Sunday, June 27, 1999
By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
RIDGWAY, Pa. -- The folks who live in Elk County on the sylvan, southeastern fringe of the Allegheny National Forest are comfortable sharing their woods with deer, timber rattlesnakes and the largest elk herd east of the Mississippi River.
But 30,000 pacifists, feminists, Deadheads, '60s hippies, '70s radicals, flower children, children of flower children and tie-dyed-in-the-wool, back-to-nature types convening to pray for world peace and create a functioning, if short-lived, utopian society are a bit much for many of the locals to get their arms around.
The Rainbow Family of Living Light convenes its 28th annual countercultural happening tomorrow in the national forest, nine miles west of this county seat. If they get their expected crowd, the county's population of 35,000 will almost double. Little wonder then that an advance team of 1,000 Rainbows, who spent the past two weeks setting up camp in deep cover, raised as many local eyebrows as they did teepees and tents.
Not since the elk rutting season in September have so many strangers come to Ridgway, and these folks are, well, stranger.
Many sport tattoos and multiple body part piercings. There are more dreadlocks than at a reggae concert and more ponytails than at a stable, though many are graying.
They have adopted names reflective of their spirituality and alternative lifestyles -- Raven, Cinnamon, Wind, Oneness, Turtle and Captain Chaos. Many of the graybeards actually know Wavy Gravy -- the person, not the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor.
At the gathering, which will last until July 11 and is clothing optional, there will be lots of drumming, chanting, praying for peace, pot smoking, spirituality, street theater, tea drinking, singing, ecstasy -- with both a small and capital E -- and fun.
These are not folks who place a high premium on blending in. Consequently, they have caught the attention of the local populace. Close to 400 locals overflowed the Central Fire Hall in Ridgway 10 days ago to hear reassurances that life as they know it will not end as a result of the alien invasion.
Small town friendliness and intolerance were on display in relatively equal measure.
"Some of them have come in the store, and they give me the creeps," said Becky Ross, co-owner of Keystone Hardware. "They're dirty and filthy. They're not the '70s doctors and lawyers we've been hearing about. These are young people. Some have been begging or stopping cars on back roads. People are afraid."
"We came to this meeting because we're curious," said Don Fabiano, 43, who lives halfway between town and the Rainbow campsite. "We were warned about the drugs and alcohol at one of the Rainbow campsites. We told our kids that Ridgway has 5,000 people and there's a certain element here you wouldn't want to associate with, and these people are just the same.
"We're hoping this meeting calms the public paranoia so people realize there's no need to lock their doors and stay inside for two weeks."
With so many people packed into the fire hall, Ridgway Borough policeman Tom Kontes joked that he felt the urge to call bingo numbers. Instead, he opened the meeting by running down some of the rumors swirling around the town.
"You probably heard the one about Rainbows going into the Jubilee Market and urinating on the produce and in the meat department. That's false. Then there's the rumor they were at the West End Laundromat and were naked while their clothes washed. Didn't happen."
Kontes did confirm a rumor that the Rite Aid's supply of batteries was cleaned out -- the Rainbows bought a lot -- but store managers assured him they would restock. Several Rainbows were panhandling on the streets of Ridgway, he said, but stopped when police pointed out the ordinance against it.
"Elk County's population is going to double because of this gathering, and it's going to take patience to make it work," Kontes said. "Local businesses report no problems, other than business is up."
Fear of the unknown surfaced anyway in questions from Ridgway area residents about Rainbow crime, drug use, panhandling, illegal fishing and hunting, medical needs, the opening of gated forest roads and environmental impacts of 25,000 people in the woods without so much as an outhouse.
Also finding little favor in the fire hall was a 27-year Rainbow tradition of refusing on constitutional grounds to get a camping permit required by the Forest Service for gatherings of 75 people or more. Court cases about the permit issue from previous years are tied up in appeals.
Garrick Beck, an articulate if intentionally unofficial spokesman for the leaderless Rainbows, 20 of whom stuck out like flowers in a corn field at the meeting, said the group had its own medical and security teams to take care of problems at the campsite, and pay particular attention to sanitation, using Marine Corps-style trench toilets.
He said that because of ecological concerns, they were moving the central campsite or "Main Meadow" from a fragile riparian area near the confluence of Bear Run and Little Otter Creek to higher ground, an area known locally as Eagles Roost.
Beck, who inherited counterculture credentials from his parents, Julian Beck and Judith Melina, founders in the 1960s of the radical, internationally known Living Theater, and their friends Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, played the role of gracious visitor to the packed house.
"We don't see eye to eye on the permit issue," he said, "but we're working with the Forest Service and local law enforcement to make this event go as smoothly as possible with minimum impact on your lovely town."
The Rainbows first came together for a "spiritual gathering" near the town of Granby in Colorado's Roosevelt National Forest during the summer of 1972. They select a different national forest for their national group hug each year.
Bill Fox, commander of the Forest Service's 50-member National Incident Management Team, brought in to oversee the Rainbow gathering at a cost of $500,000, said there was little environmental damage done by the 22,000 people who attended last year's gathering in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona.
"We did some water monitoring and found some short-term fecal matter in the water, but long-term there wasn't a problem," he said.
He expects the usual crimes and misdemeanors this year as last, when there were a couple of assaults, a few runaways, some shoplifting, Dumpster diving, panhandling and narcotics.
"Are there going to be some problems? Yes. Are we going to get over it? Yes," Fox said at the end of the two-hour meeting. "The Rainbows have been holding these gatherings on national forest land for 27 years, and we haven't lost a town yet."
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