The Rainbow Gathering

“Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.”

I arrived at The Rainbow Gathering in darkness and I left in darkness; so that my time there feels as though it were contained in a magic vacuum – set apart from the rest of experience – in a land of faraway to which I was teleported;  like one of Robin Hood’s blind-folded hostages or Dorothy wizzed away in the tornado, not entirely sure how I got there, not entirely sure how I got back. The reason for this is that I both arrived and left The Rainbow, in the back of a van. The first was an over-crowded white flower delivery van full of fellow Rainbows, the second was a long-distance, much-loved caravan owned by a pair of ‘rubber tramps’ – as Christopher calls them in Into the Wild – packed to the rafters with yurt and circus equipment.

But let us begin at the beginning, for that is a good place to start.

I arrived at The Rainbow Gathering in the back of an over-crowded white flower delivery van full of rainbows. A member of our group, a Hungarian maths teacher called Juju, managed to negotiate for it in a small, but overcrowded pizzeria in a rural Hungarian village called Besel. In a sense I was disappointed to forego the two-hour hike through the mountains leading to the gathering site (way-marked by red ribbons). It felt like an important rite of passage prior to arrival at the encampment, in the same way that the pilgrimage is as axiomatic to the pilgrim, as the shrines, churches or relics to which their journey’s end is bent.  However, in this instance, group consensus reigned – as it always does at the Rainbow, and in any case, I did not want to abandon the group I had met on the bus coming from Budapest.  Shut up in this way, in an absolute darkness, we sang our way towards the festival camp, in a van which jolted and bumped on a rough and riveted mountain road. Though the rear chamber of the van was perforated with a few holes to allow for flow of oxygen, the limited ventilation offered by the car meant that the air surrounding us felt distinctly communal. I enjoyed the sensation of hearing voices but not knowing where coming from: voices that had joined together and united in the darkness from all around the world: Israel, Hungary, Denmark, France, Austria, Finland, the UK… In this way our little family was typical of the gathering as a whole, a kind of microcosm of it, which is astonishingly international, and like us, gathers in the darkness of our times under one accord of song and spirit.

The van drew to a halt and the doors were thrown open; my eyes, were for a moment blinded by the white brilliance of the day, after the gloom of the vehicle, and only after a few moments adjusted to my new surroundings. We were no longer by the near-deserted village of Besel with its empty school yard, crooning dogs and shifty-eyed locals, but among a herd of grassy mountains, protected from the wind, in full receipt of the sun and the sky. As we approached the outer edge of the forest we saw a sign borne aloft in the trees. It read:

Welcome Home

Rainbow Gatherings are always held in remote places across the world. I have heard stories of gatherings in the mountains of Romania or the rainforests of Thailand or beside the great shimmering lakes of protected lands in Canada. The exact locations of the gatherings are passed around by word of mouth or invitation by fellow members. This aura of secrecy is not cultivated for obscurantist purposes, but, I believe, to whittle down the number of those attending, so that those who come really want to be there are there and stay for a meaningful duration of time. The other reason that the gatherings are held in remote areas is also obvious – because the Rainbow Gathering is as much about the environment as it is about the people who create it, and indeed, loving and fully appreciating nature – as hackneyed as this idea seems – is a crucial element of daily life on site. I notice that I write ‘meaningful duration of time’. This is because another thing that sets the Rainbow Gatherings apart from other similar left-wing community practices is that the gatherings themselves often last for several weeks or even months. Indeed there is no set ‘time limit’. As the gatherings are established by the people that attend them, they can occur for as little or as long a time as the life and energy exists that is required to sustain them. If you want – as I later discovered – one could lead an entire life (and indeed many do), roaming itinerantly between different Rainbow Gatherings, regional and international, across the world. As one Rainbow winds down to its own peaceful conclusion, the wind picks up somewhere else and an invisible summons is carried by rumours across site – to Romania! With the caravans! All who wish to attend meet at the sacred fire tonight… and so it goes on.

Now you may ask why I came to the Rainbow at all. It was, after all, a decision that I made absolutely on a whim; but equally, it was not accidental. When Johannes was relating his experiences of it to me I felt, with a certainty impossible to ignore that I needed to go to this place. There are many paths in life, and many way-markers. Strange to say I knew that this journey to the mountains of Hungary was an important part of my journey in Belgium and to the story of my time here as a whole. I felt uniquely ready to receive the wisdom of strangers that I trusted. I also felt  that at the Rainbow I might receive some answers to the wider questions that have been revolving in my mind for the past year on the boat and during my time as a school teacher. The question is an existential one and forms one pillar of the sub-title to this blog: What is the right way to live? It is a question that I am sure we all ask ourselves, but it a question which only a few of us actively seek to answer. My commitment to finding an answer to this question for myself was the reason for my departure from London and from my life there. Every day that I commuted amid the throng of unhappy workers on the over-ground train from Hackney Wick to North Wembley and watched faces, weary from lack of sleep or plugged-in sonically to their devices, I could not beat back the cry roaring in my brain: This is not the right way to live. We are not happy. The word ‘slaves’ is a strong one to use. It is a word that Theodore Zeldin used in a conversation with me after a conference on Well-being. ‘Are you a slave?’ he asked me frankly – I was interviewing a great man for a great charity – I looked at him and slowly inclined my head.

So that is why I came to the Gathering – a place that manifests one clear and perhaps radical answer to the question of how to cope with modernity, or even, post-modernity and capitalism. But there was another reason for attending that was not sociological or philosophical, which was that I felt exhausted and disoriented after my first few weeks of life in Ghent. I felt that, like a spinning top, I had been buzzing with a centrifugal energy that had led me away from my centre and the meaningful values which lead to healthy living. I felt that I needed to be reminded of how to practice true appreciation and real understanding of the people I live among and the environment which nurtures me.

A group of perhaps 8 ‘rainbows’ emerged from the van. As we skimmed the outer edge of the forest and walked down a dirt track that led down the side of a valley, the whole vista of the gathering site became clear to us: it was spread across a large valley floor criss-crossed with burns and enclosures of trees and forests, with a lake on its furthest east side. The sacred fire, the geographical and spiritual heart of the festival, was located at its centre, with the kitchen in which the communal vegan food was prepared settled in a nearby field. We decided as a group to camp among a patch of knotty forest on the west of the site, not far from a beautiful meadow dotted with all manner of small blue and pink flowers. As we entered the site with our packs upon our backs, the faces of strange and unfamiliar people loomed before us. All were smiling, all greeted us. “Welcome home!” they called. “Welcome brother, welcome sister!” Site vernacular such as this felt strange to me initially, though of course I recognised it from Rastafarian culture. However by the end of my time at the gathering, I was greeting everyone as sister and brother as unheedingly and naturally as if I had done it all my life.

As you will have noticed from the wonderful photographs of members of the Rainbow Family members mentioned in a previous blog, those who attend the rainbow gathering do not look like most ‘normal’ human beings, or lets say, those commuting on the 6 am train (even from Hackney Wick). That is not to say that Rainbows subscribe to one particular ‘look’. Indeed even trying to identify trends feels typifying and reductive; suffice to say, that rather than looking necessarily like ‘hippies’, most members of the family seem more tribal. Unlike festival goers, they are free from artificial adornment of any kind: no glitter, make-up or synthetic materials. If members of the family have feathers dangling from their hair or ears it is because they have found the feather, know the bird from which it comes, and understand the particular significance it bears. No stone, precious gem or crystal is worn idly or for ‘effect’. People at the Rainbow wear the same look and carry the same traces that I have seen in really long-term travellers, or some of those that I lived among in the boating community on the Lee in Clapton. These signs are not signs of neglect – on the contrary, they are signs of liberation, but they are also the natural consequence of living an outdoor life free from materialist culture. It is something I have noticed even happening to myself, on the boat and elsewhere, probably most noticeably in Nepal. It is a ‘re-wilding’ of the body that occurs when one is not in a position to shower, cleanse, maintain and preen before a mirror. It is a process by which the body returns to a true image of itself. This also makes me realise how hard most human beings strive to hold back the tide of re-wilding, to depilate stray hairs, to dye and moisturise and buy clothes to hide slack muscles.

Another noticeable thing –  really almost impossible to ignore – about the rainbow family, is that without exception, every body is beautiful. Whether this is a beauty that lies dormant within all of us or is a special property of the rainbow people is hard to say; but it is clear that living lives in tandem with nature, vegan diets, not drinking and mainly not smoking, has astonishing results. So like their namesakes, rainbowers have strong, lithe bodies, clear complexions and shining eyes. In fact it was remarkable how much beauty emanated from almost everybody that I met there. Though – I hasten to add – how little it was fetishized, how little it was used to promote anyone’s agendas or heighten their egos.

I spent the majority of my first day and night – alas, I did not have many to spare –in the company of a lovely girl from Denmark called Ida. As with almost everyone that I camped with, Ida arrived at the festival on her own. Ida was of medium stature with long, fair hair and extraordinarily large, liquid blue eyes. Of course she was beautiful – like everybody I met there – and also good and beautiful from within. It pleased me that by my last day at the Rainbow many of those that we met thought that we had been good friends for a long time, even those we camped with! Indeed, she truly did feel like my sister while I was there – a girl who was my age and from a comparable background (photography major), searching, I am sure, for similar sorts of answers, or at least asking similar questions.

I deliberately went to the Rainbow with almost nothing. Johannes assured me that I would probably find everything I needed there and so I had with me only a water bottles, some sweets (to trade and share), a spoon and some clothes. I did not bring a tent, sleeping bag or shoes; and felt singularly relaxed about the prospect of making do with very little. So that first night – like all the rest – after the evening meal, the communal prayer (a long deep omm), the raising of hands, and a night of singing songs, I fell asleep by a fire underneath a tarpaulin and a beautiful tree, beside my sister Ida, to the sound of pounding drums.

It was some time later on the following day (although no-one wears watches at the gathering, indeed have no need too, and generally don’t bother too much with time – I even met one girl who claimed that time and age did not exist – ) that we finally made our way back to the small circle of tents that we called home, in the forest. Ida and I had spent the morning in blissful happiness, padding around barefoot in the fields after having woken up at some point in the morning, surrounded by sisters and brothers that we did not know. I had a little Italian man who could not speak a word of English tangled up with me. After we made our way from the elegant swooping branches of the tree under which we had slept, we headed towards the meadow near our encampment to pump some water from the well into our flasks. Encouraged by the  buttery sun and the fresh early start, I suggested that we do some meditation and sunbathing in the meadow. As we lay and basked on the slope – I must say that I was feeling very hungry – and cast my eyes about me and greedily took in the delightful scenes unfolding in every direction.  One girl – resplendent – was facing the sun and meditating in the nude. Another group were doing morning stretches and yoga. Another larger group stood beside the well washing themselves with pails and buckets. Inspired by the beauty and serenity of all I saw, I too decided to remove all my clothes and meditate myself. At some point Ida followed my example, and so we sat in the cornucopia of flowers and soft grass, allowing the wind to tickle our skin and the full white sun to beat upon our faces. At some point the white darkness was interrupted by the sound of a voice: “Sisters would you like to join us for some coffee and breakfast?”  I could not imagine anything I wanted to hear more.

The culture of the Rainbow Gathering is such that no money is used on site. There is a collection for the ‘magic hat’ every evening after the evening meal, usually accompanied by a playful song or two. But the idea is that the community exists without fiscal exchange – just on a sharing and donations basis. That is why though you have no formal need to bring food with you – as the food produced by the volunteers in the kitchen is enough to keep you alive – many do bring supplies to trade and share among the community. Extra food can also be a real advantage, as there is no real way of knowing when community food will be ready – sometimes the servings can occur as late as ten or eleven at night. There have also been some occasions – very rarely I was assured – when no food was produced, as there were not enough volunteers for the kitchen. Thus the invitation to share food with a new brother was very welcome indeed. Ida and I gladly trotted behind our new guide – a statuesque Austrian called Michael – who was, incidentally, also nude, and remained so for almost the entire duration of my stay at the gathering. Michael brought us to his small camp in one corner of the meadow where he introduced us to two of his female friends – most notably a raw food enthusiast called Alia – who had long black hair and a wide pearly smile. Alia and Michael shared what they had with Ida and myself – some bread, which we toasted on their fire, mess tins of strong, bitter coffee, and a variety of different fruits. At one point Alia produced a clutch of dates from her tent that she told me she ordered in frequently from Israel where they grew in the desert. She told me that they tasted like caramel. I had one bite and my mouth was filled with an inexpressible sweetness, soft and pulpy: she did not exaggerate, they were the most exquisite dates I have ever tasted in my life. After an hour passed we were joined by one of Alia and Michael’s neighbours – another Teutonic fellow – wearing steel glasses and blonde dreadlocks. Michael left us but our new friend, Adam, stayed; and together we passed a very pleasant few hours, discussing whatever subject came to mind.

Adam was a forester and very interested in alternative agricultural methods such as bio-dynamic farming and permaculture. As I had gained first-hand experience of bio-dynamic farming methods during my stay with a community in Brazil, we immediately had plenty to talk about. However I was reserved in my praise, for, indeed, during my stay at The School of Earth there was much surrounding the more mystical sides of bio-dynamic farming, that to the uninitiated didn’t appear to make much sense. One practise in particular attracted some criticism during my time there – that was the fertilization ceremony. In fact I remember clearly spending an entire morning with a group of six or seven stirring a mixture of various ingredients in a large wooden barrel, with a large rotating spatula suspended from an apex high above.  After the concoction was declared ‘ready’ we were instructed to spray it symbolically across the entire landholding, to prepare the soil for receiving seed and to encourage it to flower and bloom. One of the ingredients used had been specially fermented in a cows horn and buried under the earth at full moon. It was difficult for the more empirical among us to understand how this would help make the farm generative. Indeed there were many times when we were advised against sowing seeds, either vegetable or floral, because of disjuncts in the cosmic stratosphere. Though I was unconvinced in Brazil – I have had conversations with others since my return that have slightly changed my mind about this aspect of Steiner’s philosophy. Someone, for example, who works on an organic farm in Brighton that I met at WOMAD festival told me, that balmy as it might sound, bio-dynamic farms, with their insistence on cosmic and agricultural relationships, have been shown to be extremely productive. While I shared these insights with Adam, he nodded his head sagely. ‘Yes, indeed, there is a lot of wisdom in this system really. As you know the moon governs the tides and ocean currents. But there is also a lot of water in plants and trees. So of course it matters when you plant and harvest. This is something that people in the past understood and respected. For example it was a well known fact that you would fell trees at different points in the lunar month, depending on what quality of wood you were after. If you lopped down trees when they were full of water – therefore in a later stage of the calendar – they were harder, if you wanted softer wood, you would fell it earlier. It is all to do with the way that the water circulates inside the tree, and that is affected by the moon.”

Adam shared many interesting ideas with me that morning, I wish to share one, in particular, with you. We were discussing the philosophy of permaculture, which Adam was very struck by. Though I am by no means an expert, generally  speaking, the basic principle of permaculture is that the earth is not a composite of many different systems, but one system, and one organism. Thus, when it comes to farming, growers should not simply focus on their orchards, fields or animals, but seek to understand the ways that all these systems are interconnected and depend on each other. In order to demonstrate this point Adam used the example of mushrooms. Mushroom, he explained, or fungii, are not simply ancillary to the ecosystem of the forest, but absolutely fundamental to it: they nourish the forest floor and enrichen it both when they are alive, and then when they are dead, as humus and minerals for the soil substrate. He gave another lovely example of the interdependency between all living things, drawing from his specific knowledge area of the forest. Many people believe, he said, that the trees are not connected, but that is not true. In fact I have often witnessed that when one tree is cut down in isolation – something incredible happens. At this point I imagined he would go onto say that the others died, but I was wrong when I offered this suggestion. “No,” he explained. “What can happen is that the severed tree trunk begins to heal over, like skin growing over the stump of an amputated limb. It is not the tree itself that does this, it is dead. It is the other trees which do this, in order to create a kind of seal or plug in the broken chain. All the root systems of trees are connected. Obviously it takes an enormous amount of energy for the other trees to do this, but it really happens.” Suddenly my mind darted back to Tolkein and the great forest Ents, an anthropomorphisation of this idea. My mind seized on the image of the white veiny  trees roots entwined beneath the forest floor.

Then Adam began to speak of Tamera, a famous permaculture project in Portugal that has been around since the sixties or seventies. He said that this farm was one of the best examples of the philosophy of permaculture in practise. The land upon which Tamera was built was considered in the sixties, to be uninhabitable, dry, barren and completely unresponsive to life or husbandry. A section of this land was then taken over by a group of hippies, who spent many decades building a serried terrace of artificial lakes which captured rain-water and fertilized the ground all around it. Many things were fundamental to the success of this project – a consideration of the animals which would inhabit the lakes, a consideration of the sorts of trees that were best suited to the climate and would deposit the richest minerals in the earth, minerals which would then make it responsive to the grower’s hand. Now it is a kind of Eden, Adam explained. He looked up at me, wide blue eyes swimming with light and wisdom through the small circles of his spectacles. “The amazing thing about permaculture is the unlimited potential it holds for human life.” My thoughts travelled back to a rather depressing conversation I had with Jo about desertification and the advance of the Gobi desert upon Northern China. “It doesn’t matter that the earth’s population is rising; if permaculture were implemented widely, there would really be more than enough food for everyone. If everybody farmed in this way, the possibilities are limitless – earth could be a fertile paradise.”

And this word ‘paradise’ ramified and resounded in my head, the hope it shed counteracting my fears about climate-change, GM crops and extreme weather patterns. Suddenly my heart was full of hope.

So that is the sort of conversation that you can have at the Rainbow. My heart swelled with gratefulness and love for this beautiful brother and my sister Alia who had given me so much joy, and knowledge and breakfast.

It was probably about early afternoon by the time that myself and Ida finally returned to our camp in the forest. Then to our surprise and delight we were immediately greeted by calls of “Where have you been?” and “We were worried about you!” And my heart was once more filled with joy and delight (and also a little guilt), that these fellow rainbows, whom I had only known for one day, were worried about us and missed us. Suddenly I experienced a  tide of relief hurtling through me, and I realised what I had wanted all this time; I had wanted a family. I had come home.

I was not long in the camp before I was once more ushered away on a journey, a journey for which I am extremely grateful because it was on this journey that I met another person who remained in my mind for a long time afterwards. The trip came about because a member of our little family in the camp, an English guy and an experienced rainbower who had attended many gathering in the UK in Glastonbury and the Malvern Hills, wanted to go to the ‘shop’ in the ‘Bakery’ at the northern-most tip of the site. But we had to be taken there. Our guide would be Leo, settled in a camp in the trees not far from us. As we approached the camp, we were asked to wait for a few moments until the camp was ready to receive us. I remember the sensation of my bare feet in the cool mud; its roughage,   branches, twigs, leaves and mushrooms squeaking between my toes. Finally they were ready to receive us. I lowered my head to stoop beneath some branches and enter their camp. I heard them before I saw them — the low drone of the didgeredoo throbbing in persistent baritone breaths, and then the sight of a group of about fifteen rainbows, settled peacefully on the forest floor, mediating, massaging each other and languorously passing round some joints. We settled down, keen not to disturb their tranquil atmosphere. The members of this encampment were almost uniformally dressed in shades of green and brown – and they did not appear to disturb the life of the forest any more than a host of nymphs or dryads in a grove. A few stray crystals sparkled in the air, large dream catchers woven from hemp, root and branch quivered on tree branches. I sat beside Leo, and tentatively began to speak to him.

Leo was a very exceptional looking man, perhaps in his mid thirties. But who could say? He was also timeless – a man who looked as though he had lived for many years among the trees. A bushy, hoary beard ensconced his face and a magpie’s feather hung from his ear; a pair of green eyes speckled with gold twinkled at me amiably. As we spoke and I discovered he was from Croyden, I could no more imagine this man, the very distillation of the spirit of the rainbow, a kind of pagan St Nicholas, in London, than Odin himself. Indeed, though we spoke the same native language, I could tell that Leo was in no real sense English anymore. He had been transformed, transmuted. “Where is your home?” Everywhere. “Where are your family?” All around me. His eyes shone with a knowledge of all the things he had seen across the earth, in the remotest parts of the Balkans, Mexico, South America, Africa. Yet despite his total apostasy to the Rainbow, I could still sense in him a native love of humour and playful conversation. So as we walked towards the shop, we chatted and bantered. “How long are you here for?” he asked me. “Not long enough,” I replied, “only a few days.” “What brought you here?” he asked me. He was the kind of man you could not lie to. “I do not know… I have known that the Rainbow existed for many years…” I replied. “My best friend has come several times. I don’t know why I didn’t come before, perhaps I thought it was more her thing…” This was the truth. “I don’t know what made me feel, now, that this was the right time to come.” “It’s very simple,” he replied, and smiled at me. “The Rainbow called to you.” “Do you know the song from Sesame Street, that Kermit the Frog sings?” he asked me suddenly. “No! I don’t,” I rejoined – surprised. “Will you sing it to me?” “Yes, of course, if you wish.” And so, as we hiked up the hill, he began to sing this song to me:

Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions
But only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told
And some choose to believe it
I know they’re wrong, wait and see

Someday we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Who said that every wish
Would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that
And someone believed it
Look what it’s done so far.

What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

All of us under its spell
We know that it’s probably magic.

Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name
Is this the sweet sound
That called the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same

I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it
It’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Some day we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

The Rainbow does not have privileged members, it exists on a basis of complete equality. But there is a Rainbow Council that holds meetings to discuss the present needs and future needs of the festival as a whole. Leo is a regular presence at Council meetings, and both the spirit that himself and his life embodied, and in the thoughts that he shared with me, I felt, somehow, that through my barefoot journey through the trees, I had reached the very heart of the Rainbow – reached its very core. Perhaps I experienced a particularly profound sense of kinship because we spoke the same language and shared the same origins. But his life, his choice, encapsulated to me the opposite tendency that so many had chosen to follow in London.  I do not think that I have ever met my personal guru, and before this meeting, I did not necessarily believe that I would. But as we spoke and he elicited from me grains of truth that I had barely formulated even to myself, I knew we would meet again. At one point I asked him if he believed that there was any hope left for the UK, whether he thought it would ever recover from the scourge of capitalism and corporate culture that had enveloped it. “The UK is a very special place,” he replied and looked at me seriously. “All the earth’s fault lines meet there. It is the ancient home of magic, both black and white. The druids and the pagans knew it.” He paused for a while. “You should come to a UK gathering.” His eyes fell upon me once more. Suddenly I experienced another great surging sensation of happiness. I realised that even if I did return to the UK, I should never feel truly alone or bitter about the way that I lived there. This invitation from Leo felt like a white celestial hand shooting out of the darkness; and I knew that I would see him again and that the Rainbow family would always be with me.

There are not enough pages in an entire book to compass all the thoughts and feelings that I experienced in those remote Hungarian valleys and mountains. I cannot describe it all. But I hope these anecdotes can offer to you a hint or attempted illustration of all that the Gatherings have to offer. What happened after that meeting? Let me suggest it with a diagram of words and sense impressions:

Swimming in a shallow lake, mirror-like, brakish. Mud on bare skin; cold, elated. Climbing mountains, looking into eyes – deeply. Night falls; singing around a fire, voices tonguing towards stars. Shamanic blessed chocolate balls. A long shamanistic meditation. My inner animal, shedding, reformed, uncapturable. A beetle becomes a butterfly: terrestrial to sub-lunary. Transformation in the night. Nesting towards sleep beside fires and murmuring voices. Waking to a morning full of light: hands raised in thankfulness.

When I said goodbye to the members of my family that I had met so briefly – alas so briefly – for I was only there for a few days before I needed to rendez-vous with Johannes in Budapest; my heart felt strong and good. I felt that I had re-remembered the real beauty and euphoria that Platonic love can bestow. As I tramped back along the dusty road to Besel with two kind Israeli friends and then hitched in the back of a van, I determined not to forget what I had learned at the Rainbow. Not to forget what made me happy – being in nature, living simply – not to forget how to behave to my fellow human-beings; as a sister, and nothing more. Finally and lastly, the Rainbow induced a realisation in me that filled me with a joy and hope, healing something long damaged; that if only for a few days, I had really met my peers, and those that believed as I did, the lovers, the dreamers and me. I suddenly knew that wherever I was in the world, I always had a family, and I would never be really alone.