like the colors of bubble gum pink and baby blue swirled on my tie-dyed top, so the people of the high country bus festival blended. there were past-the-glory-days hippies walking around with dream catchers and headbands. there were sweet mamas and papas bathing their babies in the river. there were great danes and labrador retrievers swimming in the warm water and teenagers sitting in a circle on the great big rocks that broke up the current.
and then there was us. my bearded husband, intelligent brother and his devastatingly fashionable girlfriend. just a couple of kids from the triad, deep in the heart of the carolina mountains. we hopped on intertubes and spent two hours floating lazily down the river, warming our faces in the morning sunshine. we listened to live music (you've got to check out the honeycutters--a delicious blend of patti griffin and emmylou harris and all sorts of good folksy roots).
on the particularly balmy saturday afternoon, we drug our air mattresses onto the riverbank and slept under the shade trees. we woke to raindrops.
then, from 4 pm. until midnight, the sky let loose in a thunderous, dramatic and loud display of prowess. it absolutely poured. so hard that our little tent shook. we crammed ourselves inside and dove under warm blankets. then, for the next six hours, we stayed there. we ate pop-tarts and drank bottled water. we read books and my brother played his mandolin. we talked and told stories and stayed awake long past quiet hours, the next night's live music, an old bluegrass band, playing in the distance.
then, when night fell on the camp and the bluegrass started to fade, we got out some speakers and played cat power in the darkness. and lying there, three people i love to the left of me, listening to cat's deep rasp float between us, i closed my eyes and finally slept.
it was a fabulous weekend, and integrating myself back into reality has proved quite cumbersome. yes, for many it was a weekend of parties. for some, it was a weekend of children and animals and music. but for me, it was a weekend of beauty. of God's great nature and man's great machine. co-existing and cohabitating the same blessed space.
