07.29.08
Falcon Ridge Folk Fest 2008
Well, where do I start…
The festival was one of the best for me. I heard great music, connected with friends, found a very dear friend unexpectedly, danced, played music late at night, got little sleep and loads of inspiration. Wed. and Thurs. were rainy, rainy, rainy. Both days were so rainy that the roads into the festival grounds were closed, so we had to carry our things in. I had arrived on Tuesday to drop off supplies for the Activities 4 Kids tent, so I was able to pitch my tent that day. I also had help carting things and did it gradually over the course of the festival. I was amazed by everyone’s good spirits in spite of the hardships. Friday and Saturday were gorgeous days. I would almost say that they were perfect days with no hint of what was to come. Then came Sunday…
The day started out overcast but okay. I went to the information tent to find out the forecast. I was told that we were expecting very severe storms in the afternoon, around 2 pm, with high winds and possible hail. I passed this info on to a few folks, packed up my things and moved my car to a spot by the road that I knew I could get out of. I’m so glad I did.
My job every year is to run the Activities 4 Kids tent. When the rain started, it came down in buckets. You couldn’t even see across the path. Then came the winds and the hailstones the size of ice cubes. I had my hands full trying to keep our big festival tent up and all the families calm. As you can imagine, there were a lot of screaming and crying kids, so we sang. When I finally had it fairly stable and all the children in the middle and away from flying debris, I went for my radio to call site crew and security. That’s when I found out that both food tents were down. My 4-year old granddaughter, who has been raised by me since she was a year old, had left with her dad to get lunch and then the Volunteer food tent to ride out the impending storm. You can imagine my own worry, wondering where she was now that the tent was down.
She had quite an adventure of her own, having been separated from her dad in the confusion of the collapsing tent. She was with my 14-year old grandson (in the food tent), who had seen her dad go to try to hold the tent posts and keep the tent from flying away, and was carried out of the collapsing tent by him and his friend. She was completely safe, thanks to my grandson’s clearheadedness and his friend’s help, and was taken in by two separate groups of people. The first group they found didn’t have a vehicle down below, so they huddled around her, like a football huddle, with her in the middle. They sang songs and gave her and the other two kids a science lesson on how hailstones are formed and what makes them different sizes. Then he found a van, that was packed full of people. He talked them into taking in the two girls then went to find her dad, me and his mom. He found us pretty quickly, and we took them to our friends’ school bus which was in deep water, up to my knees, but not going anywhere. They had fallen in the deep water many times and were shivering, so I dried them off and wrapped them up before leaving to see what was happening and what I could do to help. A little later, someone offered to bring them hot cocoa. They had also rummaged around in the bus and found cookies. That made things much better.
It’s very interesting to see first hand how people react in a crisis. Although there were a few who panicked, most everyone worked together very smoothly. There were paying customers who came around helping in the Med tent, helping site crew with the clean-up, and helping me get my A4Kids stuff disassembled and packed up. Eileen Ivers and her band set up on the grass by the workshop stage and played their planned set to help keep everyone’s spirits up. I was home by 7 pm. When I left, things were running smoothly again. I was there with my three kids and two grands. We all have our own stories and are all fine. It was too bad it had to end the way it did. All in all, we had a great festival and look forward to next year.
There are a couple of videos on YouTube, including one of the volunteer tent when it started collapsing, that are kind of cool and also frightening for those of us who were there.
I would love to hear other stories from folks who were there.