Camping in a VW van, and that's all right by me
Camping at Firefly Music Festival in Dover Delaware / Photo by Deborah Lynch
Camping is not for wimps – and I’m not even talking about the the back woods kind of camping with big heavy backpacks on sturdy aluminum frames. I’m talking about the kind of urban camping at campsites like KOA, state parks, and festivals. Every adult should experience this loss of dignity at least once to gain and retain a a connection with the real world. It would help to keep egos in check, to instill humility, and to strip one of modesty. Camping has no room for prudes – something Europeans add to their stereotype of Americans afraid to skinny dip in the sea.In particular, any music lover should experience a music festival regardless of age. While it seems that music festivals have always been as much about the pot smoking and the partying as about the music, they are also a total escape from reality and a reminder that life is not all meeting rooms and air conditioned bathrooms. For a sober grownup, a music festival is an eye-opening experience about other generations, pop culture, community, and consideration for others in massive shared spaces.It involves waiting in queues to gain entrance to the festival and for a well-used porta potty. Every time I have to shed my germ phobias and privacy to use a porta potty, it makes me think of celebrities and royalty. Have Kim or Kanye, Kate or Will ever had to plop their royal behinds down in a stinky, filthy, sweltering, water-saving hut used by thousands? Have they ever mingled, quite literally, with the commoners? Have I gained anything from public camping that they are missing out on?
Jack Garratt performing at Firefly / Deborah Lynch
It makes me appreciate the bathroom with running water and plumbing at a Wendy’s on the trip home from a festival. It makes me appreciate cleanliness. It makes me appreciate privacy. It makes me love my house. It also makes me both admire and condemn different behaviors, fashion, and lifestyles, like the couple next to us who shrugged off a completely smashed trunk on their hybrid that happened when they were rear-ended one traffic light from the festival, or the guy who carried his punk David Bowie poster on a pole to wave at every show, or both guys and girls letting chubby bellies hang out because they care more about comfort and fashion than body image.Music festivals provide a chance of discovery. My husband and I discovered bands like Moon Taxi, Young the Giant, Kongos, John and Jacob, the Weathers, Jack Garratt, Lord Huron, Jeremy Loops, and other indie and less than mainstream bands from our music festival pilgrimages. We learn to appreciate types of music that weren’t formerly our taste by getting up close and personal to the lesser known artists where we observe their crazy talent. We confirm our love for new bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, and we soak in the well-polished sets of established favorites like Mumford & Sons.
The Weathers playing at the intimate Treehouse stage / Deborah Lynch
We learn that while many of our camping neighbors are spending most of each day and night getting high and playing beer pong, others are just nice kids here for the same reasons we are. They share their frying pans, mousse, and tequila. We jump their cars, help put up tents, and share our ice cooler, beer, and shampoo. In return, they invite us to join them in beer pong.Some look at us with suspicion, their eyes – if not their mouths – saying, “What are you doing here, mom and dad?” A beer vendor sends a not-so-subtle message to our seniority as he hands us the 90 Minute IPA saying, “Don’t have too much fun.”It’s OK. We’ve escaped reality for a few days, shed some modesty, discovered new bands, and conversed with nature in a whole new way from the pop-top of our VW Eurovan as final notes from the Kings of Leon show we left early waft in through the screen window.