We drove from Portland to the Gathering in just under five hours, taking turns as the lead car so as to be antiauthoritarian and avoid any semblance of hierarchy. Just past Prineville, I followed them off the paved road at a sign with a crudely drawn heart on it that read ‘Welcome home,’ and continued down a gravel road, passing a couple of grinning drivers who flashed me peace signs.

As we approached the site entrance we were greeted by waving, leaping hippies who cried out ‘Welcome home!’ They motioned for us to stop, and a dreadlocked middle-aged woman in a short floral-print dress came bounding over to Mike’s car. I watched as she gave him a big hug and instructions and then skipped over to me.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Welcome home, sister! I love you!’ She reached in and gave me a tight, sweaty squeeze. ‘You’re beautiful. We’re glad you’re here. Just follow your friend to parking lot number eight.’ She waved me along and then went bounding over to the next car. I followed Mike, who was following pointing hippies, to a large meadow filled with cars. We were both directed where to park and proceeded to unload the gear and hoist it on our backs. With my heavy pack strapped with a sleeping bag, sleeping roll, water jug and two coats, it was all I could do to remain vertical. I joined Mike and Karen who were similarly encumbered, and the three of us started stumbling down the dusty dirt road with the steady march of long-haired campers. Grateful Dead music wafted through the pines, a steady ambient noise that would float disembodied through the entire site.

After a quarter-mile hike we reached the shuttle, an old VW bus that, when it wasn’t providing rides, was somebody’s home. A jagged square hole had been hand-cut in the roof so passengers could crawl up on top of the bus to a makeshift deck. Inside, the walls were littered with Dead show ticket stubs and Legalize Hemp slogans. The driver, a scruffy, leather-vested man in his forties, took our packs and stacked them on a rack outside the back of the bus. After our packs were secured, we piled in, one after another, man, woman, child, dog, until there were twenty-six of us, not counting the canines and the ten or twelve people who rode upstairs. It was hot and we were all sweating from the hike from the parking lot, but spirits were high-as was the driver.

We rattled along dirt roads for five miles, and with each turn in the road the bus seemed to lurch to one side and then rock back a second, before settling on four tires.

‘I was in a bus that rolled once,’ a woman standing next to me said to no one in particular. She was wearing a white tank top without a bra and her huge breasts swung in wide arcs with each turn of the vehicle.

Another woman called to the driver and he stopped to wait for her. She opened the side door and the bus was flooded with a brief blast of fresh air. ‘Thanks, brother,’ she said to the driver. ‘I baked a pie for Badger’s wedding and I gotta get on site.’

We passed other meadows filled with cars: Bus Village, where all the ‘live in’ vehicles park, and Bus Village II. Finally we got to Welcome Home, the entrance to Downtown, and the shuttle pulled to a stop.

‘Zuzus [treats, as in cookies or candy] and tips would be appreciated, brothers and sisters,’ the driver announced as we unloaded. ‘Especially green herb.’

Mike and Karen and I strapped on our gear again. On the way past the bus driver Karen stopped to give him two pieces of bread, and I gave him a pecan sticky bun purchased in Portland that morning. He seemed pleased, more with the bread than with the sticky bun. What takes on value at a Gathering, I will learn, is not always what is prized in Babylon.

When we arrived that afternoon, there were already twelve thousand people, with a rumored three hundred more arriving every hour. The trails were like city streets, except that all the people smile and wave at you. We walked past the welcome site and through the trading circle, past the Hare Krishna tent, the Jesus tent, the Lost and Found, the information booth, and up toward Morning Star Kitchen where we found a place to pitch our tents.

The Gatherings are remarkably well organized. Locations are thoroughly scouted and then a few hundred people come early for ‘seed week,’ when the main structures are built. Oil drums are buried in mud with fires underneath to make ovens, shitters are dug, fire pits are lined with stones and surrounded with log benches, tents are erected, stages are built, signs are posted, paths are worn, even a sweathouse is constructed. These people know what they are doing. Many have been doing it for twenty years. Karen told me that most of the old Rainbows she knows organize their whole lives around the event, living in their vans, taking odd jobs, traveling from Gathering to Gathering. Someday, a banner near our campsite read, We Will Gather 4 Ever.

After unpacking our gear, Mike and Karen and I hiked up through Tepee Village past the main meadow to a coffee circle kitchen called Lovin’ Ovens (all the kitchens had names: Morning Star, Turtle Island and so on) where some sort of celebration was going on.

Badger’s wedding! I remembered the sister with the pie on the bus. Here he was, a stocky, grinning man in his forties dressed in dirty jeans with a wide belt, wearing boots, a thick long-sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed leather hat. His bride was in her forties, too, short, with curly black hair tied back with an ornate clip, and wearing a long colorfully embroidered Nepali dress. They embraced and the circle of people around them began to Om until the sound rose to a crescendo and broke and everyone cheered.

Guitars started up and the crowd began to dance and twirl to Dead standards. Mike and Karen disappeared to say hello to someone they knew from the previous year, so I sat back on the log where I was perched and took in the scene. Everyone was having such a good time. It was Woodstock, without the music, the rain or the war.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned expecting to see Mike or Karen. Instead, a young man gazed at me with glazed eyes. ‘Hey sister,’ he said. ‘I’m giving out random massages. You want one?’

‘Sure,’ I said, practicing being free-spirited and spontaneous.

‘Come lay down on my blanket,’ the young brother said, and I followed him back into the main meadow where he had laid down a blanket in the tall grass. He told me his name was Lizard.

I spread out on my belly on the blanket and Lizard unsnapped my overall straps and folded them back so my tank top was exposed. He started kneading my shoulders, then my back, arms and legs. After a while he had me flip over on my back, then he folded down my overalls, lifted up my tank top and began to massage my bare stomach.

This is so great, I thought. It is so great that two strangers of the opposite sex can have this random totally nonsexual encounter without any of society’s hang-ups or expectations.

‘Now this is the part where you have to tell me if I make you uncomfortable,’ Lizard said. He began to massage my legs, creeping slowly up my inner thighs.

Was he molesting me, or just being thorough?

‘Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable,’ he said again.

His kneading fingers crept higher and higher.

‘Urn, Lizard?’

‘Stop?’

‘Stop.’

I sat up on the blanket and thanked him for the massage but explained that it had become imperative that I find my friends immediately as they might be missing me by now.

‘Plant one here, sister,’ he said, pointing at his puckered lips.

I gave him a fleeting peck on his pucker, managing to avoid the tongue he tried to slip into my mouth.

By the time I got back to the wedding, Mike and Karen were nowhere to be found, but I could see that the minions were gathering in the main meadow for dinner circle and I figured that’s where I’d find them. I headed down the trail, passing Lizard leading another sister to his blanket boudoir.