A thousand people are expected in the woods near Mesick this weekend as part of a Rainbow Family gathering. Several hundred are already there to sing, hug and meditate for world peace.
And if you show up at the gathering in the Manistee National Forest, you’re going to get hugged.
There are drum circles, campfires, people yelling “Welcome home” and “I love you” to strangers.
The Rainbow Family has been around for about 40 years and their gatherings are like Woodstock without electric guitars. This one is tucked away deep in the woods south of Mesick.
Auntie Arica came up from Texas and tie-dyes shirts on a blanket with friends. She says Arica Garcia is her real name - or rather her Babylon name.
“Babylon is what we call normal society, because no one likes to go back to Babylon,” she says. “You know, you want to be here and free in the woods and with family.”
Garcia says she feels freer here than anywhere else and that there’s a real spirit of sharing.
“Food here is free,” she says. “You just go because closed mouths don’t get fed. You just walk around and holler ‘I’m hungry’ and someone will say, ‘There’s food that way.’”
She says some think the Rainbow Family is a cult, but that’s not true.
“Anyone with a belly-button is welcome. And if you don’t have a belly-button, have a smile, and then you’re welcome.”
You won’t see cell phones or hear radios.
You will see a lot of dogs and there’s a lot of impromptu acoustic music.
While the group is here, members build a small society that shuns money and relies on gifts and bartering. In the evening there’s a gathering in a circle in a meadow for food, chanting, singing and what they call “silliness.” And there’s an acoustic stage for volunteer performances.
A man who introduces himself as Ciccone Waters helped build the stage. He says he took his first name from Madonna’s last and he won’t tell me his real name.
“I like going by Ciccone,” he says. “I really want to change it legally, you know because that’s how everybody knows me.”
Waters says he’s spent a lot of his life traveling around to gatherings like this.
“I would go from Rainbow gathering to Furthur Fest/Grateful Dead tour to a rave to a Firefly gathering to Burning Man back to a gathering and just from one alternative gathering, basically, to another.”
The group plans a morning of silence on Saturday, July 4th, with prayer and meditation at the main circle at noon.
They plan to break camp on Monday. Several participants said they will stay behind to help the Forest Service pick up the site and re-seed where necessary.