Faerieworlds 2015 and One Big Lake

Rain. Water.  Music.  Kin. Laughter. Fae.  Juju.  Mud.  Coffee.  Joy.  Water.  Rain.

That’s my report from FW 2015 🙂

Faerieworlds, if ya hadn’t heard, is a 3 day festival of all sorts of crazy beauty, including music, costumery, food and of course, the lovely attendees.

In 2013, the fest was held at Emerald Meadows at Mt. Pisgah near Eugene. We loved it so and planned to attend in 2014, but the fortunes were not with us and we missed it. That made us even more determined to get there this year.

We started getting the ducks in a row as soon as the dates were announced, made sure the PTO was approved. I offered to do a presentation in their Free Workshop space, which was graciously accepted.

As the time approached, we packed and packed and borrowed a car-top carrier and packed some more and bought a new air mattress and packed and unpacked and packed. We brought our tent, a 10×10 canopy, a rug for the floor of our outdoor living room and some excellent chairs. Also, lots of fabric for draping and making things look beautiful. And several tarps. Actually, exactly the right number of tarps.

We drove up to Medford in a leisurely fashion and stayed there overnight. Another 6 hours and we were onsite! I felt blessed to be able to arrive early enough that there was no crowd. However, it was raining. Like really raining. Like the way we long for it to rain here in California. And because we are from California, we were slightly befuddled by this rather inconvenient deluge.

It turned out to be a relatively small deluge, but still.

There was this watery stuff falling out of the sky all during the setup of our camp, which was good because we got everything buttoned down well, which avoided a big annoyance later when it rained a lot for a long time. Sadly, Matthew slipped on the wet mud and, breaking his fall, nearly broke his wrist. It swelled up and was very painful, but the Medical Faeries bandaged him up and gave him ice and acetaminophen.

Later that evening, we were joined by the lovely and talented Lasara Firefox Allen (who had a back injury of her own) with her kids and our camp was complete!

Honestly, I spent most of this year’s Faerieworlds sitting under the canopy in my comfy chair with many blankets, staying warm and dry. We missed all the paid workshops and most of the free workshops, except my own and one of Lasara’s.  We didn’t go to hear many bands, except Sharon Knight, et al., who were amazing as always!  As for the rest, we were blessed to be camped close enough that we could eavesdrop on the tunes, which gave us little incentive to journey out into the rain.

The only music we specifically ventured out to dance to was Delhi 2 Dublin. We LOVE those guys and they are so good at lifting up a crowd and bringing the family-peace-love-compassion-beauty vibe. Our party danced right through all the various injuries and pains and had a great time.

A stand-out experience of this little vacay was falling asleep listening to the rain hitting the tarp over the tent (We stayed dry! Yay good tent!) It’s hard to describe how potent and delicious it feels to expand into a larger awareness of the cycle of water. The cells of my flesh call out to their kin and relax deeply. Something ancient is soothed by the presence of rain. Something that is un-soothed by drought.

On our drive home, we called out “RIVER!” whenever we crossed one and would look longingly at that free-running source of life and beauty. Every time we go that far north, we seriously think about moving there. But what about our community, our family here? We need to find a piece of property with about 10 houses, or room for them.

One other feature of this new/old Faerieworlds location is that there is a big lake. Y’all know about the Deep Well ~ Great Heart Society; it has me very tuned into bodies of water, from a cupped leaf on up. Putting my attention toward this lovely, human- and nature-made lake, I felt that it heard the wild beautiful music; it heard the words during the workshops held at its bank; it received the rain that washed down through the rarified air of the place; it felt the vibrations of the feet that danced on the earth surrounding it. So many kinds of prayer went into that water. Now it is a Deep Well and They who tend it will keep what they need. Maybe there is some yummy juju left over, flowing into and through the One Well that serves all things, the vast cosmic storehouse of creativity and kindness.

Blessed be our listening ears, our dancing feet, our opening hearts.

All photos courtesy of Aurora O’Greenfield 2015