Your mother sleeps in a solar powered bus. Your father is a nudist priest who protests the “oppression” of honeybees. Your sisters and brothers are street kids that make walnut paste using bike-powered blenders. Welcome to the Rainbow Family of Living Light.

“Rainbow doesn’t discriminate,” explains 19-year old Dharma. “It’s accepting of people you wouldn’t normally bring into your family, but they get to come anyway.”

Dharma grabs her stray pup, Dizzle, by the scruff of the neck, keeping her from bounding into the early-morning bonfire. Dharma is only one of the countless teenage runaways drawn to the Annual Rainbow Gathering, an eclectic celebration held in a different US National Forest each year. Trade circles, fire-spinning, and mass pagan weddings are popular activities at the Gathering, along with the central Prayer for Peace Ceremony. This ceremony, crucial to the philosophy of the festival, invites participants to link arms and pray for world peace.

Despite the hippy-dippy vibe of the Rainbow Festival, many of the younger members have darker, more desperate past-lives, fraught with rape, neglect, and drug-use. Names like Nomad, Useless, and Clutter fill the air, bumping up against incense and patchouli oil: at times you wonder if teens are calling out to their friends or their pets.

“Many Rainbow kids are street kids that are capable of doing really bad things but choose otherwise,” explains Erin, a former street kid who has been coming to the Gathering for over ten years.

THE SCHWILLY BOYS

The Schwilly boys, Josh and Salvatore, are sunning themselves under a sagging fir tree. Sal sports suspenders and skintight jeans and Josh is wearing a royal blue peasant dress he found a few towns back. The boys are two key members of “Twelve Shades of Schwilly Silly”—a vaudeville-inspired collective of travelling musicians from across the streets of the United States. They have come to Rainbow to entertain the happy masses of ‘brothers and sisters’ whom they consider part of their extended family.

“Schwilly Silly means, you know, that happy little silly drunk you have before things turn sour,” Sal explains. “There are many different forms of Schwilly, you can have a sloppy Schwilly, angry Schwilly, emotional Schwilly, sexy Schwilly…” Though Rainbow is an alcohol-free festival, many of the Dirty kids are no strangers to the sauce: They do try and pay respect to Rainbow law, however, and keep binge drinking to a minimal during the festival.

Josh and Sal occupy the field separating “Montana Mud” from “Dirty Kids Camp”—two of the darker dwellings in Rainbowland. These camps, which consist of a mish-mash of busted tents, chained mutts and fire pits, cater largely to street kids, train hoppers, gutter punks and squatters. Often called “Drainbows” by the more ‘pure-minded’ family members, who don't believe in drinking, or drug-use, this camp is often scrutinized for its rough-edged members. Most family members, however, open their arms to these kids, praising their talent and exuberance for life without judging their lifestyles.

Suns at full and Sal seems off-kilter, just realizing he lost both his vintage bowler cap and his rat, Penelope, the previous night at a wild bush party. Josh consoles him; he understands how important four-legged friends are on the road.

“Don't worry, brother,” he assures Sal, “Penelope will materialize herself.”

Thankfully, Sal still has his main companion, Dapper Dan—a six-month old puppy Sal found on the road. Also known as Dapper Douchebag when Sal is feeling particularly frustrated, the mutt helps Sal while busking for change on the street.

“Dan makes more money on the road than me!” he explains, “He just sits in my guitar case and looks cute. People love him!”

As the day heats up, Josh begins to tap a sloppy beat on his “drum set”—a group of overturned buckets and cracked plastic containers. Sal sucks back on his rusty harmonica, and both boys begin to belt out a funky, blues tune. A couple copulates openly on the grass beside us. Tattooed faces peak from tent flaps. Despite their limited instruments, the boy’s raw talent is infectious.

“We’re gonna be reincarnated as birds,” Sal sings, “Reincarnated as birds!”

Stray kids and dogs yelp and clap along with the Schwilly boys, waking up from their hangovers, opening their tent flaps, sharing breakfast beers and getting ready for their next day in Rainbowland.

STAB WOUNDS

Sicka lifts her “Misfits” shirt to reveal a gash, four hands wide, across her gut. Unlike other girls her age, she isn’t self-conscious about her disheveled hair or puffy waistline: She has more important things to worry about.

“Got stabbed back in Portland,” she explains, almost apathetically, pulling the shirt back over her gash. “Almost died. I had to carry my own guts in my hands to the hospital.” She sucks back on a smoke. “Guess that’s what you get for trying to save someone’s life.”

Sicka was attacked when she tried to break up a fight between a fellow street kid and her abusive boyfriend. Sicka is no stranger to extreme violence, having been surrounded by it since birth.

“When I was 13 I pressed charges against my parents for child abuse. My dad used to beat the shit out of me and my twin sister, who has Cerebral Palsy. After that I started drinking heavily, doing meth, doing coke, smoking crack. By the time I was 15 I was so fucked off in my head I successfully killed myself for 86 seconds.” It was at that time that Sicka was admitted to a Washington mental institution and put on heavy medication for a laundry list of mental health diagnoses.

“Diag-nonsense is more like it,” Sicka jokes, “I’m not crazy.”

Sicka occupies the field separating “Montana Mud” from “Dirty Kids Camp”—two of the darker dwellings in Rainbowland. These camps, which consist of a mish-mash of busted tents, chained mutts and fire pits, cater largely to street kids, train hoppers, gutter punks and squatters. Often called “Drainbows” by the more ‘pure-minded’ family members, who don't believe in drinking, or drug-use, this camp is often scrutinized for its rough-edged members. Most family members, however, open their arms to these kids, praising their talent and exuberance for life without judging their lifestyles.

Now Sicka sells her meds and lives off of social insurance cheques: She also occasionally makes money working as a freak show artist, opening for rock bands with her shocking self-mutilation talents.

“It was in the mental institution where I learned to stick needles through my cheeks and things down my throat. It’s also where I came out [of the closet]. There were a lot of cute girls in there!”

BABYLON

We’re in Babylon, the nickname Rainbow kids give to the world outside Rainbowland. Josh is barefoot in the frozen foods isle. We need supplies. The store-owners suspect we’re stealing, and some of us are, but Josh is just standing there, salivating, peeking at the frozen sausages behind the freezer door. He’s dressed in a waist length blue peasant dress.

“I got this dress a few towns back, at another Gathering,” he says. “Now all the girls won’t stop trying to trade me for it!”

Josh swallows, forgets the sausages, and grabs a candy bar, paying for it with his food stamps card. He doesn't seem to notice he is cross-dressing in a hyper-conservative southern town. His card is declined.

Outside, more Rainbow kids cluster in the parking lot. Signs fight for space on the store’s bib: Mickey’s Save Way Market, United we Stand, Fireworks and Chicken for sale. Kids sit out front, “spanging”—asking for spare change with homemade signs. Sicka and Moe are making out, their breasts bumping up against each other as townies in cowboy hats stare in shock. Frankie sits beside the car, poking at a can of refried beans with a jackknife. Church volunteers hand out protein bars with help line numbers on the back. Puppies lick at stray puddles.

A truckload of more kids, also in Babylon to stock up on supplies, pulls up beside us in the lot.

“Lovin’ you, Family!” the truck shrieks at us, a popular Rainbow slogan. Young people flow from the vehicle.

“Sister!” says Sal, “I haven’t seen you since Portland!” He embraces a one-legged girl with a pink mohawlk.

NOMADIC SEXUALITY

“Don’t call me a faggot!” screams Sal, naked in a natural hot spring, clutching a two-liter bottle of root beer in one hand and a jug of Jack Daniel’s whiskey in the other. A group of kids have packed into Moe’s busted-up RV to take a road trip to a nearby hot spring to swim. Sal’s sitting on Justin’s bare lap, bouncing.

“I’m a queer!” he explains. “It’s different!”

The free yelps and squeals of the kids clash with the more demure attitudes of the other “Babylon” bathers.

“I heard that salt water heals scabies!” Moe jokes, hoping to clear the crowded spring.

“What about herpes?” Josh kids.

“Or Hep C?”

Strangers’ bodies exit the spring quickly. Nipples and boys touch, kids compare bites and tracks, they slurp whiskey and swap spit with their friends and lovers. Their boundaries blur underneath hot water.

“Gay people come here because we don't care who you make out with, who you get with, everyone is welcome,” explains Dharma. “Lots of Rainbow kids are queers.”

WOMEN ON THE ROAD

“Every women I’ve ever loved or known has been abused or sexually assaulted: My girlfriend, my sister, my mother…” says Dharma, a dreadlocked 19-year old who has been on the streets for four years. Many young women have solved this problem by banding together, avoiding hitching alone, and carrying “big knives.”

“A lot of kids run away because they’re spoiled and don't want to listen to their parents. I left because I wanted my mom to breathe easy and work a little less.” Dharma comes from a family of six kids, supported by a single mother. Her father was deported and refuses to pay child support. Dharma’s younger sister, Emma, is also staying at Dirty Kid Camp. She is a bit rougher than Dharma, and has spent the morning beating boy after boy in wrestling matches at the camp’s official mud pit. Beyond having fun, Emma seems to be sending a warning to the more dangerous men of Dirty Kid Camp: “Don't mess with me.”

Though she has been through a lot of abuse from strangers, Dharma insists she doesn't hold it against anyone. “I want to make it very clear,” she explains, “I love my country. I love the USA. I love traveling around the most beautiful country in the world. I feel so lucky to be alive!”

PRAYER FOR PEACE

The annual Rainbow Gathering is focused largely on one central event: the prayer for peace. This ceremony, held at every annual Gathering, brings tens of thousands of family members from all Rainbow camps to the center field to hold hands and pray.

“Rainbow is an untainted family,” explains Amber, a beaming 19-year who is completely covered in mud after celebrating all day at the “Prayer for Peace” ceremony.

“We won’t judge or reprimand you here; we are only there to heal and nourish and love you. Rainbow is what family should be.”

At the prayer ceremony an elderly woman in a white gown silences all the kids with a single finger to her lips. They obey. Friends and family members, young and old, hold hands, their eyes closed: There are near thirty thousand of us, silent, waiting, gathered together.

As the night creeps in the teens circle the fire back at “Dirty Kid Camp,” singing, screaming, sitting too close to the flames. Rain begins to fall but nobody takes notice. As their dogs yelp and hump, the kids find comfort sleeping outdoors, picking at ticks, nursing sunburns and scars, huddled together for warmth.

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