Festival Weekend

I was raised on grassy hillsides, a funnel cake on my lap, a thin sheen of powdered sugar on my fingertips, a jangly anklet making music as I shift my muddied feet on the old worn blanket. I wasn’t raised a hippie child, not all the time, but one weekend each summer, we packed up for the Folk Festival. I have friends who remember their “first concert.” I probably saw my first concert before I was old enough to talk. A whole weekend of folk and indie artists - known and unknown to the general world - made for more than a “concert.” It wove a backdrop of sound that has become one of the most peaceful sounds I know. A few fiddles, an upright bass, harmonica, and a vocal sound somewhere between blues and country... that is the soundtrack of a folk festival. Layered on top of the music itself was the chatter of other folk fest-ers on their own blankets near ours, the smell of wet mud and campfires, the sensation of sun crisping my pale skin, the taste of a funnel cake or a cold lemonade, and, often, the roll of distant thunder and the crinkle of tarps being spread over food, knapsacks, books, and small children to protect from the coming shower.

One of the best things about Folk Festival weekend, though, was that my best friend, MJ, would come along and camp with our family. She and I would take morning walks around the campground before the concerts started, we’d walk the craft aisles together and buy sterling silver rings or beaded necklaces, we’d buy smoothies to share and bundle up later for the evening concert, shivering under the stars until we were too tired to keep our eyes open, then curling up in our sleeping bags back in the tent at Campsite 30. 

It’s been about six years since we shared this tradition. Four years of college and then weddings for both of us crowded into all corners of life and made such indulgences impossible. This year, though, Folk Festival weekend approached and we were both free. We didn’t stay the weekend, but on Saturday afternoon, we bought tickets and spread a blanket in the grass, ready for a day of fest-ing. The campground looked the same: the grassy expanse in front of the stage, the carnival food vendors in their trucks parked along the driveway, the camp store, the two ponds, the gravel road weaving through the campsites... It was all just as we’d left it. 

We started the day with snacks. A strawberry lemonade for MJ, cheese fries for me. Cheese fries were not on the menu, but when I asked for them, the vendor said, “Cheese fries... hmm, yeah, we can do that. Hey Adam, just put some of that cheese on top and nuke ‘em.” I have confidence in fest food, and was happy to wait for my makeshift cheese fries, but when I was finally handed my $4 treat, I found it to be a pile of fries sprinkled with shredded mozzarella and, well, “nuked.” It hadn’t melted too well and was not sticking to the fries but had become its own entity in the paper fry dish. I had a good laugh over the mess, ate around the gobs of white cheesiness, and enjoyed every fry. MJ bought a flowy pink skirt for three dollars to replace her jeans, too hot in the surprisingly summery weather. 

We walked to the pond where we sat and talked about our grown-up lives - jobs, husbands, homes - while children played blissfully in the shallow water and teens walked by, reeking of coolness. Phases of our life in living color right in front of our eyes. The sun had its reddening way with our winter-fair skin and we finally succumbed to the need for ice cream, just $2.44 in the camp store, and made our way back to our blanket where we listened to some music until night began to settle and we collected our sweatshirts from the car for the evening concert. 

It was late when we finally left. Dew had settled on our blanket and the grass surrounding it, and our feet were damp as we made our way back to the car. The day had bubbled up with memories, the present and the past colliding at a place unchanged by time. And when it was over, I felt more sure of the things that time cannot change - not just a pond or a hillside, although those also remain firm, but also a friendship and the bedrock it becomes, undergirding a life through the cycling seasons of many years. I think now that it wasn’t the pond and the funnel cakes and the marshmallows over an early morning fire that made my childhood festing such a part of my soul. It was the companionship of my family, of MJ, of the musicians on stage who never saw or knew me but were experiencing the same life I was for that one weekend. That is what I recaptured this weekend and that is why the Folk Festival will always be part of my bedrock: It’s a sense of home wrought of exclusivity. It’s a set of memories and feelings that can’t be transferred, must be lived. And it’s the fertile ground in which memories can take root and a lifetime of love can grow.