Keep eyes, mind open

By By James Foley

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Thursday at sundown we arrived at camp. Near the treeline off the intersection of Crazy Lane and Fourth streets at Campground One were two familiar cars and several tents. Earlier in the day, our friends waited in a queue of cars for seven hours to stake our claim on the vast field of withered grass and dirt. Cars from as far as New Jersey formed a grid of makeshift roadways. Anyone from a solo festivalgoer in a pup tent next to a Subaru Outback, to a flock of hippies complete with Volkswagon busses huddled under crudely constructed sunshades, composed the thousands of campsites at the Wakarusa Music Festival.

Music coming from surrounding campsites was slightly drowned out by the distant sounds from stages that were blocks away. As some people slept in preparation for a long next day, others roamed the campground selling a vast array of drugs to plenty of eager and experienced buyers. Occasionally fireworks or a wild scream pierced air and brought the masses to attention. This happened all weekend long.

It’s a way of life for some people. An entire subculture dedicated to traveling from festival to festival for as much of the year as they can. Aged hippies from generations past mingle with a new breed of youth who embrace the lifestyle with every penny of their disposable incomes.

Everyone is there for one reason; to have fun.

There is no better excuse to go camping with your friends. The atmosphere bursts with energy and beams of love. Thousands and thousands of people, many of them drinking excessively or experimenting with mind-blowing cocktails of drugs living a relatively safe and orderly environment. It’s amazing chaos doesn’t break loose on the hour.

But with so many people trying to live outside for four days without all the accommodations of modern society, it gets messy. One of the worst things about festivals are the piles of trash we leave behind. When a show ends everyone gets up and leaves, not always taking with them what they brought, expecting someone else to clean up their mess. The number of cigarette butts littering the ground rivals the number of stars in the sky. Why are we OK with this?

Something with such magnificent drawing power as a music festival should take it upon itself to spread a message of environmental awareness. If we keep mindlessly trashing our planet, we won’t be having music festivals for much longer.

I can’t say I’m innocent of absentmindedly littering, but I try hard not to. I pocket my cigarette butts.

Music festivals are growing bigger and bigger every year. And as they grow it would be wise to do more to encourage environmental stewardship, and conditioning festivalgoers to be more aware of the impact we all have on our environment. If everybody were to make a point just to clean up their own mess, we’d be on the right path.

We can keep having these wonderful, crazy events for years to come if we keep one thing in mind: leave only your footprints.

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