I’m back from Falcon Ridge. I got back eight hours ago and had ambitions to do things today including writing this hours ago. It’s hard to do that when you fall asleep sitting in your chair. I still have things to do but I won’t make My Gentle Readers wait another second.
Jake J asked me how many blogs I’d write about Falcon Ridge. I told him, “I don’t know.” I still don’t know. At one point I was contemplating writing just one. That is not going to happy. I’ll write as many as it takes to tell the tale.
This is me, so I will start with the trip up. I could start with the preparations but that would mean remembering them. No! that’s not how I start. I start with the overview. My What Falcon Ridge Means to Me theme. My, Why you must go to Falcon Ridge Next Year piece.
There are thoughts shared by many people on that magic farm in Hillsdale, our Brigadoon, our Shining City on the Hill. Two artists articulated them by artists performing on the modest but mighty Budgiedome stage. Carolann Solebello and Willa Mamet. This was Carolann’s 17th Falcon Ridge, she’s been camping with us at the Budgiedome for years. She told the audience that Falcon Ridge is special, which is why she and her family made their home on the Dodd’s Farm. Sure they go on the road the other 360 days but home is Falcon Ridge. That’s how we feel. This is our comfort zone. This is our place to be safe and secure and happy. This is the place to be with our people.
This was Willa’s first Falcon Ridge. Willa came from the other side of the continent to be there. The only ones in the Budgiedome she knew were Carolann, Mark, Bri, and me. But she was able to watch us in the dome and know that we were mishpuche, and say so from the stage. Mishpuche literally means family but it’s Yiddish so it’s all in connotations. You don’t necessarily share blood with mishpuche; you are related by your souls, not your genes.
The official festival is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with Thursday being semi-official, but Fred and I arrive on Wednesday and leave Monday morning. On the way home we discussed how Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday night, after the Festival is officially over, are some of our favorite parts. We are with our mishpuche. There is music every night, on Wednesday and Sunday we make it ourselves, we, being the people of Buddha-Pest, the combined Dharma Café and Budgiedome camp. On Thursday there’s the semi-official Lounge Stage put on in the Dance Tent by our good friends in Pesky J. Nixon and their mishpuche. It’s followed by our song circle in the Budgiedome where we invite everyone to join us. This year not many people did but we still had a wonderful time. I got to hear original songs from Mel who is part of our camp. That’s the essence of the song circle, we don’t distinguish between the pros and the amateurs. I even sang an original.
We soak in the night sky, especially on Wednesday and Sunday nights when there are fewer lights to drown them out. This year the stars looked particularly bright as Wednesday was moonless and on Sunday the crescent set early. On Wednesday Jake B pointed out a satellite to me. On Sunday Nick figured out that the bright light we saw moving was the International Space Station. My mishpuche don’t just appreciate music, we appreciate the world around us, nature, the arts, the sciences, history; joy is where you find it.
But there is music, wonderful music, I discovered new artists, you’ll be reading about them in the days to come. You might hear about them on Gord’s Gold one of these days.
I almost forgot the entire reason I go to Falcon Ridge, the Taste Budd’s Frozen Cocoa Chiller. When we started staying over Sunday night I discovered that the Taste Budd’s crew joys the Dharma Café family for music making. I was jamming with chocolate royalty.
I could write an entire entry on the wonderful people I see there, from Phil, who directs traffic as you enter to park on Wednesday to the last stragglers on Monday morning. My mean free path is about twenty steps, that’s how far I can make it till I run into the next person I know. I can never walk in a straight line non-stop. I could write an entire entry on the people I stopped to talk to. I’m so tempted to do that. I’ll just integrate it into the tale of days.
I don’t intend on dying and if by some strange chance I did, I don’t intend on being buried, but if I was and could choose my spot it would in Lower Pasture at Dodd’s Farm and the gravestone would read R.L. Stevenson’s Requiem, with a slight change.
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the folkie home on the hill.
Wise Madness 