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.