Michael Crater:  

Life After graduation, I moved to Montana and started college at UM in Missoula a year later. I was an off-and-on student, tending to skip the Spring trimester because it was too beautiful out there to be cooped up inside. I lived at times in a commune high in the mountains, where I was lucky enough to happen along as they put the first log on the foundation for a big solar building. It was a great experience and fulfilled a childhood dream of building a house. I hope to do it again some day. I studied journalism and published various magazines and volunteered in the anti-nuclear movement; several small groups gathered signatures and put an initiative effectively prohibiting nuclear power plants in Montana on the 1978 ballot. It passed by a landslide and still stands. I met people who went to events called Rainbow Gatherings, big summertime campouts held every year since 1972 in different national forests. When you walk in, you're likely to be greeted dozens of times with a friendly "Welcome Home!" I went to my first in 1979, and in 1980 went early to help find the site, in West Virginia, and prepare for the gathering, which that year involved about 10,000 people. It was a coming of age experience for me; we met strong opposition in West Virginia from officialdom and the local good-ol-boys network, and I faced my own moments of truth. I went back to Montana so strong and fired up that I married the most beautiful woman I've ever known ... apologies to some of you my classmates ... and we have two magnificent children. I graduated from the UM Journalism School in 1982 and went to work in Helena, Montana, first in a summer job with the Associated Press and then as a reporter at the local daily. Our son, Miles, named after my friend and Marlboro classmate Miles B. Smith, was born that fall, and o...Expand for more