1979.Ayatollah Khomeini seized American hostages in Iran. Three Mile Island nearly lit up the eastern seaboard. On a warm day in May, I met the Rainbow People.
I remember it well. I had recently moved to Montana, and stream season had just opened. It was a Friday, it was springtime in the Rockies, and I was home from work early.
I was talking with my friend Lee in the shade of the apartment building in which we lived. We were jump-starting the weekend, sprawled in the lush green grass next to a dented cooler full of ice and beer. Ostensibly, Lee and I were planning a fishing trip, but mostly we just watched the prairie slope of the foothills above the buildings, where half a dozen Rainbow girls, not a tan line among them, fairy danced through the fragrant wildflowers, stooping now and again to pluck a blossom here or a plant there.
Down below, the hot spice of tempura and Thai peanut sauce seared the breeze, sharing the airwaves with the concussion of Led Zeppelin blasting from several strategically located speakers. The Rainbow People, a name taken collectively by an eclectic assortment of humanity with a common longing for simpler times were cooking.
In form, as they highball along the express lane to Nirvana, the Rainbow People most resemble the loosely structured American Plains Indian tribes of a century ago. Individually, they range from happy feet and tree huggers to astrologers and witch doctors, and together they form an amorphous group that gathers from the odd corners of the world each summer in a free-for-all camp-out to celebrate the karma of all that is natural.
The Rainbow gathering that year was scheduled for later in the summer in the mountains near Yellowstone Park. Roving bands of Rainbow-driven nomads and gypsies merged like streams into rivers as they closed in on Yellowstone; a large group had erected tents and tipis in our back yard in Helena that afternoon. They were visiting the Reverend Stumbo, who, for tax purposes, was the first and only disciple of The Church of the Immaculate Prospector, and who lived next door in the old yellow school bus with the three flat tires.
"How long will you be here?" I had asked of a Rainbow boy as I offered him a cold beer.
"Hey, wow, like a day or a lifetime" he said, then drained the can in one effortless swallow, finishing, "it's all the same to me."
It was, perhaps, the Rainbow credo. Montana, at that time, was an anything-goes kind of a place, but even so -even given the fact I lived in an apartment complex my father had described as a damned commune full of dirty hippies wearing somebody else's clothes -those Rainbow girls on the hillside were a real eye-opener.
"Don’t stare' said Lee.
"I can't help it" I replied.
Lee plucked up a blade of grass. "Makes it hard to think about fishing'
"Makes it hard to think, period' I agreed.
Having lived a relatively sheltered life, raised according to the strict edicts of fundamentalist Baptist doctrine, it was nearly impossible for me not to gawk at one amazing Rainbow girl in particular, who had rumbled in astride a chrome, chopped, hot pink Harley strapped to a rod case conspicuous by its presence.
After a perfunctory "howdy do" she had scampered through the flowers to join her friends in the celebration, along the way shedding layer after layer of nothing but black leather (including things I had no idea could even be made out of leather) and silk, revealing a collection of intertwined serpents -polychrome vipers and pythons and adders-that corkscrewed up her long leg from writhing ankle to rounded breast.
"That's a lot of tattoos," I said.
"How long would it take?" Lee grimaced. "Just think of all those needles."
"Maybe she's into pain"
"Hey, look." Lee pointed. "I think she's coming over here"
"What do you suppose she wants?"
"I told you not to stare. Now you're in trouble.'
"What do we do now?" I asked. "Should we take off our clothes or something?"
"Too late;' said Lee, and we fell silent as she approached.
The woman set her flowers on the ground, and stood up straight. "No pockets" she said, raising both hands palm-up, fingersspread to prove it. "Got a spare dip?"
So that was it. No problem. Lee reached into his hip pocket for the Copenhagen.
Excerpted from True Love and the Wooly Bugger copyright 1996 by Dave Ames with permission from The Lyons Press, an imprint of the Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT www.globepequot.com
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