The fall is at its peak right now; the colors of the leaves on the trees are stunning, thought it's nighttime. It's night, and I'm out on my front porch as a storm blows in and brings drizzle, leaves, pollen, you name it, whatever is blowing around in the countryside, that storm is bringing it right in to my porch. But it's not too cold. Halloween is in about a week, but it's a mild storm; if it's bringing in one of those bitterly cold fronts, that is a little further out in the countryside.

The raging winds actually make a kind of rhythm, with all the falling leaves and flags and such flapping around. Someone has a wind chime somewhere - not us - but it goes off in the background as the wind is so intense it's knocking everything around. In my mind I hear these drummers outside a Sox game. They had this gig, and it was a good gig - they set up a bunch of drums on the sidewalk from the parking lots to the stadium, where hundreds of people had to walk right past them, and they got going. There were about four of them, but they knew their drumming. They'd done it before. They were quite good at it. They were fast, and you had to appreciate that.

A good drum exhibition is something to remember. Nowadays my hearing's not great, but I remember more than one drum exhibition. You get these people who are really good at it, and some might just be like those four black kids outside of Comiskey Park. Maybe they get paid for their efforts, maybe not, or maybe not nearly enough. But if they're filling the air with intense rhythms and getting people all stirred up - I for one remember this even forty years down the road.

There was one when I clear the cobwebs from my head, one that stands out from all the rest. This was at a Rainbow Gathering in Enterprise Reservoir, southwestern Utah, summer of maybe 1974. I'd been hitchhiking around the southwest and had found that the heat was overwhelming as it was late June early July. I got to this gathering right around sunset on July 3rd. or maybe it was the 4th, but I was close to heat stroke so someone guided me to some caves where I could get back in the caves, roll out my sleeping bag, and sleep, and that's what I did. There were lots of hippies around but none seemed to mind me and in fact I think they kind of kept their eye on me just to be sure I wasn't tripping out or something. I was just exhausted from traveling, no drugs in the picture. They made sure I had water. I slept for like ten hours.

When I woke up there was this drum circle going on. I'm not sure what time it was. All the hippies were gathered around this big circle out in the center of the caves where there was plenty of room, and they had every imaginable drum out there, and they were all remarkably enough pretty good at it. The drums were intense, and ongoing. It was how I woke up.

Sometimes a drum exhibition can tell you that you've arrived, you're here, you're where you're supposed to be. That's how I felt on that day. Or maybe it was night. I was a little disoriented. But I do know, I was in the right place.

The world is a hostile place. I learned that from hitchhiking in intemperate places like the deserts of southern Nevada and black-slush on-ramps of the northern industrial states. When you get a little companionship, refuge from the hard life, a place off the street, out of the sun, with plenty of water and a bite to eat once in a while, that's all you need to keep going. But you need inspiration too. That's what comes from the drums. The drums reach back into your heartbeat and connect with other living things, so that lots of heartbeats are going at once, and the drums tell you that all life is connected and all heartbeats are really part of the great heart beat. When you feel connected, you have your inspiration, and then you're truly ready to get back in the game.

On this porch I hear the distant train, now. We're in a small town that has trains going in every direction, but they're actually not all that far from my house. The wind has been ongoing; the leaves stirred up by it but, getting wet, they're getting that feeling like they might just be pressing into the grass for the next week or two. When they're really wet, they're less likely to be flying around.

The next-door neighbor's wind chime is odd, though. I'd never even heard it before tonight, but it has a kind of sing-song voice, a little off, not at all in harmony with the wind, kind of like a baby who keeps asking as nice as she can to be picked up by her momma who is way too busy doing some kind of flirtation or something. The wind is a serious pressing urgent business. The wind chime is a kind of irrelevant tangent.

The hot summer days of Enterprise Reservoir are distant history now. The Rainbow people couldn't even remember where they'd held that third of all Rainbow gatherings and placed it somewhere more toward the center of Utah's canyonlands, but that was probably because either they'd had two gatherings that year, and forgot about the one at Enterprise, or more likely, just forgot about its exact location and didn't write down where that gathering was until many years later. I remembered it, very clearly, though, as I've never really been to any other gatherings, and it really was quite unique. This I'll say for those hippies though: they were welcoming, and generous, and gave me what I needed to sustain myself.