INSIDE THE RAINBOW.

In People of the Rainbow, Michael Niman describes a collective survival instinct where "in the absence of any compulsory organization, unconsciously, organically, we become a tribe." That process is the whole point of the annual Rainbow Family of Living Light's gatherings, which last year were held in Arizona's Sitgreaves-Apache National Forest.

Despite their decidedly peaceful aspect, the proudly countercultural Rainbow Family inspires mixed emotions. A year ago, the U.S. Forest Service's newly organized "National Incident Team" was upset because the Rainbows hadn't secured a permit for their gathering. There were no arrests, said one Forest Service officer, simply because of the "sheer numbers" of people on the site. It's that same growing attendance, 20,000 last year, that has some environmentalists worried about the group's impact on the land.

The Rainbow Family says its intention is to share lives in a totally free, non-commercial "Cathedral of Nature." A week before the gathering, a "Seed Camp" arrives on-site to scout water sources. They lay out trails and dig latrines, which are constructed with environmental guidelines in mind. Colorful notices ask respect for the streams, grassland and forest, and a mammoth recycling effort goes into effect to handle the 25 tons of waste generated.

No private fires are allowed, and water sources are protected as the gathering's lifeblood. Still, in Arizona, water was a major point of contention between the Rainbows and the Forest Service, which claimed that the water belonged to the town of Springerville and two private owners. The Rainbows said that since the water is in a national forest, at least some of it belonged to the people, so they "borrowed" it.

Such misunderstandings have, unfortunately, been commonplace in the Rainbows' dealings with the outside world. After the 1996 gathering in the Mark Twain National Forest, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sniffed that "firewood was provided by mother nature, and so were the toilet facilities." Part of the problem is the Rainbows' refusal to seek permits. Another is the bills they sometimes leave local officials, such as the $60,000 it cost Missouri hospitals to deal with a bacterial infection at the Mark Twain camp. Rainbow cars sometimes tear up the landscape when they're illegally parked, and then there's the dogs. After the 1998 gathering in Oregon, 100 were left behind.

Everyone agrees that a lot of progress has been made. Meagan Boltwood, a former Forest Service intern, says she helped clean up a huge mess the group left behind in 1994. But these days, a few hundred Rainbows stay behind, backfill latrines, replant native grasses, break up hardened ground and attempt to return the site to its natural state.

This summer, the Rainbow Gathering will be in the Allegheny National Forest of Pennsylvania, but details are scarce--because the celebrants like it that way. "Our fear is that the gathering will become total chaos," says one longtime celebrant. "There are no leaders of Rainbow, and what we have can't easily be classified, catalogued or referenced." CONTACT: Rainbow Family, http://welcomehome.org.