Rainbow Nomad

To live in the nature is a fine thing to experience, it is only the minority of the human collective who truly dare to surrender themselves to paradoxically simple lives, while the majority feel an inherit conditioning from birth to be or
behave a certain way. The Rainbow family are one growing tribe of folk that need no labels or boundaries to their shared freedom. For the last month, the wyrd sisters have kept me in Wales, for my last days in the W.I.S.E. islands. Capping off a fourteen month stay at the welsh rainbow gathering in Hay-on-the-Wye. Here, I was, and there I be.
From thee new moon to thee new moon, my hammock became my bed, strung gingerly neath the branches of an elder father oak. This is where I would come to terms with myself, shed old burdens, forge a path outwards, and contemplate romance under a big sky.

The ritual of the rising sun day egged out new rainbow people to the camp, others more seasoned in the ways of the gathering crawling from their shelters for vegan coffee and warmth by the sacred fire. The rainbow stew, that is, the eternal pots of porridge were already in the making. People stagger to food circle and fill their bellies. I enjoyed this routine, breaking our fast around the flames in a circle, and everyday new stories going through the vine as people congregate from all over Europe and World to one small horse field, bringing their history, their problems, but all their love first hand. This was my virgin rainbow gathering experience, but as an elder told me, ‘everyone is already a rainbow, they just don’t know it yet’. I came seeking nothing, expecting nothing, and wanting nothing, with only the slip of a tongue of any mention of a Rainbow Gathering in the WISE isles. It is to my honor I owe to three sun tanned tramps I met in Arizona at the TTT truckstop who first told me of the Rainbow. I had never heard such a thing, only now that hundreds if not thousands will gather for peace and take care of each other. They spoke of a large gathering in Utah, and I tried to find my way there later that year. Denied at the US homeland, maybe this was a sign, I wasn’t ready to bring my presence. Now I was finally here, stepping into a nearly empty field looking for some travelers to welcome me home, I gave up a comfortable situation where I was staying in a Celtic house with all the food I could want to join the congregation. And a long journey later, I came upon a small circle of vagabond children of the world, eating heartily, I was in the right place.

This was a time of purest intent and healing, I had just come off 7 months of hard labor, and my body begged to rest, the way a hobo seeks his tobacco. I knew that I shall contribute my hands and heart for The Family, but with this knowing came the need to allow myself to receive as well. Collecting wood, finding bliss, spring mission, sacred fire watching, food gathering, spiritual discourse, this was the be to pattern of the first half of the gathering for me. A steady rise in energy, like an Icelandic geyser until the power of surrounding energies peaks at the full moon. And there we held our numbers strongest, lsd and ganja were shifting hands, more drums circulated and rapped until the dawns, workshops were starting to happen. These are all sacred memories.

I recognized my time to heal, both this poor skeleton, and an absence of love in my life. Many a sister came my way with words and gestures of remedy, and brother with comradeship and collaboration. I met two lovers from Germany, a man named Bear, and a man named Lion, while I was Wolf in the pack, wise medicine women and powerful shamans, a fellow Icelander, a story teller from the island, and burgeoning new allies from Hungary, Spain, Netherlands, and Australia. The shared stories of these individuals were overwhelmingly inspiring, as I recanted my own tracks behind me. Tales of one man I met who lived in a cave for a year at the Cheddar Gorge, and a sister from my homeland who has been drifting for five years, almost entirely without money, while I listened in to a graying storyteller, smith poetry by the flames, who writes on the ground to make his way around. It was deeply moving to listen to one of the elders speak of his full circle around different Rainbow gatherings, through the Canary islands, Romania, Hungary, Spain and Wales, one year of this lifestyle, surely a noble way to live. He taught of his wisdoms gained from the Lakota, we sung Ayahuasca songs in the shade, and waxed on about medicina and nomad caravans.

A new feeling of power came to me after a shamanic breathwork session in a bell tent with two well experienced guides. It was a physical trip for me, a higher vibrational travel of my physically inert body, going through different layers of the earth, embracing pacha mama, the trees, the water, the air, the animal that is me, and coming out the other side where I began. This set the course of a talk about the Hopi Indians, their prophecy and the creators law with another elder with Nordic heritage who also spent time with the grandfathers. I received a medicine wheel. stick and poke tattoo under the sanctuary oak tree some days later from a German comrade, in a ceremonial way with Aztecan music and a sacred fire. I had all the time in the world, for anything I desired. The vistas of the Brecon Beacons, perceived during one climb in the hills were medicinal to the soul.

The double rainbow bridge did shine amongst the darkest of days of the gathering as a negative energy seemed to manifest and dissipate from the outside, while the family injected their love into its remedy. Ideas began to manifest in the minds of the collective for a permanent gathering as the days began to wane, everyone had co-mingled and were initiating new plans, while others simply waited for that voice we call conscience to pull them. My own journey now takes me back to the land beyond the north winds, Thulean Iceland for scouting of new Rainbow land, venturing in open country and maybe a little old time work on the side. The path of the nomad will eventually lead me back into my labor forays, perhaps in the Scandinavia countries, but it has taken on a new caliber. I see myself traveling with an ally for the first time in over two years wandering alone, it won’t last long for my self styled pattern will shift rails soon, then I shall find myself in Mexico and South America at the end tide of this year.

We share our lives out of the love to BE, there are now three families that I can call to for brother, sister, mother, father. I am part of the all that is the gypsy caravan of Rainbow people. In my heart is set the compass to follow the gathering through Europe in another year of age, and I will know when that time is only through intuition and initiation. Whether it is a journey on foot of a hundred miles, a horse trek through mountains or the aerial navigation of borders, I look forward to those words again, Welcome Home.

 

“When the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying,
a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds,
and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again.
They will be known as the warriors of the Rainbow”
– Old Native American Prophecy –