The Root Hippie

July 1

Fire.

Hands like leather pound the stretched skin. The voice of the drum echoes through the circular valley, itself an enormous drum. Dancers writhe and twist around the firepit like fingers of flame. In the center, the place where energy and matter meet, is the stuff of life itself: a mystery, it twists and writhes, common and dangerous, untouchable, unpredictable, necessary, beautiful.

The fire. And around it, the dancers, in bare feet, in wraps and skirts and nothing, moving to the rhythm of the drum, but seemingly imitating the flame. The dance is like the wind blowing grasses across fifty thousand miles of American prairie. It is a sacrament to the Unknowable One Who lives where matter and energy meet, Who knows the balance of fire: how to warm without burning, how to consume without destroying.

And around the dancers are the drummers, squatted sitting leaning or standing on the edges of the cleared circle surrounding the firepit. Congas, bongos, dumbeks, bodhrans, monkey drums, ghatams, steel drums, bombos, surdos, tubanos, askikos, djembe, talking drums, jun-juns, tablas, khols, pakwajes, hudaks, madals, dholaks, djun-djuns, nagas, deffs, buffalo drums and tamborines set the beat for the bells, finger cymbals, rainsticks, triangles, and maracas, and the cow bell, and the police whistle. Someone, somewhere, is even playing a jew's harp: and all of them to a rhythm none dictated, but all are following, seemingly at random.

Ace has been at the drum circle since the beginning of time. He will be there until the universe finally sinks to the size of a pinhole and disappears. Time is meaningless in the drum circle; and when, as now, he feels Time attempting to regain a thumbhold on his consciousness, he stops drumming long enough to fix it. His hands, still vibrating from the drumming of the past few (hours? days?), seem to resonate with energy as he reaches into the pocket of his faded jeans. He draws out a plastic egg and pops it open; inside is a tiny slip of paper with Bart Simpson's picture on it. (Even here, no escape from corporate pop-culture clutches.)

Ace lifts Bart with a fingertip, raises the hit into the air. He touches it lightly to his forehead and closes his eyes, offering a silent meditation to the Jah. (Ace has seen God so many times, he's on a first-name basis.)

"Thank You," he breathes, finishing the prayer. He sticks out his tongue and places the paper thereon. He closes his mouth, imagining he can feel the LSD, freed by the moisture of saliva, released into the pores and capillaries of his tongue. Entering his bloodstream. Making minor but significant alterations in the chemistry of his brain.

Clouds swirl and race overhead. Ace sees himself sitting on the opposite side of the firepit, drum in hand. This does not alarm him. He gives himself a big grin, and he returns it. He puts palm to drum and begins to beat, watching his double do the same thing with the same hand. "Boy, this stuff works fast," he says, almost an hour later.

To spite him, time races ahead. Drummers and dancers stop and drop away from the circle. Others step forward, taking their place without pause. The sun slides down behind the mountain, and dawn appears one frozen instant later. As day follows hard on the heels of blue night, the hillside paths grow ever more defined under the passage of sandaled feet. In the woods, tents bloom like great flowers of olive-drab green and blue. Within the circle, the beat changes, speeds up, slows down – but the voice of the drum never stops.

And the flame never dies. Fed constantly with the wealth of dry deadwood from the surrounding forests, the fire burns even through the day: not merely for warmth and light, but for ritual and meaning.

The drums. The fire. And the dance.

It's as if the lost children of Native America have finally returned home.

Time pauses in its headlong rush as the Goddess approaches.

Darkness surrounds the drum circle for a million miles in all directions. She appears out of the eternal night, and the fire gets warmer, flickering in her direction, choking those nearest with smoke. She falls into step with the other dancers as if they were the gypsy family who raised her. She belly dances so well you can hear the bells jingling at her waist, even though she's completely naked (not even a nose ring). Eyes closed, she moves, and the beat of the drum circle follows her.

Watching her, Ace understands the nudity taboo for the first time. It’s as if (he asserts) our bodies are too beautiful to observe in everyday life - as if our naked natural selves reveal a holiness that defies conventional religion, and one that we have been taught not to look on.

Then the Goddess is looking upon him. She is smiling. Ace can barely contain his joy, barely keep from laughing out loud, even though he knows she must be looking past him, at someone else. But she moves toward him, her blond hair a corona against the fire. He gasps as she leans close, tantalizingly close, and brings her smiling face toward his. Feeling like a Michelangelo painting, he tilts his head up, watching her lips as she speaks silently, asking the question he has waited his whole life to hear:

Can I have a cigarette?

The wheels move slowly while changing gears. Ace takes a good thirty seconds downshifting into reality before he can fumble out a cigarette and light it for her. While waiting, she simply shrugs and holds out her hands:

No pockets.

In the extremity of night, the temperature drops to freezing; the fire dwindles, still fed by a few last volunteers, and the drummers huddle closer to it. Others gather under blankets around the fire, sleeping in clusters to stay warm. Shadows deepen at the edges of the circle. One by one the dancers leave, but the drummers remain.

In a state somewhere between wakefulness and dreaming - but still drumming - Ace sees the other drummers transformed into ancient Ibo tribesmen, their dark painted bodies gleaming with sweat in the firelight. Someone throws on a log, and their skin lightens to copper, their hair lengthens, and they are Shoshone, the very same Shoshone who inhabited this valley a century ago. Then they are in Trinidad, then Brazil, then the vast silent reaches of Nepal - and their drums speak the same language through the ages.

Ace understands, then: the drum jam is perhaps the purest form of human gathering, one based totally on personal human interaction, spontaneous yet synchronized, through the most basic of communications media, allowing everyone to be heard, with little to no hierarchy: only consensus.

Only the Beat.

And Ace sits in that circle for 23 hours straight - a new record - sometimes playing, sometimes just sitting watching the fire and the dance. He never notices a need for food, never feels the urge to sleep. And he never notices the stowaway in his dumbek. Inside the hollow shell of the drum, clutching a corner, is a familiar-looking cockroach (but then, all cockroaches look alike). Holding its forelegs over its ears.

July 2

"Fire!"

Ace pulls himself out of sleep with a nameless dread, unsure which of the last 36 hours have been dream and which reality. He misses his dog. Somewhere the conch shell is sounding its eerie tone, again and again. It's like Lord of the Flies, he thinks.

People are running and shouting. The conch shell sounds for the fourth time, and he remembers what word awoke him. He frantically kicks free from his sleeping bag and scrambles to his feet. "Holy shit!"

Ace has walked through these woods. They are full of dry deadfall. He has seen the brown dust suspended in the air. It is humus, organic as you can get. The last three days, clouds have hung over the open bowl of Snider Basin, promising rain but delivering nothing but high prairie winds. Ace may be a frybaby, but he's not stupid: this is the worst possible place and time for a fire.

By the time he's fully awake, he's already running, following the other frantic figures. But before he ever sees the fire he's stopped by a pair of hippies. They place him shoulder-to-shoulder with other Rainbows in a line that quickly stretches a hundred yards in either direction. At least somebody's taking charge, he thinks, as someone hands him an open-topped milk jug full of water. He passes it down the line, takes a sloshing plastic bucket, and repeats the process – once, a dozen times, a hundred. Behind him, another line has formed to pass back the empties.

For what seems like hours - but is probably less than one - they stand there, receiving right and handing left, over and over. Rumors pass along the line even faster than buckets: it's just one tree; it's several trees; it's getting out of control; it's under control; it was a cigarette; it was deliberately set. Strong winds throw brown dust into their eyes and remind them how quickly a forest fire could spread.

Ace looks up the hillside and feels another wave of unreality wash over him. At the trading circle, hippies are still crouched over their blankets and tarps of trinkets. The water line snakes right past them - but they continue trading as if nothing is going on.

Am I really here? Ace thinks. Just then a plastic bucket jams his middle finger painfully. Real enough.

"It's out!" someone shouts a little later, and a cheer goes up. The line begins to disperse. Ace looks around, still holding a Big Gulp cup full of water. Rainbows are giving each other hugs and grinning high fives. Ace feels the gestalt: the community has triumphed over a threat.

Then someone yells "Fire!" again.

The line quickly reassembles, passing buckets until word arrives that the tree, singular, is finally out. A collective sigh of relief. A skinhead with dreadlocks chants, "We don't need no Forest Rangers, we don't need no fire department, the Rainbows can take care of ourselves!" Others cheer and shout "Ho!"

A woman standing near Ace says, "As long as it's not more than one tree."

July 3

Ace is sitting in Everybody's Kitchen, reading my book. After lunch, the bustle of the midday meal has died down. All the cups and bowls have been handwashed and put away, the day's volunteers are scrubbing out the gigantic stewpots and serving bowls under the shade of the tarp, and a few people are sitting on impromptu seats around the dormant ashes of the firepit. Two women are talking, butts balanced on rocks opposite Ace's toppled log. In the bright sunlight just out from the tarp's shadow, a blond hippie in a Johnny Reb hat and another in dreadlocks are staring down a chessboard.

"I'm really tripping out on all the negative energy here," the blond woman says, and Ace looks up. She seems familiar; probably another Deadhead from the Vegas show. She meets his eyes, saying, "It doesn't feel like the Gatherings I've been to before. There's this real sense of foreboding in the air."

The other woman doesn't notice her friend looking at Ace. "That'll go away tomorrow, at the circle," she says.

"I don't know if it will." The woman replies to her friend, but keeps addresssing Ace with her eyes. "It seems like this is bigger than the Gathering."

The other woman doesn't reply; Ace takes that as his cue. "I know what you mean," he says.

"I thought you did. I can see it in your face. What's the matter, brother?"

Ace hesitates. "I'm not really sure – but you're right. It feels different from the last Gathering. It's like everyone's holding their breath, waiting for something bad to happen."

The blond woman shakes her head. "No, I mean what's on your mind that weighs so heavy?"

She is a stranger, but she speaks like she's known him all her life. And he has seen her before, somewhere…the familiarity is comforting. "Well…I'm worried about my dog," he confesses. "I lost track of him on the Deadhead circuit. I haven't seen him in months. He’s always been able to travel on his own, but he's never been gone this long before.”

"He'll find you again," the woman says kindly, and Ace thinks: No pockets. Now he recognizes her: the dancer from the drum circle. She looks different because she's not naked. "Hey – you're – "

She nods. "I wondered if you'd remember. I owe you a cigarette." She rolls left on the rock, reaching into the back pocket of her jeans to pull out a pack. She takes one with her lips and offers him another.

"Thanks, sister. I'm Ace."

"Dolly."

As they lean forward to exchange a hug, the book slides off Ace's lap onto the ground.

Dolly says, "I think everybody's tense because they can't let their guard down. After the fire today – "

"You mean yesterday," Ace says.

"No, I mean today."

"There was another fire?"

"Yeah, this morning. Didn't you hear the shouting?"

"No, I just got back from Bus Village a little while ago. What happened?"

“Stump caught on fire. It was right over there by that big tree.”

“Which one?”

“The big one.”

"What started it? Do they know?"

"I've just heard rumors. Cigarette. Arson. The cops."

Ace nods: in other words, nobody knows, but everybody has an opinion.

"This is just what the cops need," Dolly says. "They already think the Gathering is a ‘riot of homeless people….’ I heard that on the way in."

"I haven't seen too many of them up here – not like Alabama."

"That's because you didn't have to walk over a mountain to get to the Alabama site. The cops're too out-of-shape to haul their fat asses up the trail! Even the Rangers are riding horses. Maybe the hippies have finally figured out how to keep cops from hassling us – climb a mountain. Then climb another one. And another one. Eventually the cops just say the hell with it and go home."

Ace says, "Oh, I don't think that'll happen. It's like a cartoon. The cat never catches the mouse, and never gives up, so the chase just goes on and on. Sometimes I think we wouldn’t be hippies at all without cops to harass us.”

Dolly gives him a lopsided smile. "I think we’d manage just fine."

A little while after she leaves, Ace gets up to put another log on the fire. On the ground he sees a couple of business cards, rolling papers and a lottery ticket, fluttering in the wind behind the rock Dolly used as a seat. He remembers how she leaned over, pulling the cigarettes out of her back pocket.

Ace's time sense is still a little sketchy, but it seems like she only left a few moments before. He picks up the handful of paper and wanders into the woods after her.

Hours later, not only has he has failed to find her, he's totally lost himself. He knows he's not that far from camp (or he thinks he knows), but damned if he can find it. He imagines he can hear hippies around every bend of the trail, but somehow they are always just out of sight through the trees.

The forest is littered with deadfalls, like ribs from the skeletons of long-dead giants. Next to one toppled trunk is a mound of dirt and pine needles fully three feet high. It is crawling with life. He crouches for closer examination. The inhabitants pay him no heed, moving with single-minded intent, their tiny bodies and segmented legs in perfect synch. Their black jewel eyes are blind to his presence. He is a thousand times their size, but unless he were to mash his foot into their hillside, they should have no idea he ever existed.

Ace watches the ants for a long time. They have a speed and intent few creatures possess. In all the animal kingdom, he can think of only one other creature that moves with such deliberation: people.

Ace shudders and walks away from there.

Eventually the forest opens into a wide clearing. There is a trail, and a few tents propped up at the treeline. He has no idea where he is: Hoboken, Wyoming, or freaking Oz. Oz seems least likely at the moment: none of those damned flying monkey-things have shown up. Ace eyes the upper branches suspiciously.

Trees must topple here all the time, he thinks, stepping over another trunk. What are the odds… He eyes a tree suspiciously as it seems to waver in front of him. If a tree falls in the forest…and you're standing under it…

At first, Ace doesn't even see the hippie sitting next to the fallen tree. His brown dreadlocks and beard are the same color as the roots around him, almost inseparable, as if woven together. He sits crosslegged on the ground, probably meditating – or at least he was until Ace showed up. Now he simply sits watching him approach through the trees.

As Ace steps closer through the shadows of early afternoon, he sees that the hippie is a part of the fallen tree. His hair is woven into the twisted roots, his body a natural extension of the trunk. The curling dreads, the beard, the face itself are formed from rootshapes; he is an Escher painting come to life. The root hippie does not move from his meditative stance, but he is definitely aware of his accidental visitor. Ace feels rather than hears him say:

come closer…
child…of the rainbow….

Ace approaches without fear or hesitation. The root hippie is silent for a long time, but there is no doubt he is regarding Ace, as if considering his intent…or his worth.

Finally, the deep, deliberate voice speaks again.

Why…

Why, yes. Ace has often wondered that, himself. As his mind races for an answer, the voice continues, finishing the sentence.

…have you…come here…

"I'm lost," Ace stammers, respect turning to awe as he realizes the huge tree must have been at least 500 years old.

…are you… - a pause, and then a word Ace slowly comes to understand as shaman.

"Sham - no, I'm just a, I'm not a, I'm not a shaman, no." It takes less time for Ace to say this than for the root hippie to say the next word.

I…
…have been summoned…
…by the tipis…
…in the sacred circle…of the valley.

And Ace suddenly understands. Hearing the deep loneliness in that voice, he understands how the last great auk felt as hunters smashed her eggs against the rocks. He knows what the last living creature on Earth will feel as it watches the final setting of the sun. He didn't know there was that much loneliness left in the world.

The root hippie thought Tipi Village was the return of friends he hadn't seen in generations - those same Shoshone Ace witnessed in his vision at the drum jam. But there are only white people in this valley now - all the Shoshone are dead and driven away. How to explain that to this old spirit?

He decides to say nothing, merely stands and watches the root hippie silently. After a while, the old one speaks again - as old ones will do. In the extremity of age, there is little left to do but speak of the past.

A short…time ago…
…long before…your birth…
…people…of copper skin…
…and brilliant laughter…
…celebrated me…
…in voices…like these…

…reborn…
…but these people…are different…
…there is much…new…about them…
…and a fiery energy…
…so bright…it threatens…to exhaust itself…
…also…
…a threat of darkness…
…something…coming…I have not seen…in all my summers…
…that threatens…
…the valley itself.

Ace says, "What?" and immediately wishes he hadn't; his voice, shattering the silence after so long, breaks the spell. He waits in that spot for a long time, but the root hippie does not say anything else.

Shattered, Ace wanders away through the woods - an intruder in a room full of strangers who are too shocked to speak.

I remain where I am, staring at the root hippie for a moment longer. To my astonishment, he says:

Was there…something else…

“You can see me?” I stammer.

Of course…
…ghosts…are young spirits…
…I am…very old.

"What else can you see? Do you know what the next century holds?"

No…I cannot see…
There are…too many…shadows…
…I cannot see…more than five…summers ahead…
…but I know…that he…
…is not…what he seems.

So I was right – Ace is somehow special. Then the root hippie says the last thing I ever expected him to say:

And neither…are you.

The sun peaks over Snider Basin and begins its slow slide down the sky. By now, the day before the Gathering's grand finale, the woods are as busy with hippies as the anthill Ace observed. One such fellow, Donnie, is wandering the forest not far from where Ace held palaver with the root hippie. Emerging from the woods into the very clearing Ace entered only an hour before, he beholds a strange sight.

A man in black – no Rainbow, from the look of him – stands in the clearing, holding a gun. He wears a cowboy hat over a clean-shaven face. As he watches, fire moves up the trunk of a nearby tree, silent as a cat.

In the dreamlike mystery of the moment, Donnie can only stare as the fire leaps into the higher branches. Still it is silent, as if observed through a tank of water, or on a TV with the sound turned down. The man raises his gun into the air, as if forcing the fire to climb at gunpoint.

The shot shatters the silence of the Wyoming afternoon and shocks Donnie out of his reverie. The man races into the woods and disappears. A moment later, the top of the tree explodes into flames like a Roman candle. Within moments, three of the nearest treetops are burning, and more are igniting every second. The roar of the forest fire sounds like a subway train. It finally frees his voice:

"FIRE!"

And Ace is back at Everybody's Kitchen, looking for a joint. He's hoping that a good hard stone will help him deal with the root hippie's somber message. But he has no luck finding any, and is standing there, lost and despairing, when he hears the conch shell's eerie tone.

"Shit, not again," he breathes. People are already getting up and running, their nerves tight as wires from the previous firefights. Thinking of the root hippie's words (a fiery energy), he makes his way back to the top of the hill – and stands still.

(something…that threatens…the valley itself…)

This is very bad. It is no stump fire; even from here, he can see the treetops blazing. The column of smoke rises up from a familiar spot: it's where he just came from.

It's where the root hippie is.

Ace begins to run….