Though we’ll be driving through West Virginia for the distance of about twenty miles until we reach Pennsylvania’s state line, it feels like more than a whisper calling to me. Memories of a gathering in West Virginia in the Monongehela National Forest still beckon to me with strong sentimental feelings. It was a short but wonderful gathering for me.

My husband Cephas stayed in California on a carpentry job that needed to be finished, but our friend Marty and some others gave me a lift all the way to West Virginia from Colorado. Up to that point, I rode the Amtrak train which I love. That’s the trip where I met the angel Mrs. Robinson, but that is another story for another time!!!!

An old friend of ours Luke, attended that sacred prayer ceremony for the last time in his sixty plus years of life. He passed away that winter in Florida while Cephas and I were visiting friends in California. The time that I spent with Luke that summer are so precious.

Though I really missed by love and my partner, it was good to be with the man who was a second father to me. In fact, Luke officially adopted me that summer in front of witnesses. I felt so honored and filled with love and adoration for the man who taught Cephas and I so much about rainbow gatherings.

That summer in West Virginia, I cared for Luke at his camper. In fact, I never pitched my tent that summer, like I usually would have done. I slept in the living area of the camper on a sofa bed listening as Luke labored to breathe at night, waiting and listening in case I needed to resuscitate. Thank God I did not have to experience that situation. Luke had a wonderful time that year being pampered by all our friends. Lots of others parked near his motor home in 2005. It was as if some unspoken “knowing” told us that Luke was spending his last year at the gatherings as well as on this planet.

We miss you shanti sena Luke Skywalker. We love you brother and we’ll see you when we cross that great divide into the spirit in the sky.

Sentimental feelings wash over me as I think about the music and dance, the conversations by the fire, the coffee drinking outside Luke’s camper. Robbie Gordon sang a lot of folk cowboy songs that year and we all sang the theme song it seemed for the West Virginia gathering “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”.

As we drive through West Virginia tomorrow I will feel the love and the presence that says you are home.

The Midnight Writer