An Arts and Crafts Festival in the Redwoods

When I arrived here in Benbow Friday evening, I noticed a bunch of white tents along the Eel River bank. After setting up the rig with water, electricity and sewage, and hooking up the cable TV and WIFI, sliding out the push out (yeah, that's how I roll), I took a walk over to the Benbow Inn. The Inn is in the style of an Old English Manor House. The restaurant and bar are excellent. Sitting at the bar I asked the bar keep about the white tents. He said for the last 10 years the Mateel Summer Festival takes place the first weekend in June. The festival is an arts and craft fair with lots of live music provided by local bands.

The next day I wandered over to the festival (admission $13.00) and made a beeline to the beer tent. With a Stella in hand I made my way down the rows of white tents looking at crude hand crafted ceramic pots, tie dye shirts and dresses, hash pipes and water pipes made of glass, leather ware sellers, herb and plant peddler; you name the craft and it was for sale. Although I was walking along the banks of the Eel River with all its lush boreal forest vegetation, the smell that permeated the air was marijuana. Like anything else, when you don't expect to see something, you're not apt to be looking for it. Once the smell of weed filled my nose, I began to see people walking around everywhere hittin' on fatties.

After walking around for about an hour I made my way back to the beer tent where they had picnic benches set up. I got another Stella and sat at the table and bench looking at/observing the people around me. Soon a slender willowy young girl, maybe 19 or 20 years old, came into the tent with her small bare breasts painted like blue bonnets. Very pretty.

About a half hour into my observations several facts began to emerge. The crowd was overwhelmingly white. There was only a smattering of Asian, Black, or Latino people. There were, surprisingly, a lot of older folks in attendance and many of those olds guys and gals were puffin' on doobies. Taken as group, the crowd was fat, like in nearly obese. But that made sense considering all the weed that was being smoked. I could only image the amount of sweet and salty munchies being consumed.

It seemed almost every person who was capable of reproducing was reproducing repeatedly. Babies and young children were clinging onto women everywhere. The fathers were ignoring the kids and the mothers looked haggard and worn out. Even the children appeared distressed crying and pawing at their young parents.

People seemed to have money and given the poor economy up here in the north woods, I wondered where they got their cash. Then it dawned on me: someone has to grow the medical marijuana being distributed in all those clinics all over the state.

I must have listened to a dozen different bands playing music on the stages erected all over the site. A common thread running through most of the music was the lack of any band playing melodies. No melodies. Only beats and rhythms grinding away at my ears and brain. And maybe that contributed to my most stunning observation. No one was smiling. There was no joy anywhere to be found. Thousands of people ghosting around showing no interest, making no human connections, not simply unfriendly but non-friendly, unengaged, even paranoid. Very, very weird.

Forty years ago I attended festivals like the Manteel. Those festivals of the past were exciting and new, and ground breaking even revolutionary. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

Perhaps its the copious amounts of herb being smoked. Perhaps it is the harsh, cold, rainy winters being endured. Perhaps it is the narrow pop culture being followed. Perhaps is it the Frankenstein monster of religious fundamentalism sucking up all the rationalism in the air. Whatever the reason, the festival I attended yesterday, and that is the correct word, I attended not participated in, was joyless and reactionary. People seemed to go through the motions and no one was trying to do anything new or interesting. Same old-same old.

In the past the youth were always seen as a revolutionary force guiding history into new directions. Young people with clear and unencumbered minds synthesizing the new from bits and pieces of the old. The young people I saw yesterday were wear worn, beat down, befuddled, and incapable of midwifing a new world. What will become of their future? What a shame, what a damn shame.

I ended the day having dinner at the Benbow Inn and going back to the rig to enjoy a nightcap. While sitting outside a neighbor guy I met and talked to earlier stopped by and sat down. Within ten minutes he was preaching Jesus to me. Why can't I catch a break?