This story is during the time that Mount St. Helens (the volcano) was blowing grey ash that looked like dirty snow all over the Washington state and as far as Montana I heard. The Portland show was great and when they started playing Fire on the Mountain someone in the crowd was yelling that the volcano was erupting again and I thought they were fooling, the usual stuff. But no, when we came out of the Portland show the warm grey stuff was falling all around us. When we arrived in Spokane there was a 2 inch layer of grey ash on everything. In an abandoned lot I found beautiful blue wildflowers (bachelor's buttons) and
picked some to put into my long braids. Somehow they were just fine in spite of the ash. I don't know why but the Spokane show was not very crowded and so very spacious for dancing. About 21 of us Spontaneously held hands and did a circle dance during Estimated Prophet. The circle moved in and out like the heartbeat of a being that was composed of all of us. After the show my friends were too high to drive so I was dancing around in the parking lot waiting for us to come down enough to drive. Swirling and spinning and just having the time of my life in the afterglow of the show and the wonderful songs going on replay in my mind. Singing softly to myself and dancing away. All of a sudden I looked up and was
surrounded by a ring of policemen, there were at least 6-8 of them. I am sure they thought they had a live one. They all started saying stuff at once and one of them said something like "Driving that train, high on Cocaine"  I maintained my composure and looked straight into his face (actually I was very high on acid) and then I looked into all their beady little eyes and said clearly "You know, they didn't play that song tonight, but that's OK because that one isn't one of my favorites."  They did not move to let me out of the ring until they told me that I had to leave the parking lot and did I have transportation. I said yes I was with friends and then they moved to let me go. I walked away from them and then deliberately started doing my dance again and danced all the way over to the VW van where my friends were crashed out. A narrow escape. I felt that if I had acted with anything but crystal clarity it would have been an ugly scene. Always maintain when the situation requires it, keep your cool and let them know you are just fine, even if you appear to be outside the boundaries of social decorum.


Sign me, Linda Lu 

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