[BassBear]

oh my... where to start... what an amazing thread. super points to you klover. i'll get some more later but here's one of my faves of all time... and please do me a favor and read it all.
(read this with "Get Together" by the Youngbloods playing in the background and i promise you it will send shivers down your spine.)

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime - the kind of peak that never comes again.
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there, and alive, in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant.
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right - that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense - we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson