Now we were back on the mainland. One thing I didn't mention through all of this, we had a dog. We got a dog in the cave. She wandered in one day, all bedraggled and skinny. We adopted her, and called her Shaka. She was a kind of crazy, totally sweet, golden retriever, collie mix. We brought her to the mainland with us.
So we were back in California, and we went back to Joe's, my friend from Syracuse, I came out west with. He had a wife now, and he was uptight about her not wanting us there. So he gave us a few hours to find a van, to move into. We found one that had a nice body, but it was not too mechanically sound, and we moved into it. We were in Sonoma county. We found this hippie RV park, that let us stay there for free, and started selling our jewelry everyday at the near by college. We also sold at a weekly flea market. We were trying to make enough money, to trade our van that didn't work too good, with some cash, for one that did. It worked out. The next month we get a better van, and we were on our way. We named our new Volkswagen Van Dirt.
We ended back up to Eugene, to see our friend's. They just had a new baby, and weren't that keen about us being there either. So we did what any respectable hippie would do. We went to the Rainbow Gathering. It was all the way at the bottom of New Mexico. The Gila Wilderness to be exact. It was a long but beautiful drive. We drove through parts of the desert, in our country that I have never seen again. We drove through the length of Utah, and saw all those amazing rock formations. We got to the gathering and set up camp. I feel like our experience was a chaotic mess.
First of all, it was the 4th of July, and they have this huge Om circle of thousands of people. I am in it, by myself, without Thomas, and then they say who ever wants to do a day of silence, should go up this mesa, hand in hand. So I go up, and then we sit in silent meditation for hours. That part was nice. Finally it is over and people start hugging each other. So I start hugging the guy who was next to me. Well it seemed like this totally cosmic connection, and there we are. We don't stop hugging, we keep staring into each other's eyes, and we just spend the rest of the day together. Cool, except I have Thomas, floating around there somewhere. The only thing me and this guy have said to each other is our names, because we met in silence. Finally, we go down the mountain. We still haven't said a word, but we are hand in hand in love. Finally he says something. It is " I came here with a woman, and there she is". Great he is with someone too. Then we part company and I go back to my tent, and it turns out Thomas is in there with another woman. Complicated.
Well, it goes like this. I don't see my guy for a few days. Thomas is hanging out with his gal, and ignoring me. I want to find my guy. I finally see him, the night before we are all supposed to go. We finally decide we should use language, and we speak. He wants to spend the night with me, but he has the problem of his gal, who is right there. So we decide to just hang out all together. In the morning, she wakes up early and tells me to take care of him, she is leaving. I feel like he should know, so I wake him up. He decides to go with her, but gives me his parent's phone number in Wisconsin. He leaves. I feel all in love, but I am with Thomas.
I go back to my tent, and Thomas is in there with his new gal. I am like, ok, this is over, lets just get out of here, out of this insanity, and back to our life. Thomas has a different idea. He says his new gal and her friend are coming with us, and we are giving them a ride to Durango, Colorado. I'm like great, and we all climb in our van. The two woman are in the back, and we are in the front. We are barely out of the gathering and I fall deathly ill, with what I later figured out was dysentery or something like that. Within minutes I had an extremely high fever, and felt like my head was going to blow off my body. So, I had to go lay down in the back on our bed, and now the new woman is in the front with Thomas, in my seat. Her friend was in the back with me. And we still had our dog. Then I got the runs really bad, and I was very ill. At the gathering they had a huge kitchen and everyone ate together, what ever they served. and the water I was drinking, was coming out of a rock. Something had made me extremely ill.
I was actually sick for 2 weeks. We got all the way to Durango, with the new woman and her friend. I lived in a campground alone with our dog, while Thomas was hanging out with the woman. I guess you can say, I wasn't having such a good time. Thomas was really into this woman. I couldn't say I totally blamed him, because we weren't in love. But we had been together for a few years, we were on the road, and he was my whole life. He was my home. I didn't know what to do. Thomas actually tried to get me to go to my parents house. I called them, but of course that didn't go over very well. Then, he was really grasping at straws. He made me call, my guy, I had met at the gathering, and tell him I wanted to come to Wisconsin and be with him. That phone call was actually intense, and we could still feel the connection over the phone. But he was living with his parents, and I only knew him like 2 days. Thomas was stuck with me.
We finally left Colorado, and put our life back to what was normal for us. We headed back to Eugene. It is a haze. I do remember, he couldn't forget this woman. We were back in Eugene at our best friend's house. I had somewhere to be. Thomas gave me the van and the dog, and said he had to hitchhike back to Colorado to be with her. I said ok, what is fair is fair. He left, and I started my new life alone. For one night. In the morning, Thomas was back. He had made it to Bend, Oregon and spent the night. He said he missed me and the dog too much, and came back.
The rest of the summer was just normal stuff. We might have sold at the Eugene Saturday Market our jewelry. Then it was fall and we rented a trailer on land, way out in the coast range. It was beautiful, but cold. There was ice on the ground. We were Hawaiianized. Besides that, something terrible happened. Our dog Shaka, and her puppy ate bad salmon out of the creek, and died a day apart. We buried them there on that land, and went back to Kauai.
copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.
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