Michfest, Day 10

Michfest, Day 10
Current mood: content

Tarp Convention~

Today my crew finished up a few odds and ends. Dropped some furniture, put up a few small tents. Then, because we had the time, Dustin, Liz, and I returned to Oliver, the place where everything had started for me.

Oliver was a dirty, dirty barn. Old brown and blue tarps hung in fraying tatters from the ceiling, spilling leaves and mouse droppings and bat guano all over the floor. The three of us gave the barn a good sweeping, then began the task at hand.

Dustin and I climbed up on ladders with staple guns and systematically tarped the entire roof of the barn. In another world this task might have seemed tedious or tiring, holding a large staple gun over one's head for prolonged periods of time and stapling plastic into wood, but Dustin and I fell into a groove with it while Liz held the tarps up for us. It was just coincidence, I think, that Dustin and I were handed this task, but it felt so right to me that we return here. We, who a week ago had entered Oliver as awkward newbies, now had the chance to see our first big task come to completion. How very satisfying.

But it was more than that. All the work we had done up to that point had been for this year's festival goers. Delivering wood, moving the scaffold, bringing furniture, all these tasks were part of the cyclical festival constructs that would all come down again and go back into storage where it would lie dormant until next year. But this, a barn with a shining plastic ceiling (with a particularly nice orange tarp amongst the blue, I might add) was something that we were doing not for the festies, but for the Lace crew that would follow ahead of us. So we could breathe a little easier when we moved the wood again. I saw myself opening the red barn doors next year and marveling over our handiwork from the year before. The thought of coming back to this barn again and again kept me smiling along the winding dirt road that led us back home.

Michfest, Day 9

Michfest, Day 9

What you find under a tree~

What is there to say about an easy breezy work day?

This town is starting to look like it’s going to have a festival! Pretty much all of the tents have gone up. Set-up strike has made sure that the paths have been covered with wood chips, trees pruned, brush removed. Some of the first short crew members will be arriving tomorrow, and from there, Workerville will just keep on growing until the last of the Festival is over.

With a little free time on my hands, I decided to do one of my favorite things on the land- sit underneath the big Michigan tree.

The feeling I get when I see the Michigan tree reminds me of the feeling I get when approaching Charles Bridge. Walking across Charles Bridge is *the* quintessential thing to do in Prague. Tourists cross the river Vltava in throngs, regardless of whether or not it’s summer or snowing- a visit to this story book city would be nearly impossible without a walk across the seven hundred year old bridge. But the cool thing is that the folks who live in Prague traffic the bridge regularly as well. You can cross at sunrise, flanked by angels and morning mist, or by day when the cobblestone corridor is bustling with buskers, street vendors, and foreigners with cameras. Or at night, when seagulls overhead are illuminated by the bridge lights and seem to vanish completely when they pass into darkness.

One winter day I was out for a walk across town with my friend Jiri, a Czech who’s lived in Prague for several years. As we approached the high stone archway on the east bank of the river, I felt that same unflagging sense of wonder fall upon me. I turned to Jiri and asked, Does it ever get old to see this? She shook her head and grinned fiercely. ‘Never’.

For the first few days of long crew I came to the tree in the morning, muscles tight and veins as yet uncaffeinated, for a half hour session of yoga that left me energized for the rest of the day. I went to the tree for grounding after my first sweat and felt my heart unfurl with crow’s wings and distant forests full of laughing Monet leaves. I’ve danced and drummed and worked beneath those gorgeous branches. I can’t even begin to imagine Michfest without that tree.

On this particular day I felt like I needed some time alone. My heart felt a little heavy, though the day had been light. Luckily for me, the night stage bowl and the best seat in the house were both empty. I sat down and leaned my back against her rough rigged bark. We sat like that for a moment, the tree and I, until I saw someone approaching from across the field. She waved. I squinted. Ah, Amelia! She came to sit beside me and we both stared across the field for a while in silence. She was tired of processing and talking about her feelings and I didn’t particularly want to talk about mine in that moment, either. So we talked a lot of nothing. Threw a few punches back and forth. Laughed a lot. It was exactly what I needed. By the time we walked away from the tree, I felt better. Lighter.

Does it ever get old, this constant return to the same place?

Never.

Michfest, Day 8

It Might Be an Ordinary Day~

Sunday morning. Nothing like waking up happy, walking down to the Belly Bowl on a sunny day, and having the always loving Gals serve brunch. Oh yeah.

Today's my first full day off! Plenty of time for a post-brunch lay in the hammock. There's something so sweet about letting a latticework of rope support your body entirely. Rocking…sunlight filtering down through the trees and forming patterns against closed eyelids.

There was plenty of time that day for ice cream in downtown Ludington with Emily, the bes-test friend a girl could have. We dipped our feet in Lake Michigan, laid out in the sun, and watched the people around us with curiosity. We'd only been on the land for a week, but already I feel like I'm looking at this outside world from the eyes of an anthropologist instead of one who actually lives in it.

Driving with the top down through rural Michigan countryside, I turn to give Emily the biggest grin in the world. I'm comfortable as can be with my arm out the window and Gillian Welch tunes on the stereo. What a gorgeous day it is. We haven't seen rain all week. All these different splashes of color by the roadside are enticing; I stop to pick every wild flower I see on the way home. We arrive on the land with clean laundry and rosy cheeks from the sun on our faces. I drop off my laundry and find a happy home for the flowers.

I miss the simple routine of it all. The quiet comfortable circuits I would make between the showers, the Belly Bowl, the Night Stage bowl, the Lace tent. Here on this day I'm surprised at how relieved I feel to be back on the land after our day excursion to the Lake. The ground feels so good against my bare feet. I haven't spoken to every woman on the land yet, but I recognize all their faces. They're all so beautiful.

Michfest, Day 7

Michfest, Day 6

Safety Dance~

This morning when we crewed up at Lace the outlook for the day seemed positive. We were a little ahead of schedule and could take a few hours of reprieve to practice our rain crew duties.

Imagine, seeing an empty field on Sunday and then, six days later, there’s a massive stage on it covered with a huge gorgeous blue and white tent. Unbelievable. I stood on the night stage for the first time while Belinda talked us through the mechanics of the rain pole and its crucial function of preserving the tent and all the expensive sound and light equipment beneath.

Charles, Viv, and I volunteered to be on top of the ladder for rain crew duty. I chose the task because I love rock climbing and I’m not afraid of heights. The day before I left for Michigan I had helped Amy clean out her gutters and it had seemed like no big deal at all- ladders are fun for me.

But the first time I practiced putting up the pole, I was scared, even though I couldn’t have had a better person as my second. Crash stood behind me with her arms around my legs and reassured me that I wasn’t going anywhere.

What scared me were all these epic crazy stories of the Le Tigre show a few years back that had been so amazing to so many womyn. The massive moshing in the rain bit of it sounded awesome, but the idea of being on top of a rickety wooden ladder in the middle of a crazy thunderstorm and trying to put the metal tip of a heavy center pole in through a tiny hole that was flapping in violent winds…well, let’s just say that the idea pushed against the limits of my bravery.

The hardest thing for me about putting up the center pole was the damn safety knot, of all things. I had tied the same knot a thousand times as a rock climber. But on a ladder, with a different type of rope and from a different direction and imagining gale force winds… I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it. Or wrap the string around the pole, rather.

The rest of the afternoon was a lesson in my limits. We had been working for six days straight without much of a break. I was tired. Lace finished up the last of the sledging and this time I had to sit out entirely for fear of ripping open (again) the miraculous stigmatas that had blossomed on my palms. I ended the afternoon feeling small and a little lost.

I wandered off alone to the acoustic stage to try to make sense of how I was feeling. Once upon a time my spirit path had opened up in the middle of the Ferron show in this very spot, and the next day I had found the grounding I needed here at the healing ceremony. I went back to that stage looking for the same door that had opened for me last year, but it had closed. Or moved on, rather. The land laughed at me, gently, playfully, and said, Oh no. You can’t expect to come back to the same place a year later and find the same door. It’s not that easy. The world has moved on. You’ll find that door again, but where you least expect it.

I was probably a little cranky that evening. Everyone was talking about the dance that night, but sheesh! All I wanted to do was sleep! Emily Huber kept reassuring me that the dance was worth it, that I’d get a second wind, that the first dance was the best, but oh, my little yellow tent looked so inviting!

Oh man am I glad that I didn’t sleep through one of the best nights of pre-Fest.

The dance was incredible. During the week I had started to get a sense for some of my fellow sisters personalities, but it’s always a surprise to see how this translates on the dance floor. Who would have known that Paige, my (as of yet) fairly quiet Lace-partner-in-crime would prove to be a dance machine?! And Justin! Damn! After a long week of work, it was exactly what we needed. I danced until I was so hot that I needed to step away for a bit and cool down. There were womyn that I hadn’t even talked to yet, but met them energetically on the dance floor. Fucking amazing.

Not long into the dance, I noticed that the safety knot that Charles had tied that afternoon had unraveled and the string was dangling above the floor. Oops. Lori came over and swatted at it like a cat. Fearing a potential future accident in which my knot negligence would drop the string on Ferron’s head mid ‘Souvenir’, I vowed to have a knot consultation with Viv who, incidentally, looked fabulous dressed in a tie and no shirt.

Oh, how we danced! KT took a turn as DJ and we only danced harder. One song in particular had everyone stomping in unison against the stage floor. That’s our ply!!! All those boots together made a hollow staccato against the wood that my crew of four had taken out of Oliver earlier that week. Unbelievable.

Em and I took a much needed break to cool off. We walked along the catwalk to the end and laid down with our feet dangling off the edge. In the darkness I got the sensation that we were sitting on a pier overlooking a vast starlit ocean. With so much space out there it seemed like anything was possible.

Back on the Night Stage, we danced until the music was over, then we begged for more, and the DJ broke her curfew to play us one last song.

We kept right on dancing.

Michfest, Day 6

What the Thunder Said~

I am such a mess. At dinner I sit down at the Belly Bowl table and receive stares and sympathy from the womyn around me. My right forearm is one giant bruise from the afternoon I spent stake throwing in Howard’s barn. Both of my hands are covered in tape. In an attempt to compensate for yesterday’s blisters, I’ve acquired more in various parts of my palm and thumb, not to mention the myriad of bruises on my thighs from the numerous times when I rested a piece of ply against my leg.

But I can’t stop grinning. Sleep is a wonderful thing. Yesterday I absolutely could not figure out how to sledge. I slept on it, and somehow my brain synapses made the necessary connections over night. I spent the day with Liz, Lizzie, and Dix and we put up so many tents between the four of us. Today the sledgehammer felt like an extension of my body and oh, how satisfying it was to pound in the stakes downtown, at acoustic stage, at Dart!

About half of the sledges are named, each identity marked clearly on the handle in black sharpie. There was a ten-pound hammer that I was particularly fond of named Thunder. Me and thunder, we had a good thing going on. Thunder said, Pound! and I did. I sledged my little heart out. I found a rhythm and posture and grip that worked for me and I went with it. My palms were raw and tender, but I didn’t care. I re-taped my hands over and over and kept right on sledging until my paws were tattered.

The four of us were a little cracked out by the end of the day. Something about that kind of repetitive hard work and the additional effort it took to really pay attention to the geometry and tension necessary to set up a tent correctly had left us brain fried. Salvation came in the form of a package of graham crackers from the Belly Bowl. Liz Singer devoured half the package, then complained through a mouth full of crackers about how dry they were and that they needed some fucking butter. I laughed so hard that I started crying.

We started putting up tent sides and unrolled one in particular that smelled especially dank, like it had been wet when it was stored. As we hung the sides up, we were searching for the precise words for this musty plastic-y smell and Lizzie found it for us. ‘I’d say it’s foosty,’ she said in her thick Scottish brogue. To better illustrate its definition, Lizzie used the word for me in a sentence. ‘You know, you wouldn’t want someone to tell you you had a foosty fanny. It would mean that no one had been there for ages.’

Recommence laughter.

And at the end of a long hard day, we still had the energy to join around the Dart fire for a party with friends. Time for a sweet moment on a neatly tarped pile of ply. Time to sit for a spell in the Night Stage bowl and enjoy the stars.

Michfest, Day 5

I Wanna Be ~ Your Sledgehammer

Thursday, Pre-Fest. This day kicked my ass, seriously. Yesterday I was feeling pretty on top of my game. Feeling good energetically, feeling like my body was doing a fairly admirable job at handling the ply situation. Onward to the next challenge.

Charles had been saying the word, ‘sledging’ for the last few days and staring off into space with a dreamy look in her eyes. Me, I had no idea yet exactly what sledging entailed, nor did I know that my crew of fourteen was responsible for raising a good three quarters of the tents on the land.

Putting up tents is a lot more involved than I could have managed. Lots of angles, corners, cranking, attention to lines, tension, hills and bee hives. The first step was figuring out where all the stakes went- the second was getting them into the ground.

Sledging is one of those things that takes a while to get. I spent most of the afternoon missing the wooden stake entirely and knocking little dusty holes in the ground, trying not to hit my damn foot. My back ached. My wrists felt awkward along the taped wooden handle. After about ten minutes of whacking and swinging I had angry red blisters on both of my palms.

One of my better swings knocked the metal ring off the top of a stake. I was about to keep swing, but Dix stopped me and told me I should keep the ring- it would be one of the things I would want to have after festival. I tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans and liked the feeling of its weight there.

Michelle came over to help us out and I couldn’t help but stare at her sledging technique. Poetry. Her hammer moved in a fluid windmill that looked effortless, almost easy. I listened to the rhythmic metallic peal of the hammerhead against the stake ring. Now that’s how you do it.

********

Sledgehammers are a lot more sensitive than they look; it’s a fine balance to keep them happy. Hold them too loosely and they drop out of your hands, or miss the mark entirely. Grip them too tightly and they chafe against you, again and again, until eventually you have to let them go. Somewhere in the middle lies the perfect tension, which I had yet to find.

And sledging need not be back breaking, either. Michelle explained to me that the upswing was important, but once the hammer reached the apex of its swing… the rest was just inertia. Letting gravity do the work for you, bending your knees for extra force, gliding smoothly into the next swing. If it felt like too much work, then you’re probably doing something wrong.

So much at stake. So much to learn from a sledgehammer.

Michfest, Day 4

Michfest, Day 4
Current mood: quiet

Wood, Stars, and Chocolate Bars~

This afternoon my crew of four pulled the last piece of plywood out of Oliver. How satisfying it has been to see a project come to completion in just three days! Somewhere in the middle of moving a piece of wood I made eye contact with Charles and something in me clicked. My stubborn arms that had been performing similar variations on the same awkward motions made a connection with my brain about this whole wood ordeal and I just *got* it. Absolute wood groove. The rest of the day felt so much smoother. We watched a dog run back and forth from one end of a long piece of plastic pipe to the next, trying to catch the little furry creature that was somewhere in the middle and trying to escape without encountering this pup's slobbering jowls. Later we moved on to Howard, the even bigger barn, and I had my first lesson in stake throwing. Sure, I had come to a peaceful understanding with ply, but stakes were a whole new type of wood. Apparently you're supposed to give a little with your body every time a bundle of sign posts gets tossed in your direction so it doesn't feel so much like a bludgeoning. Amateur mistake.

But I have to admit- the pain was kind of exquisite.

In honor of an empty Oliver, my crew and I jumped in Charles car and headed down the road to Crystal Valley for drinks and burgers and fried mushrooms, the reward we had been waiting for all day, and damn it was good. The four of us rode back to the land singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' at the top of our lungs. One of my Lace crew highlights.

By nightfall the energy I had been hoping to feel on the land was coming to me in waves of joy. I took a bite out of a very lucky Milky Way, then later saw it reflected in pale bands of light amongst so many glittering stars.

Michfest, Day 3

Everything You Own~

Ah, what a glorious day!

My fearless crew of four has accomplished, in two days, what I thought we would do in a week and a half. Oliver is still a dirty dirty barn, but he's nearly empty!

We took a break in the middle of the afternoon to help our fellow Carps women move the scaffold they had so carefully constructed over the last 24 hours. Each piece was so heavy that it required at least twenty womyn to move. We assembled in rows inside the scaffold and waited for the cue from our Carp director. Simultaneously we dropped to the ground, lifted the large wooden frame to our hips, turned to the side, then brought the piece up to shoulder level.

Carla called out, "To the left, to the left, to the front, to the front" and we moved together in unison, feet shuffling and hips moving fluidly, gracefully. It reminded me of the line dancing that goes on in the dyke bar in Durham, only this time with several hundred pounds of wood over our head. I got a song stuck in my head and started giggling…'To the left to the left, everything you own in a box to the left'. Piece by piece we moved the scaffolding as a slight drizzle fell upon our shoulders. Within half an hour, our quick, coordinated efforts were complete- the main stage scaffold was up. We gave each other hugs and returned to our separate crews to finish off the work-day. But wow…what a joyous, coordinated effort! How lovely was it to have womyn from so many crews collaborate on this lovely joint effort, and for the main stage, the center piece of our Festival world .

I wondered, how would a team of men move the scaffolding? Would they attempt to move each piece with the fewest number of men possible? Would the Carp director call out orders with the authority of a drill sergeant? Would there be so much flirting and laughter and joy, or would it just present itself as another task to be completed?

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of plywood. We were exhausted by the end of the afternoon. My arms felt like wood, my head felt like wood. We jumped into Ruby with the last load, the four of us cramped into her small front cab, me riding in the middle. On the way home Dustin reached down, exhausted, and unconsciously attempted to shift my knee into third gear.

We both burst out laughing.

Michfest, Day 2

Comedy? or Tragedy?

This morning I spent riding around on the back of farm trucks through a cool fern lined forest. A hawk flies over the truck, always a sign of good luck. Everything is named here; this morning we took Elle out for a ride and visited Oliver, the big red barn that I had barely noticed on the way in the day before. Behind the barn is a sprawling field of Christmas trees that leads up to a denser patch of forest. I crane my neck to look up at the top of the white silo behind us. The gaping maw of an open door spews forth barn swallows. I watch their tipped wings bend into the sunshine.

Behind door number one is a rectangular room filled from floor to ceiling with plywood. The tarped ceiling is caving in, dropping bat guano and mouse droppings on to the pile of wood. It smells musty in here, dank. We cover our noses. I take a look at the stacks of ply and think, sure, we can move all this in a week an a half. No problem.

But my body doesn't understand yet how to work with wood. Rock, I know how to touch. But wood? Pull, slide, lift. Tip? Or bounce? Each piece seems to want to tip slide right out of my hands. Charles, Justin, and Dustin are showing the ropes to the rookie, and I'm trying my best, but my body doesn't know what to do with all this wood. We fill Elle to the brim with ply, then ride back through the forest to an empty field and stack the wood all over again. The ply that we bring will become the stage floor that every performer on the land will stand on. For now, we leave it, stack it, tarp it. Repeat the process again and again until my back is on fire.

Inside I feel small. I've never worked before, I'm not privy to the festival lore and stories from previous years. I search for a point of commonality with my co-workers, but fall to silence staring into the forest. One of them notices that I'm quiet, and I muster up my best smile. 'Just wait. Give me a couple of days, and you won't be able to shut me up.' I feel like I'm speaking the truth, but I'm not so sure. I have an idea of what I'll become after a few days of acclimating in the same way that I know the ply will transform into a place for dancing in a few days. We both just need a little time.

That evening my Lace crew lead the first community meeting. To keep things lively, we directed a book making exercise. Our task was to tell, in one sentence, the story of our day. In honor of Shakespeare, we were told to write either a comedy or a tragedy. My storybook was a run-on sentence complete with pictures and stick figure drawings that read something like this:

'Today I wanted to see as much of the land as possible, so I rode on the back of a farm truck with my new friends Justin and Charles and Justin and we rode through the forest to a big red barn full of wood". I looked back on the day, even in it's difficulty, and grinned. No tragedy in a day well spent.

Michfest, Day 1

We left Columbus bright and early on Sunday morning, and it was a fine day for traveling. After turning off into Hart, Michigan and I can feel my heart racing at the familiar gas station, factory, and country roads that are all signs that we're getting closer to home. I look in the rearview mirror and see that another sister is riding behind us with her bike on top of the car. Emily reads the directions out to me and we take a right onto the long road that winds in front of the Michigan trail. I still don't have the turn down; we peel right past a big beautiful red barn that I haven't met yet, haven't seen the inner world of plywood that waits within.

This time there's no one to greet us at the front gate to shake their hands and blow their whistles and shout, 'Festie Virgin'! Instead we drove slowly past fields of tall grass, unmown lawns that would later be a sea full of parked vehicles from festies hailing from all over the US and Canada. How amazing it was to see *nothing* up...no stages, no Cuntry Store, just forest and fields waiting like seeds to fulfill their potential.

My first evening on the land was a blur of new faces, greetings, mosquito bites. So surreal, the feeling of waking up in a city one morning and falling asleep on the land the next with the sound of crickets outside my yellow door.