After 1,771 miles and two-and-a-quarter days hurtling through Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and New Mexico, we turned off to start the last nine miles to The 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes at Parque Venado in the Santa Fe National Forest, and instead of empty dirt road we saw tents, parked vehicles and hundreds of people milling about playing music and tending fires.

We tried to keep going but were stopped by a dreadlocked dude who said "I can't tell you what to do but it's a mess up there. Already 12,000 people and the parking's full. You might want to think about parking here and shuttling in. Up to you."

We parked, unpacked, badly repacked, shuttled in, then hiked another mile or two up hill under sun with heavy packs, set up tent. Went down to main meadow, sat in sun and watched dogs run free amidst drummers, jugglers, dancers, singers, gypsies, yogas, old hippies, new hippies, punks, alternatives, dead heads, phish heads, musicians, vegetarians, children, babies, elderly, handicapped, nudists, wiccans, artists, folkies, pagans, jewelry makers, holistic healers, high schoolers, hard partiers, old alkys, the curious and curiouser.

Lying on our blanket in the sun I think, "This is nice, I love to people watch, and there are certainly a lot of friendly, fascinating people, but is this what we do for 3 days?"

Then they called the 4:20 Family Council Circle to order. We were curious what they might have to talk about, so sat just outside the circle of a hundred or so. An elder man turns and asks if I smoke grass. When I say yes, he says "Well then you need to be in the circle" and moves a dozen people further out so Lady and I are in. Turns out it's the cannabis culture's "4:20" which is the cult time to smoke grass after school or work. They pass a coffee can around asking for marijuana donations so they can roll a bunch of joints and pass them out so hundreds of Family can all smoke at the same time. I got one toke in the first round. Then a dude walked up to the Dubliner on my left, handed him a joint and said "You look like you could use this." Joints are generally passed to the left. He looked at me and said, "If I start this, you won't get a toke, so you start it." I did. The previous toke didn't do much except make me happy for the symbolism of it all, what with my purposely leaving my smoke home and reality magically getting me a taste anyway; but the second toke was sweet, strong and acrid. One toke got me buzzed - so the magic went from symbolic to actual.

There are paths everywhere in all directions off the meadow, and each path is crossed by other paths, and all paths have dozens and dozens of tents bleeding off both sides up and down the mountain. And each camp [ ie, the LGBT camp, the Yoga camp, the Jesus camp, the Anarchists camp ] had its own kitchen and latrine. Everything was handmade, the water filtered and run through gravity pipes, the latrines holes and trenches dug in the earth. Everything had to be carried in, so there was a fantastic cleverness in doing much with little, like making a swing set for the children from a couple tied-together trees.

The food from each of the 20 kitchens was free. So was the coffee, tea.

Everybody seemed open, friendly, accepting, curious, helpful. Their standard greeting was a smile and "Welcome home."

We walked up the market lane and once I saw the hand crafted merchandise available only for barter, I understood Lady's attraction - this was tribal, the market the same feel of those we'd wandered in the small villages in Morocco and Mexico. We were no longer in the Corporate-Rat Race.

Part way through the bazaar, we heard a shouted "Lady" and looked down to see our friend Magda whom we'd first met in Poland in 2006 and last saw in Africa in 2007. She lead us to her husband Blue, an artist and film maker who's also the leader of the garage avant-garde cabaret rock n roll band The Urban-Jellen Test and who had given us our first poetry gig in Krakow by having us open for several of his concerts.

Then to sleep, my tired body pained bones on hard ground, Lady freezing in insufficient old sleeping bag. Much tossing and turning. Little sleep.

But a cool day.

Lady wanted to attend the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering in the Rocky Mountains north of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She'd first gone to the 2005 Gathering in West Virginia, and it had changed the way she thought and looked at herself - showed her she was too closed and negative.

It made her want to go again, so soon after we first met, we forgot about promoting the publication of my final issue of ArtCrimes and left the U.S. a month early so we could join the European annual gathering in North England in August 2006.

This meant we pretty much lost the entire $4,000 publishing price for ArtCrimes 21 because we wouldn't be around to promote and sell it. But this wasn't much of anything new because I had the uncapitalistic habit of paying 100% of the publication price myself, giving each contributor a free copy, and then giving away most the sellable copies. I lost $20,000 on 21 issues over 20 years. But ArtCrimes made my underground rep here and abroad, and it's in the hands of thousands of artists world wide and in University collections, so it was money well used. It's the greatest and perhaps most expensive calling card in the world.

England was my first experience with the Rainbow Tribe, and it was an unqualified disaster (except for the rabbits). A Dutch Rainbower had promised to loan us a tent and sleeping bags for the occasion but forgot. With backpacks far too heavy, we bused to Northern England and walked forever up tortuously steep hills to the high fields where they were camped. With no equipment we tried to sleep unprotected in the shit-filled sheep fields and I started freezing. I had no idea one could freeze in August, but the high hills get real cold. Some group took pity on me and let us into their tent, but I still went into hypothermia, shaking uncontrollably. Lady found some blankets and covered me with her body after I'd put on every piece of clothing I had in my pack.

We'd failed to get much of a welcome from the self-superior stand-offish European Tribe, had no equipment, were miserably cold, so we waited until first light when we could see to side-step the sheep shit and left. This part at least was magic for as we walked down gorgeous mountains in the rising dawn, we saw thousands of rabbits bouncing through the fields and running across the dirt road all around us.

We trained down to Burley-On-Warfdale and spent way too much for a week in a Bed & Breakfast. It was good, but not what we came for. At least there we got to walk the moors, which made me re-read Jane Austin's Wuthering Heights with much greater appreciation.

So, understandably I was less than enthusiastic about driving 1,800 miles in 2.5 days, camping 2 days and driving 1,800 miles back in 2.5 days just to be with the Rainbow Tribe. Tried to tell her it was too fast, too long, and we'd be too tired to enjoy. Not that I thought there'd be much to enjoy - who cares what a bunch of old and faux hippies do? I say this having been with but not of the hippies in the late 60s, though I did like the hippies then and like the survivors even more now.

She was adamant, and I cannot deny her (even if I tried, I'd fail for she is rock and stone to my ethereal flow). So July 1st we jumped in the car and took 2-hour turns driving 70-90 miles per hour for 11-12 hours a day. First day got halfway across Oklahoma. Second to Santa Rosa New Mexico. Third day, 3-4 hours brought us to the camp at 9,000 feet in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.

This is not the way to travel, though hurtling across country at high speeds does have a certain Kerouacian cool madness, for as Jack Kerouac says, 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”'

Will go into greater detail tomorrow, but the highlights of the first two days were the Gateway Arch across the Mississippi River in St Louis, Missouri (It stands 630 feet / 190 meters tall, and is 630 feet / 190 meters wide at its base, making it the tallest monument in the United States), the incredible jumbled dark painted cloud skies of Oklahoma, and Cadillac Ranch just outside Amarillo Texas.
The good part here was Lady had never seen how vast this country is, or what vistas there are. Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado were amazing eye-openers to her - but it was New Mexico that was especially beautiful with its buttes, mesas, deserts of greens, reds, browns, and endless horizons.

Now I have to find a way to get her to the 4-corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah), The North Dakota and Montana badlands, and the Grand Canyon.

Here are some fotos of Cadillac Ranch. Cadillac Ranch is (according to Wikipedia) "a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The piece is a statement about the paradoxical simultaneous American fascinations with both a "sense of place" — and roadside attractions, such as The Ranch itself — and the mobility and freedom of the automobile."

When I saw Cadillac Ranch my first two times in the early 1980s, the cars were only minorly grafittied, you could still see most of the original car surfaces. Now they are totally buried under endless coatings of paint.

We did a seven day 3,672 mile drive out and back to attend the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering in Parque Venado in the Jemez Mountains north of Albuquerque.

Left our computers home, so no on-line intercourse or news for seven mind relaxing days. Left my smoke too. Figured if reality wanted me to get high, reality would stone me.

Going out the southern route, we did daily drives of 770, 786, 215 miles; camped 32 hours, then drove back the northern route with daily doses of 83, 704, 872 and 242 miles in a little red 1994 four-cylinder Honda Civic Ex, not the most comfortable touring car but a great little driver.

Saw a lot, thought a lot, burned two quarts of oil and got a $25 ticket for not wearing my seat belt this morning courtesy of an Indiana State Trooper.

I'll download my fotos and read my notes to see if I brought anything worth blogging about back.

If not, we still had a fascinating, wonderful time.

Need braaaiiiinnss.

Must jump-start brain. Going to stay offline for a week. Going to do actual stuff, work on some writing.

I'm in a dark loop of re-evaluating my worthiness. It is a downward spiral. I'm finding myself with a deep vein that's petty, selfish, shallow. I go along fine as Mr Wonderful while small wounds and slights boil and toil to trouble inside until they coalesce over time and I suddenly lash out at those around me, seldom for any valid reason.

I'm judgmental and righteous, just like the Christian Right. I have in fact become one of the very people I've always railed against. There's anger within, a smoldering rage at the unfairness of life on earth where the rich eat the poor after first picking their pockets.

I have to do something about my lack of inner light. I've worked at becoming a better person at least since the late 1960s, but for every two steps forward I take at least one back and a couple sideways. Some would say "Welcome to the human condition," but I'm a mutant, I don't want to be human, I want to be good outside and at peace inside.

And now to complicate my shortcomings, I've gotten an email from my younger sister whom I haven't heard from in almost two decades. In 1990 she disowned the rest of the family after having her memories "recovered" by a religious cult who told her my mother, father, grandmother and grandfather had all been in a Satanic cult and had sexually molested her.

Not true of course, but her lies broke mom's heart and killed any feeling I had for sis.

I thought of ignoring her, but I'd just been delving into how selfish and self-centered I am, so decided to give her a chance, hear her out, see if there's any relationship to salvage.

Not sure where this is going to go, but it is a chance for me to be a slightly better person.

Today makes three years Lady and I've been blogging on WalkingThinIce.com.

We've been together nearly 4 years, and all but our first nine months is online in an almost daily visual and textual diary of our perambulations.

We got together, Lady gestated 9 months, then gave birth to our blog.

I was against it, asked her why she would want to blog. She said it would suit me. Now I'm hooked.

We've posted 1,502 blogs and some 4,000 fotos since then. 2008 saw almost a million pages viewed (948,601).

I personally know maybe 24 of our readers. The who why what where when of the rest is a mystery.

I've noticed one result of all this blogging is I've become even more quiet among people because I've already said what I have to say.

First I got a fortune cookie which said, "Life begins in enigma, ends in ambiguity."

Then I saw the Collective's Conscious file that summarized my life - it had but one line: "Enigma in, enigma out."

Enigma in-between too. Lady says what first attracted her to me were the enigmatic tee-shirts I wore at poetry readings.

Sometimes saying less gets you more.

The Lady, or the Tiger?

Door 1?
Big bats flying, black scorpion crawling.

Door 2?
Blood pollen on the silent keys.

Door 3?
Candy worship in the Temple of the Prom Queen.

The price of right.
Is One the end of Zero?

Fish feel pain.

In a recent experiment, scientists injected bee venom into the lips of live fish. The injected fish became agitated, and swam down to the bottom of the tank to scrape their lips on the gravel, trying to remove the sensation.

The fish that weren't injected did not become agitated, did not scrape their lips.

Ergo, fish have sensor cells in their lips that transmit unpleasant sensation. And if they have pain sensors in their lips, they likely have them in their cheeks and mouths as well, so it must hurt like hell when fisherman yank that hook through. It seems the "accepted truth" that fish don't feel pain is just a lie fishermen spread to make themselves feel better.

Human cheeks have very few pain cells. I read that in 1975, and tested it out myself by pushing a sterilized needle through my right cheek with a pair of pliers. My flesh was way resilient and difficult to push through, but it didn't hurt - just felt extremely odd.

Same article said ear lobes also have few pain cells.

Looking around at the multitude of metal-studded pierced people, I wonder if that's not true with the nostril, tongue, and eyebrow areas as well.

Not going to think about folk with pierced genitalia or tattoos.