Love is alive and powerful. I saw it streaming like a raging river through the streets of San Francisco and spilling on to the steps of City Hall. It flowed from the hearts of tens of thousands of lovers who streamed up Market Street to City Hall during the annual SF Lovevolution Parade.

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Will love conquer fear, despair and greed? I don’t know. But I know in my heart that only love can. In the long struggle between love and fear I want to serve on the side of love.

So on the morning of the Love Parade I marched off to the parade wearing a “Love Army” uniform. I had sewn a “Love” patch over the words “U.S.”, while below the words “Airborne” I sewed a blue butterfly patch. I believe the “Love Army” is the only army that will ever bring lasting peace. It’s the only army I care to serve in.

I climbed on to the “Magic Love Bus” that was to lead the love parade and reported for duty with the man at the wheel leading the charge – Scotty Miller the Magic Bus Tripmaster. It’s easy to follow and serve with those you love and respect. The military has its parades. Today was ours.

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I was joined by a few beautiful loving friends and surrounded by those I’d love to know as friends. With great joy, humor and love Scotty put the Love Bus in gear and we flowed through San Francisco on a river of love.

“Lovelution” – let’s hope this revolution over turns greed, violence and fear with love. Climb aboard brothers and sisters and take the ride! But watch out for the Love Security (see below

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See images from the 2008 Love Parade.

Our future hope for peace and harmony is rooted in the children we are now nurturing. During the annual three day Earth Dance Festival for peace in Northern California, I saw great reason for hope in the serene faces of the children. These love children are born into a world of love and liberation created by their enlightened parents and their extended village. They are born free. And with peace in their hearts they can make peace in the world.

I realize that, like myself, many were not born free. We have had to struggle to liberate ourselves from limiting religions, ideas and expectations. Many never achieve true liberation and the beautiful state of freedom that these love children are born into.

It takes a whole village to raise such beautiful children. What an amazing tribal village Earth Dance is during its three days. Populated by loving children of all ages, music, dance and metaphorical puppets.

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The prayer ceremony for the children honors the hope and beauty that the children represent. The festival’s prayer for peace is synchronized worldwide at the same moment with gatherings in 50 other countries. Let’s hope that this prayer envelops the entire globe and transforms our world.

Peace, love and magic are alive and well when you look in the right places.

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Last year my first Burning Man was transformative. I felt like I drove through a portal into a world of freedom, joy and creativity (see “Born Again“). This year (2009) I felt like I returned home, as in “where the heart is”. But this year I took ten burning man virgins with me, hosted a graduation party for the “Roads Scholars” and screened several movies. We bit off a lot to chew. But it tasted delicious.

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Our 2009 Camp

This year our little tribe of Digital Vagabonds camped with our close cousins the TechNomads. Like me, these vagabonds at heart use telecommunication technology to make the world their office and playground. This year they hosted a very well attended workshop on how to become a Techno Nomad. For those who want to learn how technology can enable them to be “location independent” visit http://www.technomadia.com/links/links. I look forward to crossing paths with these Nomads on and offline.

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Roads Scholars Graduation Party

This year we hosted a graduation ceremony for the first annual “Roads Scholars“. This past spring four talented writers were awarded “Roads Scholarships” to road trip North America during the summer and share their journeys online at Matador Travel.com and DigitalVagabonding.com. Their road trips converged at Burning Man where they “graduated” from Vagabond U.

The author of Vagabonding in America, Ed Buryn, acted as our honorary dean. Ed was appropriately attired in a tuxedo T shirt and briefs reading “Why am I God”?

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Outdoor Movies at Burning Man

On Tuesday night during Bat Country’s “Hunter S. Tuesday” celebration, we sponsored “Gonzo Movie Night” with screenings of “Fear and Loathing” and “Gonzo – The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson”.   Scotty – the “Magic Bus Tripsmaster“ and myself stirred up some live audience participation by re-enacting the insanity of Hunter S. and Dr. Gonzo. The Bats flocked to the screen and the insanity.

Wednesday night was “Evolution Cinema” in honor of this year’s evolution theme (see “The Evolution Trip” for more info). We showed cult classics that question our evolution as humans, including a new and challenging movie, Fierce Light – When spirit meets action, by acclaimed filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. In Fierce Light Velcrow Ripper, filmmaker and spiritual seeker, journeys through the world exploring what Martin Luther King called “Love in Action” and Gandhi called “Soul Force”.

Prior to screening Fierce Light – When spirit meets action, we screened “Humanity Ascending” with Barbara Marx Hubbard. This documentary features author and futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard and offers a vision toward our birth as a new humanity – Homo Spiritus.

After screening Fierce Light we showed Zeitgeist – the underground classic the banks don’t want you to see. Unfortunately it’s not your imagination or the drugs, the shadow government and banking system are really out to own you and the world.

After all this burning intensity in the desert we did some serious soaking. Right after Burning Man some of our vagabond tribe made it to the nearby Sierra Hot Springs to soak, unwind and relax after an intense burn. I’m a big fan of their brother/sister place at Harbin Hot Springs, which I wrote about as “Human Soup“.

We hope to see you out on the playa next year.

Be Well and Live Large, Pat the DV.

Now a word from Jack Kerouac who was apparently a Burner before Burning Man -

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” - On the Road

The culture of Burning Man celebrates individuality and radical self-expression. These values are vibrantly expressed in the clothing “Burners” wear. Burner fashion ranges from post apocalyptic Mad Max to furry desert bunnies. To show case these unique expressions, Burning Man has it’s own fashion show in San Francisco. I hung out back stage and photographed these fabulous women. Burn Bright!

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Warning/Disclaimer this update on our “Roads Scholar”, Kyle Smith, contains adult subject material with references to stabbing hookers and pedophiles. Note – While Digital Vagabonding does not condone stabbing hookers or pedophiles we do support those who are able to travel about North America and make people laugh about it.

As if traveling America and living out of a car isn’t ballsy enough, now our Roads Scholar Kyle Smith is doing stand up comedy. Now I remember why I picked him to be the lead 2009 “Roads Scholar”. He’s not only educational but entertaining and even inspiring. I have a feeling his trip is just gathering momentum.

Kyle was recently in his old stomping grounds of San Diego and got up on stage to try out some untested comedy bits. What can I say, this kid’s got loads of talent – see below.

As I soak in a pool of warm spring water, naked humans float silently past like noodles in a soup. In this primordial water, heated deep within mother earth, we float beneath fig trees whose leaves look like lily pads floating in the starry night sky. Reflections from distant lights shimmer on the ripples of water that suspends us together timelessly under the infinite night sky.

The unspoken rule is silence. There is no mindless chatter, cell phones or any frantic noise. In this quiet refuge in the mountains north of the San Francisco Bay, we all float serenely in mother earth’s primordial womb. In this pool, silence is truly golden as it enables each person’s mental chatter to dissolve away in the water and the infinite open sky.

All shapes, sizes and colors of humans move through this pool – all seeking serenity, peace and rebirth. Couples embrace in the water, while some hold each other and gently guide them as they float on their backs and drift beneath the fig trees under the night stars. Across the pool a white man holds a black man in his arms and gently supports him in the water as he guides him beneath the stars. An old man with a long white beard drifts in front of me, spreading soft gentle ripples across the pool like old man time. The ripples created by any one person touch all of us.

Though alone among “strangers”, I feel completely sufficient and in harmony with the universe and all those around me. At this serene place, deer do not fear the humans and come up to the pools and roam throughout the 1,200 acre grounds, while musicians play acoustic instruments among the flowers and trees like little musical ferries. At Harbin Hot Springs people enjoy their days conversing, reading, mediating, relaxing, swimming, gardening, doing yoga at the temple, chanting, singing, having massages, dancing, hula hooping, hiking, watching movies, eating wholesome meals at the organic restaurant and making love. Some stay in rustic lodges, while others camp along the streams and amongst the trees.

Earlier in the evening I danced with abandon at the “unconditional dance“. There were no steps or moves to memorize and no proper or correct way to dance. Each person was free to just let the music move them. I danced “as if no one was watching”. I danced without conditions, expectations or rules. I danced with real joy and freedom. I even learned to hula hoop.

On my way from the dance floor to the hot springs, I spotted a beautiful young woman reclining in the crooked flowing branches of a mulberry tree. In the moonlight I could see that she was eating the berries from the tree. Her long brown hair draped over her shoulders and naked breasts. She smiled and extended her hand to offer me some of the tree’s fruit. Was this paradise rediscovered, with Eve offering me a potentially forbidden but sweet fruit? At the risk of being kicked out of paradise, I tasted the berry from her hand and it was delicious. She laughed when I called her Eve.

She came with me to the pools and we slipped into a heart shaped pool where silence was not expected. The moonlight seeped through the tree branches and leaves and light the pool. Along the edge of the pool near the trees a deer fawn grazed calmly on the under brush.

Eve shared that she was originally from Montreal and now lived mostly in Hawaii, often camping alone among the trees. One of her great passions was composing and performing music.

She had recently recorded an album in which she made music with whales along the coast of the Hawaiian Islands. She stood in the water and played a long didgeridoo that was shaped like a long elephant tusk and blew deep melancholic tones that resonated through the air and deep into the ocean. The deep rich tones drew the whales toward her as they echoed her music back to her with their deep submerged bellows. She and the whales were accompanied by a violinist who stood in the waves and serenaded her and the whales. Their acoustic harmonies were recorded in real time using underwater and acoustic microphones. As this wet goddess, light by the moonlight, told me this fantastic story I was mesmerized by the beauty of it all.

She offered me a CD of her fantastical collaboration with the whales. We left the pool to listen to the sound of the whales playing and singing inside my motor home.   We smoked up and   sunk into the sofa while the rich tones of her didgeridoo elicited distant calls and bellows from whales far out in the ocean. Their rich tones mixed together as the sounds danced intertwined in the air and water. The sound of the whales grew louder and bolder as they drew closer to shore. How incredible that this acoustic symphony, created by this naturally beautiful woman and the whales she called to her like a mythical siren, now echoed within my motor home. I closed my eyes and pictured sleek whales slipping powerfully and gently through blue waters illuminated by sunlight streaming through the water.

Then I imagined the image of whales and the sound of their rich songs projected into the desert night sky during the Burning Man Festival. Yes, whales moving through blue water and singing in the desert. How perfect! She agreed to let me share her music on the desert playa. How fantastic, soothing and truly far out!

Would you like to experience it? Come to the Black Rock Desert during the first week of September during the Burning Man Festival and experience the sound and sight of whales swimming and singing in the desert night sky. Isn’t life on this planet amazing?

The Spiritual Soul of Harbin Hot Springs:

“Heart Consciousness Church owns and operates Harbin Hot Springs. It is not a church in the traditional sense of buildings, structure and congregation. It is an embodiment and a manifestation of the New Age: that common thread uniting the Human Potential Movement, the Holistic, Natural Movement, and Universal Spirituality.

We identify so completely with this point of view, we call it Heart Consciousness, which we resonate with most deeply, and try to manifest consciously. “Heart” is the inner place where Oneness and Love are experienced. Love of ourselves, of each other, and of the natural environment, is the everyday experience closest to complete identity with Oneness.

The purpose of the Church is to teach spiritual life and how it can be realized by individuals; and to spread wide the practice of Heart Consciousness. Further, our purpose is to provide opportunities for the practice of work and organizational skills, including the discipline and character development necessary not only for effective work, but also for spiritual practice.

The Church honors the spiritual dimension in everyone and each human being’s unique expression thereof. It accepts individual differences in interpreting the essential unity of the Human Potential Movement, The Holistic Natural Movement, and Universal Spirituality. We believe the New Age already exists in these three movements, and our work is to combine them, giving strength to the whole that they form, and then to reach out and to teach.”

Note - To respect the privacy of those visiting Harbin Hot Springs, visitors are asked not to take photos. I encourage you to come see it with your own eyes. You can also visit their website at www.harbin.org

After celebrating life for three joyous days at the Harmony Festival, I’m beginning to believe there is a new state of harmonious mind and spirit growing in Northern California. Just look at the joy in these photos and tell me if you see it too?

Is it just me finally tuning into this wonderful frequency or is an amazing new spiritual awakening coming to fruition? Given that the annual Harmony Festival began 31 years ago, perhaps I’m just a late arrival to this amazing and growing celebration of the universal consciousness that makes us all one. What an amazing community of loving and joyous people has evolved and grown up around this festival, which showcases leading edge trends in music, art, healing, spirituality, sustainability and community.

After swimming in wonderful people, ideas, food, music and celebrations of life for three beautiful days, I believe that hope is alive and thriving. My hope is that this community sweeps the nation and the world into one harmonious world community!

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Also visit the “Magic Bus” at the Harmony Festival.

Have you ever experienced such over powering beauty, love and hope that your heart swelled and your eyes welled up with tears of joy and sorrow? Tears of joy from profound gratitude and yet sorrow for all the years you’d walled off this beauty.

It happened to me one morning in the Nevada desert as the sun rose over a mountain ridge. When my tears finally flowed, it was as if a lifetime of pent up emotion broke through a crack and then burst the dam that had held back my emotion.

Beyond choking back emotion in a dark movie theater, I can’t recall any other time I cried. It must have been some time during my childhood. I grew up in a family that swallowed their emotions like a lump of peanut butter. We didn’t hug and we didn’t feel the need to say we loved each other. It was assumed that despite the disharmony and anger between my parents that we all loved each other. I spent most of my life waiting to leave.

But when I left home I took what I learned with me, along with a dark sense of humor and a shield of sarcasm. I was crippled and didn’t realize how badly until recently.

I never expected to experience anything at the Burning Man Festival that would move me to tears. But the dam began to crack as soon as I got to Black Rock City. Black Rock is a “city” that is created temporarily each year to host the seven day Burning Man Festival and provide services for its 50,000 participants.

It’s a fantastic place where the residents have plenty of time to play with each other and where no money is exchanged and virtually everything is given freely (“gifted”). People don’t transact with each other – they interact. The “coin” of this realm is spirit and personality – not money. Entering into Black Rock is like taking a portal into another Universe. To me Black Rock City is the “City of a million delights”.

On my first day I drove across the desert following a caravan of pilgrims on a dirt road leading to Black Rock City. Our long convoy of vehicles was hit with what I later learned was the worst blinding dust storm in years. As I crept along in my motor home, I glimpsed a fire truck hosing down the charred remains of a motor home burnt down to its frame. I had heard about the devastating effects of the dreaded “playa dust” and its insidious ability to infiltrate mechanical and electronic devices and destroy them. There by the grace of God was I. The drive looked more like entering a war zone than a festival. But I pressed on.

Soon after I arrived and set up camp with Ed, the author of Vagabonding in the USA, my motor home alarm began screaming uncontrollably and shrieking in tones I’d never heard. It would not stop, despite the best efforts of the pope from across the street to exorcise its demons. We cut the battery cord and, with all power to the cab now dead, I retreated into the back section of my motor home to continue on auxiliary power.

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But in the spirit of Burning Man, a man emerged from the clouds of dust and introduced himself as a mechanic. He spent the next couple of hours crawling around under my dashboard in the desert heat until he disarmed my alarm and restored power to my cab and ignition. He did his work with joy and love and without any expectation of anything in return. It was my first encounter with “gifting” and the camaraderie that comes from pulling together to not only survive on the dusty desert playa but to thrive.

My deep appreciation of this man’s generous gift was perhaps the first tiny fissure that prepared my heart to crack open. Each day was full of new miracles, acts of kindness and compassion, acceptance, beauty, delight, surprise and joy – all of them chipping away at the wall around my heart. But a lifetime of barriers is not easily torn down.

A few days and nights into the Burning Man Festival, I rode my bike one night out into the vast desert playa. Brightly light art cars, mutant vehicles, boats and mobile nightclubs shuffled across the playa, with some belching flames into the night air. I stumbled upon spaceships, music shows and impromptu parties everywhere.

All sizes and shapes of humans grooved and bobbed on waves of surging music that washed over us all like rhythmic waves. It was a joyous symphony of pulsing lights,   penetrating music and dancing souls.

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The night show receded as the faint gentle light of the dawning new day came up over the mountains on the horizon. The music and dancing continued to flow and I stood still in the dawn light watching and feeling this incredible show flow around and through me.

An elegant man in a white tuxedo with a ruffled shirt walked in from the desert playa and stood before me. He took my hand and with an elegant Spanish accent he asked me to come with him as he gestured to a fantastic double decker bus. After a few days in the playa I had learned the futility of making plans and came to trust in serendipitous fate, chance encounters and magic. As we walked together out on to the desert playa I saw a large sculpture of the India God Ganesh with his elephant trunk mounted on the front of the bus. The top floor of this cosmic bus was open to the sky and funky people danced and swayed in the rising sun as a DJ spun records. A tall mast with a crows nest extended into the sky from the center of the bus and a fabulous woman grooved to the music while swinging from the mast pole.

We entered the bus and the elegant man sat down in the driver’s seat. After composing himself with the dignified posture of a royal prince, he flashed a radiant and reassuring smile to the passengers, shifted the party into motion and we blazed across the desert playa heading for the rising sun.

There were no glum faces on this early morning bus – only beaming faces, joy and laughter. I climbed the staircase and emerged on to the open air dance floor. The wind blew over everyone’s swaying bodies. I drank up the vision of these radiant colorful people as they swayed in the wind like blowing flowers.

This was the ride I’d been waiting for my whole adult life. During the Reagan 80′s, when I was 21, I read “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test“, which told the account of some truly far out hippies who tripped across America in the 1960′s in a day glow magic school bus – spreading music, acid and love in their wake. This book had convinced me that I was born into the wrong era and that I’d missed the magic bus.

But as I felt the magic of this bus, the loving vibe of its passengers and the beauty of the rising sun on the wide open desert playa – I realized that I had finally caught my magic bus. We were blazing into a world of wide open possibilities. I knew then that there was no place or time better than right now. This was a moment so perfect that my heart became overwhelmed like a man who had been wandering lost in a barren desert and just spotted his beautiful home on the horizon. I turned my back to the party behind me and faced the sun. The soft warmth of the rising sun dissolved away the last layers around my swelling heart and tears of joy and sorrow flowed down my cheeks.

I didn’t know where this magic bus would take me. But I vowed to meet it with an open heart.

The magic bus came to a stop along side a gigantic tower. It was made like a jungle jim with metal bars that extended three stories into the sky.

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I got off the bus and walked over to this tower that was covered with people climbing the bars upward into the morning sky. I gripped a bar and felt its solid strength. I could see that the welded joints were made with great care and attention to detail. A break in any one of these welds would send a person tumbling down to the hard desert floor.

I gripped a solid metal bar and began climbing upward toward the sky. With each rung I embraced I entrusted my life to the unknown stranger who built this structure. On my way upwards into the dawn of this beautiful new day I greeted and spoke with everyone I met. Some of them I photographed. Together we were all hanging out in the open sky greeting the new day. When I reached the top I met a beautiful young couple seated in a chair at the pinnacle of the tower. I took their portrait with the desert playa stretching out beyond them. They climbed down and I watched them do summersaults in the sands and they bounded off together hand in hand across the playa toward Black Rock City.

When I approached the bottom a woman wearing a butterfly mask and a radiant smile called out to me “Would you like some breakfast?” In one hand she held a bottle of yegermeister and in the other was a can of redbull energy drink. A jolt of intoxicating energy sounded like the perfect breakfast for this special new day. We laughed like silly misbehaving children as we drank our breakfast.

The rest of this glorious morning we wandered about the desert playa encountering seemingly random art and fabulous people. An amazing evening had morphed into a glorious new day and a fresh new beginning. My open heart absorbed its full radiant beauty and my soul was new like a child born into a world with eyes wide open. On this morning I was born again.

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They say this is the “Land of the Free”. But very little is free today in America. Every inch of the land the Indians thought couldn’t be owned is now owned by someone. The largest owner of America is the US Federal government. So doesn’t that make all Americans part owners of some amazing lands?

Theoretically, yes. But ask yourself if you feel like the owner when you arrive at the typical national park. In my experience it feels like a shake down for fees by armed police dressed like Smokey the Bear. Then they tell you where to go and how to be act when you get to your designated spot. I once was almost arrested by a ranger for leaving a piece of fruit on the ground under my picnic table. Land of the free my ass.

But there are sections of America that are virtually free of the park Gestapo and all the regulations and restrictions. These areas exist in the lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). With over one-eighth of the US land mass under their control, the BLM typically allows people to freely camp on this “public” land.

Now that’s the kind of America I like. As I headed up into the southern end of the California Sierra Nevada’s I stumbled into the Sequoia National Forest just south of the world renowned Kings Canyon National Park. This stretch of land along the Kern River was gorgeous public land available for free camping.

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I staked out my camp spot and laid my sleeping bag out along the fast flowing river. As I lay in my sleeping bag under the stars that night on gorgeous land that was as much mine as any other American, I felt grateful to be able to roam free on this beautiful land of America.

Only then did the words of Woody Guthrie’s famous folk song “This Land is Your Land” ring true.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Ok now folks, let’s sing along. This land is your land this land is . . .

For most people, Palm Springs brings to mind golf courses, perpetual sunshine, spas and retired movie stars. Nestled in a desert surrounded by mountains 111 miles east of Los Angeles, Palm Springs has always been an oasis in the desert. For the past several decades it’s flourished as an escape from the smog, hustle and hassle of LA.

But few people know the real Palm Springs up in the mountain canyons over looking Palm Springs. This lush paradise of indigenous palm trees and plants in the middle of the desert is fed and nourished by cold spring fed creeks.

The Cahuilla Indians lived in these canyons for hundreds of years. To this day, there are large stones with holes worn into them after hundreds of years of corn being ground on them. Today the Cahuilla tribe manages the Indian Canyons and let the rest of us enjoy this oasis paradise for a fee.

I spent an entire afternoon wandering the streams under the giant palms that ran through the canyons and down into the desert valley. It felt like paradise to soak in the cool pools of water and then dry off lying under the sun on the smooth boulders. The natural beauty soothed my body and soul, while relaxing my mind. To love nature is to love your soul.

The Real Palm Springs

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Palm Springs – the City

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