Don't Fight the Feeling

Shortly after I'd left Willits and dragged the 4x5 in and out of the van a few times, I began to grow weary, so when I saw the enormous field full of RVs, tents and VW van encampments just outside Laytonville, it occured to me to pull in and join my fellow nomads for the night.

It turned out to be the campgrounds for a weekend-long folk music festival that was just coming to an end. I proceeded to the information booth to ask if I could camp there, even though I wasn't attending the festival, and after a bit of hemming and hawing a woman emerged from an adjacent room, told me it was my lucky day and extended a plastic wristband for free entrance into the festival and campgrounds. Flabbergasted, I took the band and went on my way. As the daylight waned, I checked out some of the other ways of living. When you live in a van, the way other people live their mobile lives becomes a source of endless fascination.


Soon the sky darkened completely and I took out my flash to photograph people milling about the campgrounds. There were little tented areas set up, all illuminated from within, with impromptu folk sessions going on. Here and there, music emanated from a tent or an RV that would then echo in the air--they must have been listening to a broadcast of the festival, and the music from the stage took longer to travel and caused this surreal reverberation--the actual lagging behind its imitation.


As I walked the stars filled the sky, and the band of the Milky Way became so detailed and intense it made me dizzy to look at it. I found myself falling into a kind of trance and noticed that the voice coming from stage over the field was familiar to me, like the background music playing in a scene from a favorite film, and at the same time completely strange and angelic. I wasn't planning on going into the festival, but now I headed for the gates.

Emmylou Harris

The keepers of the grounds.
I was actually trying to photograph something behind him.

All the things I would normally find annoying became more textured and fascinating, and I let myself experience the atmosphere moment to moment, like a slide show from another planet. The sense of peace and good will in the air actually felt genuine and palpable. While taking pictures by the main stage, my G10 digital camera which I have been using to take all these quick snapshots and videos, fell out of my bag unnoticed by me. When I realized it was missing, I got into such a panic I could barely breathe. I didn't even know how long it had been gone, but when I went to the lost and found booth, it had been turned in by a woman named Rayla Star, who left me her contact info written on the back of this business card.





By the light of day, things were a little less romantic (more on that later...maybe). The crowd appeared to be suffering an intense hangover, and people were eating rushed breakfasts and packing and folding and gathering objects and children and crowding them into their cars and vans. A more relaxed group was down by the river skinnydipping. I met Deborah outside her lovely, fiberglass Burro trailer. She was in no rush to go anywhere, so she gave me a quick tour and we sat and talked for over an hour. Since she'd gotten divorced, she'd been spending more and more time in the trailer not because she had to, but because she liked the mobile life.





Soon the temperature reached over 100 again, and I headed up the 1o1 toward Eureka and Arcata, taking a tour through the Avenue of the Giants and soaking in the thick mossy coolness below the ancient trees for a bit. I also took a dip at this perfect bend in the river.