2003-08-03 - 8:46 p.m.
Like God's Own Peanuts
OK. So I promised I'd try to put up some sort of an entry about FRFF. And I vowed I'd do it before the weekend was through. Here it is Sunday, and I'm still not sure where to start. I'm not sure what to say, or how to say it.
The shortest and in some ways most accurate way of putting it was that the weekend of Falcon Ridge was almost 100% the weekend I needed it to be. It was the retreat, the sanctuary, the recharge... I had the weekend I needed, and I enjoyed nearly every second of it, and I'm rather convinced that (overall) I'll be in an improved mood for weeks.
It's hard to know where to break it down farther than that -- hard to find the words that accurately bring across my impressions of things. Maybe the trouble is just that it was my frist FRFF, and that I needed a weekend like it so very badly, and so everything was amplified.
The music was great -- both the main/workshop/family stage fest acts, and the acts that went on in the Dome, and the general jamming and singing along, and the fact that whenever you were out of earshot of someone's guitar, you were coming into range of another.
The people were great. I love it when I get to see people I don't usually get to see. Love spending time around people who will give me a greater level of "relax" than most of my casual friends manage. Nothing against most of my casual friends, mind you, but this was something different, and in general I think I was actually geared down (and geared up) much more appropriately than I usually am at gatherings.
The weather -- well, it was very hot, and I did get very sunburned (although, kind of funny thing, I was mostly OK on the sunburn department until I drove home, which just took the exposure on my face over the top so the last week was a blistery nightmare at times). But it was so at beautiful at night. My god, the stars... I live in the middle of nowhere, but there's light on the horizons from "my" town, and the County seat one town over, and whatnot, so even on a clear night, it's usually not quite what those stars were.
I was camping. I love camping. The absence of a nice cheery campfire was perhaps the one thing missed on that score. Sleeping in a tent, breathing the outdoors all night. Waking before 7 am, even with my tent still out of the sun... OK, that one was almost annoying, since I got to sleep at like 3 or 4 each night I was there, but still. Wow. Awake, early, happy to be so -- glad to greet another day in that place, under those circumstances.
The only day that I dreaded was Sunday. Leaving -- leaving early. No one warned me it would be harder to leave FRFF than it is to leave FruCon. Or if they did, I missed it. And it was hard. It was the weekend I needed, it was like living in a different universe just for those few days, and then there was a 10hr+ drive home facing me, this time on little sleep.
Don't get me wrong about the drive -- it was surprisingly easy, even alone. Wrung me out by the end both ways, but tolerable. Time to think. Time to just chill out with some tunes. The trouble with the drive was facing that when I'd already been forced to leave where I wanted to be.
I'm missing things. I'm missing a lot of things that should go down here somewhere. Maybe I'll get to that later on. I'm half-convinced there was an internet terminal somewhere in the lobby where we stayed for work last week. If we stay there again, I'll look into it. Because I want to try to capture everything that I do have words for -- maybe then I'll be able to work those things I don't have words for into something even I can chew through slowly.
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Murrrrrrffff? - 2005-01-04
A Late Review - 2004-09-12
Weekend Update - 2004-08-08
Intermission - 2004-08-07
Rambling or something. - 2004-07-31
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