Rainbow Gathering Ends, Cleanup Begins In Black Hills
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — The prayer circles are over, the cleanup has started, and the forest appears in good hands.
The fear that thousands of members of the Rainbow Family may be leaving an irreversible scar on the Black Hills no longer seems a concern for the U.S. Forest Service.
Only 1,700 people attended an early July gathering that was supposed to bring in more than 10,000. Little damage was done to the forest, and crews of fewer than 100 Rainbow faithful remain on the site, working to remove any trace that the gathering happened in the Black Hills.
“Cleanup is going fantastic,” Black Hills National Forest Resource Adviser Les Gonyer said Monday as he stood along a remote Forest Service road in a lush valley dotted with purple and white wildflowers at the gathering site. “Come back this time next year, and you won’t even know they were here.”
The plan is to have work wrapped up in the next few days and have the last of the Rainbow group out of the woods by Thursday.
Gonyer will be on site to supervise throughout the cleanup. He met with representatives of the Rainbow Family last week and walked through the entire grounds pointing out necessary fixes. Another walk-through will take place before the last of the members leave.
On Monday a Rainbow Family member was dismantling his giant tipi, the Rapid City Journal reported ( ). Roughly 40 yards away, a man sat cross-legged on a yoga mat emitting the dull hum of a Buddhist meditation chant. On the eastern end of the gathering area, three women sorted through a pile of garbage, pulling out recyclables. The remaining trash will be hauled away by family members and by locals who agreed to pitch in.
The most visible remnant of the gathering is a patchwork of trampled grass trails that spiderwebs its way through the forest. Large circular areas around the kitchen and camps are matted down. But the Forest Service predicts most of those will be unnoticeable once grass grows back.
“I can see the sprigs of grass coming up on the trails already,” Gonyer said.
One of the few flaws the Forest Service is taking action on is reworking an unauthorized ATV trail. It was in place before the Rainbow Family arrived, but the damage was exacerbated by heavy foot travel during the gathering.
Gonyer worries that water may run down the trail, causing ruts and pooling, damaging the road below the trail. So, he hauled six pallets full of straw wattles and compost socks out to the gathering site on Monday for the Rainbow Family to place.
The straw and compost should avert further damage, Gonyer said. The cost of the bundles was roughly $1,500, and was paid for by the Forest Service.
The most disturbance to the natural area happened where the kitchens set up camp. Gonyer said those will be leveled off, rocks will be moved back and grass seed will be spread around. The Forest Service permitted 45 kitchen fires and five bonfires for that gathering. By Monday, many of those had already been cleaned up.
There were pre-gathering concerns that large latrines dug by the family could contaminate water sources, but Gonyer said those concerns were unfounded. The latrine areas were a good distance away from the streams and creek, and lye and ash were put on the latrines before they were covered with dirt.
The Forest Service did catch a bit of a break on the gathering, which was much smaller than some in past years that have attracted as many as 20,000 people.
“If we would have had that many people here,” Gonyer said, “it would have been a much different story, and we would be doing a lot more cleanup.”
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Information from: Rapid City Journal,
