LYMAN LAKE, Summit County — A Salt Lake man who calls himself "John Doeman" offers a definition of who belongs to the Rainbow Family, the counterculture tribe collecting on the north slope of the Uinta Mountains:

"If you've got a belly button you're a member of our family," he said, as the drummer next to him paused in his rapping, "whether you like it or not."

A definition that inclusive suits the scattered, leaderless camps sprawling through forests and over meadows in Wasatch-Cache National Forest near the Utah-Wyoming border. The gathering has been drawing people from around the country for more than a week, though its formal start was Tuesday. It is to end in another week.

Tuesday morning, the official count of visitors stood at 3,600, said spokeswoman Becky Banker of the Forest Service's Evanston, Wyo., district. "But we do know that there has been a heavy influx" since then.

Although many come from distant cities, for 90 percent of the campers, this is their only "home," Doeman claimed, for they spend their lives on the road, trekking from one gathering to another.

Life in the wilds

Simply reaching the camp at Lyman Lake, about four hours from Salt Lake City, can be an arduous trip over mountain highways and deep-forest roads and trails.

Once there, arriving campers and visitors come upon hundreds of people sitting on logs in the shade or congregating in large informal circles. Others work in makeshift kitchens, doling out free stew or cookies — sometimes dumping food onto cupped hands when the dishes run out.

Occasionally one might catch an unpleasant whiff. Volunteers have built latrines, but at least one carried a sign telling users that if they must do "No. 1," go to the bushes, don't waste the latrine.

Signs pepper the encampment warning not to wash in or near the streams and not to do anything else that could harm the area's rare cutthroat trout.

For a gathering supposedly notorious for nudity and drug use, the camp was remarkably free of either on Tuesday. A bong, used to smoke marijuana, was offered for trade. A woman asked others if they had any pot. Out of the thousands present at that time, only four people were fully or partially nude.

The campers wore ordinary clothing, hippie regalia, tie-died shirts, scarves, Gypsy jewelry — even a vaquero costume. "Think globally, drink local," read one man's shirt.

Some men were as heavily haired and bearded as Yetis.

Yoga classes, dance instruction, drum circles, chatting and large, free kitchens kept many busy.

An Indian in turban and robe hauled water supplies down a trail.