Larksong is a new Sacred Harvest Festival festivant and joined Harmony Tribe last February. At age 70 she is possibly the all time senior in both categories. I asked her about her experiences.

Larksong

Have you camped before?

When my kids were little we camped, but this is the first time we have camped in quite some time! At least twelve years ago, and then we had a pop-up camper.

What does it feel like to travel 600 miles from Michigan to be with people you don’t know and spend a week?

Great! It really has been great. We brought our three nieces, so that they could have a drama free week and we have just been having a ball. They have been having a ball. The only problem for me here is everything is so far away. I’m in the middle, but it is a long walk either direction. After two or three trips I need to take a nap!

Did you have any expectations?

We went to visit Jaime and Shelly last week in July and noticed a flyer on their bulletin board about Sacred Harvest Festival. They told us a little about it, that it was camping;  that it had workshops and activities and something for all ages. We got to thinking this could be a lot of fun. We had the two older girls with us and we asked them what they thought and they said; “YES”, so we have been planning this for a year. We had no camping equipment, or anything. We got it all piece by piece. We got the tent, then we found a stove. We did have the shade house, and we laid the trailer away in January so we had something to haul everything in. We been just doing it a little at a time. I am a list maker. I made lists of what we needed, and as we got it, I’d check it off. We would put it all in the garage in the rafters. We took it all down and into the trailer and we were ready to go! So here we are! It has been great.

Do you feel like you have found a place, a family here?

Oh yeah, we are already looking forward to coming back next year, provided ‘the creek don’t rise!‘  It’s been a great experience, we all needed a week to relax. The only problem I had is that too many of the workshops I wanted to go to were scheduled at the same time. I would have loved to have gone to some of the belly dance and gamelan workshops. I finally made it there the last day, the last five minutes. I loved the “Tree Rite”, the one with the circles and rings. It explained the tribal concept in a way the kids could understand about elders and relating it to the trees. I thought it was just really nice, I enjoyed that one. We already have a couple of things on our list to get next year, a camp fire ring, a fire poker, we have been using a marshmallow fork. I know we’ll be welcomed back!

Nels Linde