to wilderness. Sunflower has been at the Rainbow Gathering for three weeks now, having been among the first hundred people on the site. He dug shitters, built kitchens, blazed trails, and welcomed family to the Gathering. It's a labor of love to which he devoted about sixteen hours a day. Now, at the peak of the Gathering, with over ten thousand people around him, Sunflower relaxes, taking it all in, recharging his energies for next week's cleanup. This year he's doing the full ride from setup to cleanup. From his tent he could hear a crackling fire and hushed voices coming from the "kitchen" two hundred feet away. An occasional loud pop signals that the fire is hot, luring campers out of their warm sleeping bags into the damp morning air. The metallic clanging sounds signal mush, which of course is always preceded and followed by "mud," Rainbow coffee. But where the hell are his damn shoes? Sunflower took them off they day before when it was hot and he wanted to feel the cool trail under his toes. When the night chill set in later, he couldn'tfind them. They were spaced out in yesterday's bliss. Today he'd find them. As he crawls out of his tent and stands up, cold sqUishy mud oozes between his toes. It feels good, but he still wants his shoes. Sunflower surveys Buffalo Camp's twenty-odd tents as he slips his grimy feet into his pants. He spies an orange tent that wasn't there yesterday. Who could it be? An old friend? A friend he hadn't yet met? Space aliens? Walking by, he hears giggles emerge from the orange dome. Definitely space aliens. He wonders about the size oftheir feet. Do they have extra shoes? Space aliens in Buffalo Camp. Why not? Hippies and punks surround the breakfast fire. Grey Bear and Plover, dudded out in tie-dyes and sweaters, sit fashioning jewelry from colorful little pellets. Asha and Tony, dressed in black, are engrossed in leatherwork. Dave, his long scraggly blond-gray hair in his face, sits by the fire cooking up a breakfast slop, an oatmealish concoction mixed with leftover rice. Catfoot, a tattered Bugler smoke hanging from his lips, kneels to help him. Sunflower inhales deeply as the damp forest air mingles with smoke, sweat, coffee, and patchouli. Dave, looking up at Sunflower, exposes his brownish teeth with a smile and motions to a charred coffeepot, "Mud's up." Sunflower adds a splash...

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