2. THE LINE

THE LITTLE PAPER I GOT when I received my Festival Ticket in the mail mentioned that there might be a line to get in the gate, and that one could get into that line as early as seven a.m. and that the gate would open at one o'clock in the afternoon. I left my friend's around eight and drove in the rain on the highway, then on local roads. The rain let up. At last, at around ten in the morning, I meandered gingerly along the last three miles on a muddy road that was not sticky like NY muddy roads, but slippery and slidey like roads I remember in South Carolina when I was a child and my father drove the 1942 Plymouth gingerly over them, red dirt the same, though in Michigan the dirt was more on the yellow side. I came to a stop behind an SUV. A person in an orange vest like the ones worn by workers on the road greeted me on foot and told me I was about the 475th car. Oh. Good thing I had snacks. It was four hours before my car moved. People came by. Fancy dressed women selling raffle tickets that were backed up by fabulous prizes donated by the craftswimmin --I never saw the word "women" spelled with the word "men" in it, by the way -- and the grand prize was admission to next year's Festival; several joggers came by and later returned; someone who owned a local restaurant came by selling chicken. The woman/womyn in front of me got out of her vehicle and opened the back. She took out several objects and proceeded to attach them to one another until she had a table. I could see a large cooler and several folding chairs. I wondered what kind of luxury one could devise in the woods. That is another subject! At one point the woman in the car behind me got out and came up and introduced herself. Later she admitted to me that she did that as an exercise in being assertive as that was her goal in coming to the festival. To come out of her shell. As we talked we discovered that she lived in the town I grew up in! That was a bond that created my first FestiFriend. She is a librarian at the junior college there and probably knows half the people my Illinois friend knows, people who drum and meditate and go to plays and grow flowers. At last the cars lurched along in groups of ten or so and finally I passed the gate. Around my left hand was placed a red band, snapped on with a finality that reinforced the instructions... lose this and you can't get back in -- (I had read a story about someone who had to go to the ER and her band was removed and when she came back to the festival she had to BUY ANOTHER TICKET. "Tis the rule, and supported by most.) PS - she received reimbursement, I believe. That wouldn't be me, I thought, and entered this new experience. Later I heard women saying that they had got in that line at four in the morning!