..Seventeen On The Road
Over drinks the other day, Deepfates and I realized we’d both lived in anarchist communes, his in the US and mine in Europe. Same Rainbow ideas, but the realities couldn’t have been more different. He had lived through infections and hygiene problems I never encountered. He even wrote about it in The Politics of Contagion, published in The Ick. It’s a pretty cool magazine, you should check it out. It reminded me that even at the edges of society, life felt cleaner in Europe than in the US. So I want to tell you about my experience.
“I swear I'll run away from every home I ever have
So I'll build a new house in every town I pass
Maybe then I won't always feel lost and trapped.”
— Wingnut Dishwashers Union, “My Idea of Fun”
I was seventeen, fresh out of foster care and starting to sleep rough. Running away felt less like a decision than the only option left.
One dusk in central France, I crossed paths with a barefoot guitarist who seemed beamed in from 1969. He spoke of Rainbow Gatherings, month-long roving encampments descended from Woodstock’s hippie diaspora.
So I set out to find one. I spent a year and a half on the road. I traveled the world looking for understanding of the times that we live in.
First, I hitchhiked nearly 1,500 miles from France to Bulgaria.
Risky, sure, but I made it, and met kind people along the way. The trip took me four days.
The coordinates are never printed, only whispered: look for a meadow, a stream, a ring of forest.
No phones, no booze, no hard drugs.
Trust was the local currency, and everyone spent it freely. Strangers would lend out their cars or lose a whole afternoon helping you pitch a tarp, no questions asked. I was starved for that kind of gentleness. I needed proof that people could still be decent, the Rainbow gave me that.
My first task was to set up camp. I arrived with a flimsy tent, but by the second gathering I was building huts from branches and mud. Completed with a campfire, a guest room, a pebble path, and a hand-painted sign bearing my name. My dad used to be a conspiracy theorist and had drilled survival skills into me “for when society collapses.” Turns out those lessons paid off: soon I was firing clay pizza ovens and sparking flame in the rain.
Days rolled together through workshops on language exchange, hiking, yoga, improvised games… At the centre stood the communal kitchen, a ramshackle palace of blackened pots, turning crates of vegetables bought from nearby farms into stews big enough for the whole meadow. We would sit in a giant circle, share the meal, sing one song, then pass a hat to bankroll the next grocery run.
After dinner the camp fractured into smaller fires. People called them “chai shops.” We sat on blankets and logs, tea simmered in old kettles, guitars went around, and stories mixed with the smoke of firewood and joints. They felt part café, part living room, and they lasted late into the night.
Basic comfort demanded invention. Someone painted a metal barrel black and mounted it on a scaffold so the sun could warm the water. A hose at its base turned that heat into a gravity-powered shower, a small luxury wrung straight from daylight. Trenched toilets padded with forest duff kept the air sweet.
Speaking of building, there were always projects for the children: nets strung between trees, small huts, and simple obstacle courses. The gatherings had become centered on families who traveled with their tipis. Many of the kids were blond, juggling while switching between three languages, playing music and happy. Seeing talent bloom like that made home schooling click for me, at least for a while.
I miss how the forest made time disappear.
In those moments it felt like we were building more than shelters or games.
Equality was more than a slogan. Expensive cars stood beside rattling vans yet ownership dissolved once you crossed the fire line. Decisions on where to dig new latrines, which trees to fell, and where the next gathering should meet were hashed out in open councils. A talking stick made its slow orbit so every voice, timid or booming, could steer the camp.
Uno Moralez <3 i love this russian pixel painter
Every time, a month passed and it was time to move on. I had been crust punk enough to busk in the streets with strangers, and as I write this I remember those moments, like something straight out of this.
It was also my first time traveling alone, and it sparked in me the will to keep experimenting with other forms of solo journeys.
The Rainbow gave me exactly what I lacked: evidence that goodness survives hardship. Eventually the crowds swelled, mysticism crept in, and the mood shifted from gritty utopia to something closer to a festival trend. As the circle grew wider, the spark grew thinner. That’s when I walked away to run a restaurant.
But that’s another story.
