Flying stallions

Everyone kept smiling at me...when I asked why, they said the mud spot on my shirt looked like a flying horse. I couldn't see it, because it was upside-down. The next morning, just as I woke up, two identical twin sisters, blonds, where handing out bits of paper from a design that was...flying horses! I popped the paper into my mouth. After a few hours, things were pretty wild, when, suddenly, I hear someone yell, "runaway horse!" I look over and a white stallion is racing by my little camp, where I kept dogs that were found without a leash. I chased after it, and found myself suddenly in the middle of main circle, right as the silence was breaking. The horse was acting a little calmer after someone grabbed it's reins. A few moments later, a huge branch that a lot of kids were sitting on fell down suddenly. Some kids started screaming. I ran to help keep the main crowd from gathering too closely around any possibly injured children. I realized that my life form had an innate purpose right then.

Crazy dude builds fire in stump and then menaces with hand gun

One time, people had gathered around an old man, about 55 or 60, who had built a fire in the stump of a tree. People had come by earlier and told him that was uncool, but he had brandished a weapon, a nickel-plated handgun. He would not let us near the tree. We talked him down, after about two hours, but by then a root fire had spread apace, and it took about fifty of us to put the dang fire out, which had spread ten feet in every direction.

Another example of non-violence working

at my first Gathering, I was on a trail when I heard loud screaming coming from a man. I walked over to see a hulking, 6'2" dude, towering over a small couple and wielding a knife. The man had to be at least 33 years old. The couple were in their teens and were particularly scrawny looking. The man was fuming and yelled, at the top of his lungs in a thick, southern accent: "you said I slept with your wife!" Meanwhile, the couple were stunned and frightened, and a mob of people were beginning to gather. Suddenly, one sister, who's name I forget, said, "let's Om." Fifty people started oming at the guy, and he just got more crazy looking, but then, suddenly, he mellowed out and just walked off.

Historians tend to leave things out

So, I just read this and commented on Facebook, and I'll just repost.

Rainbow History

A good, comprehensive study/documentary document. However, I cannot help noticing the "sins of omission" in the piece...like, Idaho, Where a few of us ended up in a Parlay with about 5x as many officers, the Feds frothing at the bit to punish all of us for the actions of a few kids. (see comment below)

After about an hour of listening to the Federales try to convince the State Colonel of Police (the state's highest ranking police officer) to let loose an already gathered army of 600 federal police holed up in a hotel to respond to the actions of the youth in the parking lot, I said my peace..."you all became policemen to help people, and that's why we come here, to heal and help these kids. These kids could be running off to be prostitutes and crooks, like MOST kids who runaway do, but instead they are here, in the mountains. Do you really think it's going to help them to become Federal criminals?" A few more minutes went by, and finally, the super impatient LEO says to the state colonel, "so, WHAT'S IT GOING TO BE?!" And the state colonel looks directly at me and says, "what he said, no." And that was that.

Others who were there and said their piece: John Buffalo Barry Plunker Adams and one or two others. There were at least 20 police, all on a back road outside the Gathering.

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