dying in a pyre of flaming hippies

Over a year ago my boyfriend's family started planning a big ole retreat where we all get together in some cabins up in the Colorado hills and spend family time together.

Kurt has three other brothers, most of them with kids (9 total, actually), and we all rarely get to see everyone at one time anymore. The area around Steamboat Springs, Colorado is supposed to be incredibly beautiful and a fab place to recreate.

Uh, nobody thought to check that the annual Rainbow Gathering is happening in the same area. Dude. Like, the RAINBOW GATHERING. Oh my. According to articles we're reading about in the paper, about 16,000 hippies will be caravanning it up there to have their annual festival this weekend and all through next week, right when we'll be there. And local folks are claiming it's a veritable tinder-keg, with lots of dry grasses and the potential for a mega hippie-fire disaster. I mean, think of all those joints being lit up, and all the stoned/blitzed-out hippies dropping matches all over the place, or the candle ceremonies at night...Being a San Francisco girl, I've seen (and even participated in) my share of Haight Street style hippie blissed-out slackerdom, but this sounds like a possible fiasco.

Yow. I'm actually a bit tickled that I can wander over during our stay to check out the hippie festivities (i'm a bit of a sucker for counterculture movements, even retro-nostalgic ones that need to perhaps evolve a bit), but this is starting to sound like it could have some very weird headlines.

If my epitaph says I died at the Rainbow Gathering, I will not be pleased! I mean, I know there's been a culural "hippie resurgance" lately, with young musicians and hipsters evoking the early 70s Manson-era hippiness (a bit darker than the 60s versions, fer sure). Just check out Mr. Devendra Banhart, who I've been told was in art school undergrad with me but I have absolutely no recollection of him whatsover.



Hippie is cool, hippie is in, especially for those who get to check it out via the 70s Fleetwood Mac album covers and are too young to remember anything from that era. I mean, Stevie Nicks was a total hottie, right? Who wouldn't want to run around singing "Gypsy" and twirling your scarves around your head.

Stevie in her glory days...

Something tells me that fashionable young hipsters won't be at the Rainbow Gathering, however, and that this it's gonna be the super hardcore hippie set who are in it FOR LIFE. Interesting.

Dying in a pyre of flaming hippies. Not looking forward to that.