To their credit, the police have been remarkably tolerant of national Gathering activities. The Rainbows choose public land that is relatively out of the way, collect all the necessary permits, inform nearby towns and spend weeks after the Gathering cleaning up and planting trees. Often their presence is a boon to the local economy, as Rainbows spend thousands of dollars on supplies, from wheat flour to condoms. Yet there is a police presence. Cruisers roll through and around the camp regularly, but officers ignore most of what they see-the general rule is that if it’s inside the camp boundaries, it’s legal. Because the police are not a threat, passing police cars are often greeted with stoned smiles and peace signs and I saw more than one cop flash a peace sign back.

A pudgy member of the Naked Tribe approached and took a seat next to me in the grass. I managed to rescue my plastic-wrapped package just in time. ‘Hey, man,’ I said. ‘Watch the pachouli.’

That night, at the Fourth of July Eve celebration, everyone was decked out in his or her finest Janis Joplin attire. There were big colorful hats, flowing vintage dresses, leather pants and knee-high lace-up boots. Even rumors of food poisoning and long lines at the sister shitters did not dampen the festive spirit. Spaghetti was served to almost seven thousand people at dinner and the magic hat collected over $2,500. After dinner, bonfires were lit all over the site, so that points of light flickered everywhere in the darkness. A talent show was held at Turtle Island and the kitchens were on hand with cookies and coffee. I wore an Indian-print dress over blue corduroys, a thick wool shirt and my aunt’s red hat with earflaps. Luckily, the point was to look like a freak, or I might have stood out.

I left Mike and Karen at Turtle Island gathering wood for a fire, and tried to find my way back to the tents. The drumming circles had started and the steady beating echoed from every direction. Everyone I passed greeted me with enormous smiles and hugs. (It’s hard to pass a Rainbow without getting hugged and asked for the time; though most Rainbows do not wear watches on principle, they are always interested in what time it is.) I ended up completely turned around and found myself in a kitchen I had never been in before. Freezing cold and lost, I found a spot on a log and joined a group of Rainbows sitting around a small fire.

A long-haired sister strummed softly on her guitar and no one spoke, all eyes on the fire. Then another sister joined the circle with a guitar and she started to play and the first sister joined in with her guitar and soon we were all singing ‘Sugar Magnolia.’ I did not know I knew the words, but somehow they surfaced from my childhood and it occurred to me that I had sat around this fire before, a long time ago, singing the same song with people who looked not unlike these. I stayed at the fire circle for another hour singing old songs from the sixties with strangers, and then found my way to the tent where I fell asleep to the mindless throb of a hundred drum circles.

Now, the hawk. It is July 4, the apex of the celebration, and we are all standing, heads back, gazing up at the bright sky as the hawk banks and then disappears over the woods. Most of these people have been up all night, many on LSD, and they are a bit frayed. We have been silent since dawn, a tradition that culminates at noon with the children parading into the main meadow and a final Om breaking the silence. It is 12:15, and the children have already arrived, faces painted, wearing handmade costumes and carrying colorful banners and masks. They run free with the dogs. Karen is radiant in her suede boots and Charlie’s Angels hair. She is in her element, surrounded by her Rainbow family. Everyone is dancing and grinning and passing around huge chunks of dripping watermelon. The hawk is a good omen, a sign that the next year will be a happy one. There is some more talk about a permanent settlement, but not much is made of it. It is a pipe dream, and no one really believes it will happen. For all their anti-establishment talk, many of the Rainbows hold down jobs. The runaways will return to their parents, or back to the streets. The college students will return to study. The core Rainbows will begin to plan next year’s Gathering, of which there is already much talk, and later today I will decide to leave early and return to Portland.

I wanted to come home. But this isn’t it. My parents’ counterculture was reacting to a war and an establishment that had proven again and again that it could not be trusted. The Rainbow Gathering rejects society for the sake of it, because it always has. Am I a sellout because I don’t want to live in a bus? Because I am typing this on a computer? Because I shave my legs?

It comes down to this: During my three days here I have been called ‘sister’ and greeted by strangers as if we were raised in the same tepee. But they are not my family. I think that the people who love the Gatherings, who live for them, are people who don’t feel that sort of adoration anywhere else. The hippie daze of my memories is gone, vanished with the era and the youth of its players. It cannot be called back and, except for a minute or two of campfire singing, it cannot be re-created.

Yet there is something going on here. Something that, if unsettling, is still admirable. The Rainbows’ appeal lies in their fragile belief in the ability to create a better world. It is in their moony hopefulness, in their lack of self-consciousness, in their seeming dearth of social hang-ups. I am not a Rainbow, but it is not because I don’t want to be. There is a part of me that wants to name myself Bear, buy a pottery wheel and move to the woods. There is a part of me that wants to join the Naked Tribe and get high every day and know for certain that my government does not have my best interests at heart. I long for the simple righteousness of my childhood. But I was there. For the very best of it. And because I saw it end, I know it is over.

Iowa is such subtle Beauty. I am driving east toward Cedar County, the sun glowing orange in my rearview mirror. The corn fields exude something like nobility, their crowns beginning to wither with the dignity of a very old person’s hands. November touches the countryside with the honey-coated glow that is distinctly present when the sun is low in the sky. This light gets to the core. Burrowing into crevices between soybean plants, twisting up and down rows of corn, it fills entire plains with auburn fire. It seeps up under my eyelids and finds its way to my breastbone where it lingers, humming, a moment more. Dusk brings dark purple shadows to spaces where shades of earth roll into the gentle swaying slope of the Iowa horizon. I am driving under a big midwestern sky, and once again the season is about to fall.

I know it is autumn now because yesterday I awoke early, reached for the faded blue sheet that serves as my curtain and pulled it over my head to inhale the potency of morning. Across the yard, the maple tree was stained with sun. I couldn’t take my eyes from the orange leaves in quiet conversation with patches of newly lit sky. It seems that blue is always listening. Lying on my stomach, my chin propped on the windowsill, gaze transfixed on the fiery maple, I was reminded of hiking through a myriad of fallen leaves as a small child, holding tightly to the hand of my father, who urged me to be quiet and listen to the swishing at our feet. I wondered then, craning my neck to see into the highest trees where the most brightly colored leaves still clung to their branches, if the brightest stars are those that are about to fall. I wondered what would happen if a strong wind came and sent those leaves tumbling on air currents changing direction as fast as my small-bodied breath.