Welcome to thinking about coming Home! (guest post)

Today's blog post comes from guest blogger Ashley Perry.  Enjoy!

Welcome to thinking about coming Home! Whether this is your first rainbow gathering, or your 968th, remember you have the same right to exist in our national forest as any other camper. No one is in control, except for you, and that’s only control over your own decisions. This is your gathering, and its success depends on you.

In my mind, rainbow success means we all leave happier, healthier, and more grounded. This makes us more able to carry peace with us, out into our world.

To stay happy, protect yourself. Don’t bring anything you couldn’t bear to lose. Lock your phone in your car, and leave your diamond earrings at home. Rainbow is camping, and everything you bring may get soaking wet or carried away by wildlife. Also, each human being harbors different values and perspectives, and anti-capitalists generally disrespect shows of wealth. This doesn’t make them bad people, but it does make them more likely to rob your ass, especially if you’re bragging about what’s in your tent. Tempt not, lest ye be lifted from.

To stay happier, don’t use violence, even verbally. No matter who did what to whom, we are capable of solving our problems peacefully and rationally. Isn’t that in fact why we gather? To avoid conflict, remember you are only in charge of your own self, and your freedom ends where another human’s space begins. I know how it feels to be right, to see someone behaving badly, and to judge them. But at rainbow, if they are too loud, you are too close. Some one yelling in your face is probably too loud, but you always have the option of walking away. If the person becomes too destructive, a crowd will naturally gather and put a stop to it. It is never your job to ‘school’ another adult, especially when you are pissed off. Always bear in mind, our gatherings really are open to every single human being, from every sad, scared, angry, dejected sector of society. You never know which person is off of their medication, or how your words will impact a suicidal or homicidal human.

You can always ask the people around you to help mediate an issue, and if it is still intense, people will form a circle and council with all involved parties until you reach a satisfactory outcome. Together, we can find healthier ways to deal with conflict. I promise, if you got robbed, someone wants to help repay your money. If you got insulted, some rainbower wants to remind you why you are amazing. We love you. You have a right to exist. So does the other guy.

Remember you do not ever have to be touched without your consent. If anyone does put their hands on you, yell “shawn-tuh scene-uh” and people will come running to help. I’m sure screaming “help help holy god somebody help me” would also bring people running, but rainbow uses shanti-sena as our emergency alert. It is more identifiable over long distances, and less easily confused with someone calling Will, or Gale, for example. If there is a fire, or an assault, or some other true emergency, then that is the time to yell shanti-sena. It’s like 9-1-1, so never call shanti-sena unless your safety is currently being threatened, and just ask the people around you for help in less violent situations. Also, if you hear it called, quickly move towards it. It’s always a good idea to go assess an emergency, regardless of your sobriety levels, but if you’re schwasted, and other people show up to handle it, please just excuse yourself so you don’t end up creating even more drama and violence.

This is one of my favorite arguments against getting drunk at gatherings, by the way. You cannot apply your brainpower to a potentially ugly situation if you are wasted or otherwise inebriated. Also, aren’t we all more prone to becoming violent when we are hammered? Also, what if there is a forest fire one night after you’ve drank yourself unconscious? Also, many people consider our prayer for peace to be a spiritual event. Also, being super-inebriated means you are more likely to give up on finding a latrine and poop under a random bush. Also, many people come to rainbow to dry out or clean up, and tempting them seems cruel to me. Why not drink at the road? At least if you get drunk by the cars, someone can give you a ride out if you catch your feet on fire (this happens. A lot.) It’s a whole big wide free world, and you can get drunk anywhere else without bringing the repercussions back on your rainbow family. Thousands of people over the years have built up our reputation as a safe place, and losing control of your self jeopardizes that.

To stay healthy, don’t antagonize the people who have chosen to party in the woods. Focus on yourself, on finding your Zen and knowing when to bow out. Cranky people suck, so plan now how you will get enough sleep. Are you bringing a tent and also a tarp to hang over it, so it’s actually waterproof? Do you have a sleeping mat of some sort? Every clean-up we haul a million blankets and Therma-rests out of the woods, so don’t bring more than you’re willing to carry out; but do bring what keeps you sane and comfortable. If you want to bring extra mats or tents or blankets, people will be happy to use them, but again, if you carry it in with your car, please carry it all back out with your car.

To stay healthy, drink water. Boil it first, or use a real-life filter. If you have time and money, go spend the $20 on a little portable filter today, before you come to the gathering. Sure, there should be filtered water available in all the kitchens, but why rely on other people if you don’t need to?

To stay healthy, eat food. People burn extra calories hiking around the woods, then forget to replenish them, leading to weakened immune systems and emotional outbursts. Take care of yourself. If you’re anemic or diabetic it is especially important that you bring personal snacks; the high altitudes do weird things to your circulation. Be aware though that animals are drawn to the smell of food, so keep it well wrapped up or in a tree outside your camp. Also, single-serving sized anything creates way more garbage than buying bulk. Consider buying a big bag, portioning out enough for your stay, then donating most of it to your favorite kitchen. Don’t ever feel like you cannot eat at a gathering. Nothing is so important you can’t put it down for a few minutes. I know at least Fat Kids is an open kitchen, so you can always come make yourself food (but if you’re gonna cook for one anyway you may as well cook for fifty…) and of course we gather in main meadow every evening for supper. Again, though, why rely on other people to fulfill a need you anticipate? Start saving extra grocery money now. Bring enough food to share. Behind every grocery store in the country is a dumpster full of food; raid them all! Fill your car! I promise one of the kitchens will cook every single thing you bring, hygienically. Again, though, if you bring garbage in, take that garbage out with you.

To stay healthy, Wash Your Hands often. Soap and running water is best, of course, and all kitchens should have a hand wash station set up. Help us create more by bringing clean buckets, or consider spending $5 on a foot pump used for siphoning. Boat stores, RV stores, and hardware stores carry some version of this; it’s basically a long tube with a bulb in the middle to step on. Bring yourself a little bottle of pocket hand sanitizer. We can make our own hand-wash by adding one drop of bleach per gallon of water. Mixing a splash of vinegar plus a couple drops of hydrogen peroxide to a gallon jug works, too. Mark the bottle clearly; drinking bleach is lame. If you can smell the bleach, it is too strong, dilute it.

It is important that you Wash Your Hands before you cook, or serve food, or touch a community food container of any sort. It is important that you Wash Your Hands after touching blood or poop or other hazardous material, or experiencing the possibility of having touched hazardous materials. It is important that you realize that not every gatherer is going to wash their hands well. So wash your dish, and Wash Your Hands.

To stay healthy, Wash Your Hands, and only -ever -for any reason -for the love of Christ - only ever- shit in a community shitter. Yes, it seems weird to poop on top of other people’s poop. Sometimes it is awkward to wait in line- what if they know you’re pooping?? In fact they know you must be pooping, because we try not to pee in the shitter. Get over it. Shit. In. The. Shitter. If you poop in the woods, a dog will dig it up, and eat it, and lick you in the mouth. There are far too many dogs at rainbow to dig a personal hole. On a solitary camping trip, yes, you can bury your shit two feet down and that’s fine. At rainbow, there are too many dogs. Dogs eat shit. Shit in a shitter.

To stay healthy, shit in a shitter. If a shitter is too close to a kitchen, flies will go directly from human feces onto human food. Do not eat at a kitchen where the shitter is within eye-shot of the kitchen. The rule is at least 100 feet, but the further the better.

To stay healthy, shit in a well-stocked shitter. Each latrine should have hand wash. If there is no hand wash, go wash your hands, then make some new hand wash and bring it back. Each latrine should have ash or lime to sprinkle over your newest addition. You can’t add too much ash to a shitter, so feel free to dust the whole trench. If there is no ash, go get some from a COLD fire pit and bring it back. Be careful not to start a root fire by sprinkling hot ash, but please do sprinkle, every time. There is no need to kick dirt in to a pooper; no one will know which turd was yours and I promise they don’t care. Dirt fills the shitter more quickly, and flies will easily burrow down through 6 inches of dirt. Ash makes it unappealing to flies. When a shitter gets close enough to ground level (2 feet) for dogs to eat out of it, fill it up past full to mounded with dirt, then drag heavy rocks and logs on top of it. Dig a new shitter before you fill in the old one, and never walk away while it is half dug because you will get phantom poopers who don’t realize you could have dug it several feet deeper. Please try not to pee in a pooper because this deactivates the ash. Do not throw diapers or maxi-pads into a pooper, wrap those up in plastic and pack them out with you.

If for some reason you are incapable of hauling your own trash out of the woods (sigh) at least sort your own garbage. We dig compost holes for food. Never throw food into the garbage as this attracts dogs and flies, and it stinks. Bury food in a compost pit, available outside any of the kitchens. We burn paper and cotton because they get so heavy when they get rained on, and they mold and stink and leak. Metals are sorted from glass, heavier plastics are recycled; any thing left is landfill trash. If you can’t haul out your own hazardous material such as bandages, diapers, and maxi-pads please please please wrap them in plastic before placing them in the landfill trash.

If a camp does not have a recycling station set up, why not make one for them? Metal, glass, plastic, landfill; all of the trash will get sorted in this way, whether you take responsibility for your own garbage or not. If you do not haul out all of your own garbage, a fellow rainbower will sort it and haul it out for you. Sometimes this takes months to complete, at great personal effort and expense. Haul out your own garbage, and don’t bring superfluous trash into the woods. Any time you drive into town, please consider taking a few bags of trash out of the woods with you, so we have less left at the end. If you want to cash in the recyclables for money, please feel free to do so, as long as you are carrying trash out of the woods we thank you for it.

Remember that rainbowers are not the only people who use our national forests. The people coming after us have as much right to wilderness as we do. They deserve the same level of cleanliness we saw when we first arrived,

and a clean-up crew will stick around for as long as it takes to restore the woods. Mostly we haul out mountains of garbage and sort it. We hike in circles burying dog poops and wrong human feces. If you do not poop in a pooper, you are condemning a fellow rainbower to bury your shit and paper for you after the dogs dig it up. We also re-naturalize the forest by breaking up trampled soil with a rake and adding leaves and ‘duff’ to encourage regrowth. We throw logs and rocks around to discourage camping on trampled areas, and hide any sign of human intervention such as paths and compost holes, by covering them with duff and leaves.

Clean-up is done by volunteers, as is everything else in rainbow. Your help would be appreciated, but if we all took responsibility for our own camps and helped with one kitchen, a clean-up crew would become obsolete! Consider making signs to educate people about clean-up, and hand washing, and non-violence, or whatever you consider to be important. Or don’t. I love you anyway. Welcome Home.