I left home about 11:00 Thursday, May 8, and headed up to Camp Rockmont, near Black Mountain, NC. This is located on Lake Eden, and is where the Lake Eden Arts Festival takes place.
I arrived up there around 5:00 and the wind it was a-blowin'! I was amazed. Last fall I set up the tent (a 10x13 monster compared to the 10x10 box that eventually flooded), in light drizzle. This time I set it up in winds sustained at about 15 (gusts up to 30). If I had to choose, I'd much rather set up in light rain and towel dry it when setup is complete than have to chase it across a field all afternoon!
But I did get it up, and got all the gear unloaded from the truck and tucked away not-so-neatly in the tent (who needs to be neat when you're camping).
Then it happened...
The skies opened up!
It dumped, and dumped, and dumped, and dumped, and dumped, and...(repeat ad nauseum).
So I got out the umbrella, and set off for the truck to go over to the Old Farmer's Ball.
The Old Farmer's Ball is the Thursday night contra dance that is held every week on the Warren Wilson College campus in the Bryson Gym.** This is where I first learned to contra dance in 2001, and though I don't get there very often (this was my first time in 3 years), I do love it there, and I have many good friends there. The caller that night was Beth Molaro, one of my favorites from my very beginnings of dancing, and the band was The Latter Day Lizards.
Back to the tent (still dumping, and dumping, and...well, you get the picture) for some sleep before the next morning.
I wake up (surprise...it's no longer dumping) to the feeling of something on my face. I open my eyes and notice that one of the rods that holds up the structure of the tent is leaning down periodically and brushing against my face. It was now...you guessed it...blowing, and blowing, and blowing, and blowing...
But it wouldn't stay that way all day. It only blew for about an hour after I woke up (about 9:00) and then the day gave way to excessive amounts of sun. Now most people who have been there recently have grown somewhat accustomed to rainy, cloudy LEAFs. So there were a few caught off guard with this anomally in the LEAFy weather department. As you've probably guessed since I brought it up, I was one of those that was caught off guard. By noon, I was well-done...cooked, fried, pretty much burned to a crisp. And this was only noon on Friday. I had the rest of Friday, and the rest of the weekend to go, and the entire event, almost, took place outside.
Around 11, my friend Joey from Charleston arrived with his crew. Joey, his girlfriend, and his guitar player's wife would be the people who were staying in my tent with me, and there were some others who camped in other tents very nearby.
4:30 came and up to the Brookside dance hall I ran. Had to catch the first dance of the day...Cis Hinkle with The Latter Day Lizards.
After that dance, I went outside for a bit to see if I could refry myself for an hour or so. Then it was back into Brookside for some swing with Big Sandy and his Fly Right Boys. Lots of fun there, and it gave way to the big contra dance of Friday night...Robert Cromartie with The Great Bear Trio.
Toward the end of the dance, people were reporting in the dance hall that it was raining outside. Lightning could occasionally be seen flashing through the skylights, and an occasional roll of thunder could be heard over the music and thundering feet in the building. The dance let out at around 12:15. The ground was wet. Over the mountain behind us, the sky was strobing with lightning. Over Lake Eden in front of us, it was the most clear, beautiful, star-lit sky that anyone could possibly ever dream of dreaming up. So the storm had passed. I went to the bathroom.
Then I came out and made a VERY startling discovery...
Even when it comes to meteorology, I do have the ability to occasionally be wrong.
This moment was one glaring example of that.
Looking over Lake Eden again, there was not a single star to be seen. The strobing effect was getting much more vivid, and the thunder claps from the storm were getting much louder and much closer. I realized, much to my disappointment, that the storm had not moved past and gone over the mountain, but was moving over the mountain and was about to dump its soul down upon the Lake Eden Arts Festival. I knew it was very close, and apparently moving quickly (starry sky to black death in the amount of time it takes a man to pee), so I started making my way briskly toward the campground, about 1/4 mile away.
But the gods would have none of it. I wasn't even completely down the woodchip path in front of Brookside when "WHOOSH." It was like I took a step and found myself under a waterfall. I was already half-drowned, and drowning more by the minute. But I had a long distance still to go. So I plodded along through the torrent, eventually making my way to the area of the Lakeside Stage, the main stage that is home to the biggest of the concerts at LEAF. The rain started to cover my glasses to the point where I could no longer see through them. This was getting dire. Up the hill I walked, struggling not to slide all the way back to the bottom with every step. And then the rain started flowing off my head and into my eyes. I made it up the hill alive, but the field atop would be a much more harrowing experience. The rainwater flowing into my eyes hurt. It burned. It clouded my vision beyond the cloudiness that already exists when I don't where glasses. So here I am walking in a deluge, through a field, filled with tents, which lay out an infinite number of trip lines. Only one of these several-hundred tents is mine. It's dark outside. And I'm literally walking blind.
Twenty minutes I wandered in the field. I walked slowly, trying to make my way onto the multi-purpose sport field they had set up for the frisbee throwers and other such people there. No such luck. I wandered instead to a point very near the parking area at the complete opposite end of the field (I know this because I could very vaguely make out headlights not-too-far in front of me...of the vehicular type). I turned left, and started down the edge of the campground. After a couple more minutes, I finally stumbled upon my tent. Upon entering, I (thankfully) found that Sarah (the guitar player's wife) had been the first back to the tent before it started raining, had zipped it up, and had gone to sleep. Joey, his girlfriend, and I, were all just getting back, and were all completely saturated and overly drowned (not really...we're all still very well alive, but we might as well have been as wet as we were). So we dried ourselves off in the darkness of the tent, changed into drier clothes, and went to bed for the night.
And it dumped, and dumped, and dumped, and dumped, and dumped...
And we woke up Saturday morning and it was so excessively bright with sunshine that one could hardly remember that there was even a hint of clouds the night before. So I set about once again refrying myself. I was bound and determined to see just how extra crispy this little chicken could get. Secret herbs and spices were being gathered in anticipation of great meals from "Kentucky Fried Kenny."
I didn't need much more sun. I had had enough of it already. So I went for a hike up the mountain, and got more sun. But it was well worth it. I had been on this mountain hiking before, but never had I gone as far as the crew pushed today. We went WAY up the mountain, about 3 times as far as I had gone in the past, and it was a strenuous climb. We were on the mountain most of the day. We got up to a rock face that situated itself so that it overlooked the town of Swannanoa along Highway 70 and the Swannanoa River, and sat there for about an hour. We enjoyed snacks, talked, laughed, took pictures. It was a great time. When we got back down, there was some time before the next dance (quite a bit of time), so I found myself with my friend Bart Saylor under the Lakeside Tent listening to an Irish band called Buille (pronounced Bwilluh). Three people, piano, guitar, and concertina. Buille is one of my new favorite bands, and I bought one of their CDs while there. Then it was off to burn some more.
Then night fell, and back up to Brookside I went. The night began with Cis Hinkle and The Great Bear Trio, and ended with Robert Cromartie and The Latter Day Lizards. GREAT dancing, and I danced every dance.
It did rain Saturday night, but it waited until after I was sound asleep to start. So no major dumping took place on my time. But Sunday was (finally, for I was about to set myself ablaze at this point) a VERY cloudy, foggy, drizzly, overcast day. I didn't do much today. Just walked around a bit, listened to a couple of bands. Did a couple of dances during the contra periods (same callers, same bands...Cis and Lizards, Robert and Bears), and I took some video of the dancing Sunday as well.
Taking down the tent was very easy...the wind picked up again as it was breakdown time, and there were some tents that went flying (I forgot to mention earlier that Friday morning, at least two tents were blown into the lake by the high winds). But we were packed up and on the road home by 5.
I pulled into the driveway at just after 11:00 PM on Sunday, May 11, Mothers Day. It was a great trip. Spring LEAF 2008 was a memory, and it was time to begin looking forward to Fall LEAF 2008 which is coming our way in October.
Here are some pictures that I took at LEAF this spring (most on Saturday during the hike) More pictures to come in a later post:
**As of May 22, The Old Farmer's Ball is being held at Morris Pavilion at Warren Wilson College. On that date around 5:30 pm, about 1/3 of the roof of Bryson collapsed. The building has been condemned, and the north entrance to the college is being rerouted down the hill around where the nurses building is located.
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