Further Letters On Rainbow's Origins - Part II

Jackson Phelan was one of the people who was sent out by Don Kelsey - called Mountain Don in Barry Plunker's book, "Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?"' Jackson and the others went out to ask everyone they knew to come to a gathering in the mountains near Nederland, Colorado in the summer of 1968.

There were rumors that an asteroid called Icarus was going to hit the earth and that the safest place would be there in the mountains around Nederland, near Boulder. However, Jackson says that Don Kelsey never said anything of the kind and he ((Jackson)) never told that to anybody.

Jackson went to the 'Up Against the Wall Motherfuckersl-- they were a group of anarchists who lived on the lower east side of New York. Ben Morea of the U.A.W./Motherfuckers was at the June 1967 convention of Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) and in December, 1967 U.A.W./Motherfuckers was recognized as a chapter of SDS.

The Motherfuckers has a group of young people staying with them who took on an identity of their own as the STP family. The STP'ers went to this gathering in the Colorado mountains that Don Kelsey called. John Johnson - now well-known in Rainbow as John Buffalo met the STP family there in Colorado in the summer of 1968 and he became part of STP. He does a lot of the security for Rainbow now, and hopes to do a kitchen.

Barry Plunker and his first wife Ellen were at that gathering in the mountains that Don Kelsey called. They went on to New York. About 2,000 people in all showed up that summer. Some vigilantes came and tried to make them leave. They hit Don Kelsey over the head with a rifle. However people stayed camped there near Nederland all summer and through the fall.

Jackson Phelan says that he stayed in Boulder over the winter. He worked part of the time in a restaurant. ((Then)) that summer of 1969 the gathering started up again in the mountains near Nederland. Barry Plunker hitch-hiked from New York sometime in late June and early July. Jackson says he believes it was before the space ship landed on the moon ((on 7/21/69)). He went camping in the mountains with Barry. Another person showed up who was important in the early days of Rainbow - Michael Bison Bear. He had been to the Woodstock festival ((of 7/_--,/69)). He left the gathering in Colorado and went off to the Big Sur region of California and camped with the Salmon Creek Family ((around late Aug. 169)). Barry left Boulder shortly after that...he went to Alaska and then down to Big Sur to be with Michael Bear and the Salmon Creek family. When hunting season began in early fall, the Salmon Creek Family started being harassed by hunters so they moved up to Marble Mount, Washington.

Barry and Michael Bear and part of the Salmon Creek Family became the Marble Mount Outlaws. They set up the camps called Love One and Love Two and Love Three to take draft dodgers and deserters across the border to Canada. They went down to the Renaissance Fair in Portland, Oregon and met up with Garrick Beck and the Temple Tribe and began the discussions with him that led to the Vortex free rock festival near Portland over Labor Day weekend', 1970, and then ((onward)) to the July, 1972 ((first)) Rainbow Gathering near Granby, Colorado.

Best wishes, Jodey (postmark 1/28/91).


This letter from Jodey was included in the 1996 Rainbow Anthology.