Faerieworlds: 5 Days, 0 Drama

One thing that's struck me about Faerieworlds is how nice it can be to be in the presence of a large number of people gathered together to share the experience of an event like Faerieworlds. From late Thursday morning until Monday afternoon, my main focus was Faerieworlds and having a good time there.

I traveled to and from Faerieworlds with Jason, a friend from Tribe.net's Circle of Merry Folk. He lives in LA but wants to move to Portland, so he flew up a week early. We got together a couple of times, one of which was for the purpose of checking out a few apartment possibilities. I picked him up in the city at noon on Thursday and we headed down to Eugene where I'd booked a room at the Motel 6 just a few miles from Faerieworlds. We went to the screening of Mythic Journeys on Thursday evening at the Red Lion Inn where Brian and Wendy Froud were there along with Steven and Whitney Boe, the directors, writers and producers of the film.

Jason and I pretty much agree on the idea of making plans and trying to stick to them. We agreed to be at the Faerieworlds gate at 7 a.m. Friday morning. We left the motel right at 6:45 for the 10-minute drive. Along the way I thanked him for getting up so early so we could get there and I noted that it was the last thing we had to schedule together. His flight back to LA on Monday wasn't until late in the day, so we had plenty of time as all we had to really be aware of was being out of the festival site by noon.

From both adults and kids during the whole time I saw very little unhappy behavior aside from the occasional flash. I'm not a kid person, but I thought the kids were much better behaved at Faerieworlds than I'm used to seeing in the more mundane world. Everyone wanted to have a great time and I'd say the folks I saw succeeded. I sure did.

I'm starting to upload photos to my Flickr Faerieworlds 2010 set. As I write this, there's a few pictures of my steampunk hat I wore on Saturday, Bad Faeries Day, a few from the Frouds' book signing at Powell's on Wednesday, the film screening on Thursday, and a couple of photos another photographer took using my camera early on Friday. Unfortunately I didn't get similar pictures on Saturday but I've been looking for other photos showing me on Saturday both on Flickr and elsewhere. I'm sure the faeries will eventually lead me to some since during the festival I was stopped often by other folks who asked to take my picture and I know of others who just snapped as I went by or was posing for others. While it was nice of those who asked for pictures, I didn't mind a bit if others just got candid shots of me. One reason I didn't get a picture or two on my own camera of me on Saturday was that I was reluctant to ask anyone because getting the hat off then getting the camera off without dropping the hat was a bit involving. Since nobody offered, I didn't want to put anyone out.

One thing I did discover during camping at Faerieworlds: my days of using a tent I can't stand up in along with an air mattress on the ground are over. Next year I'll either try to scrape up money for a motel (the Motel 6 only 10 minutes away is a good possibility) or some sort of screen house or canopy with sidewalls, either being big enough to accommodate a cot for the air mattress. All the bending and stooping was uncomfortable, but it was a temporary inconvenience and didn't diminish my overall enjoyment.

I was extremely glad I remembered to pack earplugs. I expected things in the inner circle camping area to be a little noisier than I'd experienced last year in the outer grove area and it was, but inner circle meant far less walking. Jason and I were probably 100 feet from one of the gates between camping and the Realm itself and that gate was very close to the main stage. The earplugs bore the very appropriate brand name of Hearos.

So there's a few impressions of my best weekend of the year. I really haven't said a whole lot about the music, food and vendors, but as I get the photos up, I'll probably have more to say about that.

As I get back into the more mundane everyday existence, I'm finding I'm not so eager to get back to the political forums I visit on Delphi. I guess I'm just not ready yet to deal with what is often a lot of negative energy. Also, while I've usually watched Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on weeknights, I didn't tune in last night or tonight.