Rebirthing in Wyoming

We all know the annual gathering of the tribes of the Rainbow Family of Living Light is taking place in Wyoming this summer.

Many people have been commenting on the ways in which we have been failing to live up to the vision in recent years. Some of us have been talking locally in San Diego and we’re having weekly circles in April and May to try to at least bring our higher energy to Wyoming. In conversations with others across the country, I sense this feeling of wanting a time of rebirth is felt by many.

I hope to share some of the thoughts and ideas that come out of our local circles with people as this journey progresses; however, in the hopes of jump starting energy towards reclaiming our vision, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts.

At the last Wyoming gathering in 1994 (and many other gatherings circa the 1990s and earlier) a few kitchens served breakfast in Main Meadow to help focus our morning energy.

Communal breakfast in the meadow served many purposes including but not limited to:

• creating positive energy in the center of the gathering mid-morning,


• making it easy for people to find breakfast,


• providing an opportunity to meet and great with each other and share the Rainbow way,


• allowing camps and kitchens that need help that day with shitter digging, food preparation, or other activities to get volunteers with full bellies and immediately go off and do the work,


• connect people with workshops that are happening that day.

I believe it would go a long way to helping us rebirth our energy if a few kitchens would be willing to go back into the future and find ways to bring us all together in the morning. Of course it’s easy for me to say. But a couple of large pots of oatmeal in the morning and some granola served in a circle would go a long way to helping us raise our vibrational energy and uniting our camps.

Friday Afternoons in Spring Time

A long time ago in a life time so far away that it feels like it belonged to someone else, Friday afternoons in the spring time held a magical promise of possibilities. Home from work and the sun still shining bright. Maybe a quick swim at the beach and an entire weekend slowly unfolding in front of me.

A weekend. Two nights in a row to sleep in. A Saturday morning and a Sunday morning to wake up when ever you want to. A Saturday and a Sunday afternoon to hang out at the beach or nap or go hiking. Two nights to sit out on the front concrete slab or porch and watch the night sky fill with stars.

That was in the twentieth century - a century that seems so long ago and far away that we often forget how people survived without cell phones pressed to their ears (but I digress).

In the twenty first century, my weekend runs from 5 PM on Saturday evening until 3 PM on Sunday afternoon. Barely time to remember who I am.

The rest of the weekend I work caring for my mom. It's easier on Mondays when everyone is working, but spending Saturday on laundry and pushing her around Mission Bay feels like I'm left out of the fun of riding my bike around the bay or having a conversation with someone who just sky dived off Mount Whitney or went searching for tigers in the Sundabans' gigantic mangrove swamps. I generally go to be early on Saturday nights as it's my one night to sleep without a baby monitor pointing at my pillow. The one night I know I can fall asleep without instantly being yanked out of bed to adjust a blanket or a pillow.

So today, instead of revealing in the fact that it's Friday afternoon in the spring time, I'm tired and sad knowing I have to slog through this evening and most of tomorrow until 5 PM comes and then if I have any energy left, I'll try to ride my bike to Black's Beach, walk the road down to the beach and scan the swell for dolphins and a memory of life before, of life when a weekend lasted from 5 PM on Friday afternoon until 8 AM on Monday morning.

For those of you who have the luxury of an entire weekend, stay out late dancing and kiss a boy you never met for me.

Spring on the Land

The land in question is only a seventy five by fifty foot lot in the low lands of Pacific Beach. Somehow, this land came to be mine in the eyes of the law in 2004 despite my lack of belief in owning the earth, but a person has got to live somewhere and while I can live anywhere I can fit a sleeping bag, a bike, a surfboard and a laptop computer, my wheelchair dependent mother likes a bit more in the way of creature comforts - things like indoor showers, heat and a television with fifty seven channels.

So we settled here for the rest of her life.

After the fuss of remodeling to make the bathroom and kitchen more accessible for wheelchairs, I started thinking about the land. Not that there's much. The back yard was a postage stamp of concrete and the front yard two small blocks of soil topped with bark and a couple of recently planted palm trees.

That first summer, I would sit on out on the front concrete slab in the evening and look at the bark and try to decided what to do. After a while, the land started talking to me. It wanted to be the way it was before the Americans, before the Californianos, before the Mexicans, before the Spanish Conquistadors. The land wanted to live like it lived when the footsteps of the Kumeyaay Nation and the hoof beats of Pronghorn antelope roamed the sandy banks of Rose Creek and the Great Blue Herons waded through the marshes and the American Wigeons wintered here and took flight in huge flocks that blocked the sun.

My nephew (who was eight when we moved in) and I discussed the possibility of keeping an antelope in the yard. He didn't think it was practical to have antelope in Pacific Beach, but I could keep cantaloupe instead. I have yet to take him up on his suggestion.

So I read books, listened to the wind, talked to the wealth of knowledgeable people in the area on what plants would have lived in my yard in the year one thousand five hundred. And then I planted. Dug, chopped, hauled rocks, tried to create a balance of plants to bring happiness to the land and the people living on it now. This spring the land thanks me. A carpet of bright orange California poppies, bunches of bright yellow Coast Sunflower and clumps of butter cream Beach Evening Primrose fill in the gaps. Even a purple Wild Hyacinth lurks in the corner of the yard sprung from the soil as if slumbering for generations.

Black Sage and San Diego Sagewort rub up against me as I pass and envelope me in the smell of San Diego. Even the Scrub Oak is growing, tiny tender shoots stretching up towards the sky. This is where we live, along the once upon a time shore of Rose Creek in the land of sage and the ghosts of antelope and Kumeyaay basket weavers.

To all the ancestors and the Grizzly Bears who fished the shores of the bay - spring blessings, we are listening to the words in the wind. Peace to all my relations.

Desert Wildflowers and Aging

So this weekend I dragged my movie to Borrego Springs to visit Anza Borrego Desert State Park and see the spectacular wildflowers in bloom. By movie, I mean disabled Mom in a wheelchair, her caregiver, myself, a gel filled mattress pad, a suitcase full of clothing, a canvas bag of medications, quad cane, baby monitor, food and assorted sundries.

We were only gone for two nights, but filled up a four door sedan with stuff to make sure the routine we maintain at home could be simulated at a golf resort in the desert peopled with grey haired men golfing with their younger wives.

The visitor's center now has a paved trail that runs between the campground allowing my mother to get out into the desert and observe the ant hills, Golden desert poppies, bright yellow blooms on bladder pod, the red tips of Ocotillo like miniature flags in the wind. Blankets of rust colored grass and magenta Desert Sand Vergena teasing tourists to walk slowly, look closely.

Our biggest outing consisted of rolling the entire length and back again. We were surrounded by people with grey hair, strolling about with cameras and guidebooks and I wondered what happened to my life of hiking desolate trails and hearing the voices of those who lived before me. We also drove out a dirt road and ventured thirty feet into the desert - a lot of work for me as I had to pop a wheelie with my mom's wheel chair and drag it through the sandy wash. Then we sat there, in the sand surrounded by purple, white and yellow flowers. The stark mountains rising up to the north - a few scattered bushes on the south facing slope like my scarce moments of remembering who I am.

I saw my future. It is is my present. I don't want it to be. I don't want to be another grey-haired lady dining with friends in the hotel restaurant, shopping for t-shirts, and discussing how spectacular the blooms are. I want to feel the wind speaking to me, sharing tales of vanished worlds and lives still to be lived. I want to rise at dawn and feel the stillness all around, not start my morning off cleaning up urine soaked sheets and pillows.

Unfortunately, I'm living the life of an eighty one year old woman. Early to rise. early to bed. Indoor pool exercise. Conversation for three days about the flower we saw. What's next? Dying of old age by the time I'm fifty?

The Path Less Traveled (Stuck in Traffic)

So one of my oldest and closest friends just was accepted into her dream MFA program at the University of New Mexico. I am thrilled for her. Thrilled that she took the risk and put herself out there. Thrilled that she was accepted. Thrilled that she'll be starting a new phase of her life this summer. One that will lead her down an exciting writing path and into a career as a writer and journalist on NPR. And above all, I'm so proud of her for opening up old wounds and trying to heal them.

The part that I'm not thrilled about is being left behind. Everyone else keeps moving onto new phases of their life and here I sit, babysitting an 81 year old woman who is unable to function without assistance every fifteen minutes. I too am ready to take the leap into the unknown, create a new life, explore the world. But I'm living the life of an 81 year old disabled woman and have been since she was 72 and I was 38. I try to tell myself that I'm on the path less traveled. The run away from home at 17 and join a commune path. The travel around the country in a VW van path. The mosh pit, sweat and tattoos path. The path to adventure and great things. The path where redemption or wisdom or joy is going to come out of taking care of an old person: I've been waiting for nine years and still nothing seems to have materialize except the flab around my tummy and the etched wrinkles on my face.

Somehow I've been stuck here in one place for so many years I can't even remember what life was like before and I don't see any exit ramps. Sometimes people tell me about the twenty first century. I read about it on the web, catch snippets of it on the nightly news. But it's not my life, my world.

Saturday night, I'll drink champagne to celebrate my friend's success. Then I'll go home to my same life that never changes.