Great Hudson River Revival

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9^th year at the festival and it feels like it’s yours, but it’s only been 34 nights of your life. 90 hours volunteering. 108 hours driving there and back. Feeling like you never left. Missing a part of yourself when you’re not there.

Eat breakfast elbow-to-elbow with other blue-shirted volunteers. Compostable plates and silverware, food fresh and organic: that’s why you’re here. Makes you feel like you’re a small piece of the earth and you could take root any day if only you’d stop moving.

Call it a fiddle here, call it a violin, just play it. Dance under the tent until your body feels like it’ll never stop sweating and beating. Musicians with big sunglasses and top hats play their instruments like they’d die if they ever let go. Wonder if this feeling is a little bit of the elusive peace everyone’s been talking about.

Girls with colorful strings and beautiful faces. Boys with jack-o-lantern smiles and crumpled-up joints. Some are from the city, they are glamorous and edgy. Some are from upstate, they are lovely and natural. Two o’clock alcoholic kisses and underwear smelling of sunscreen and expectation. In the morning everything will be different, but tonight you appreciate the laughter and how everyone looks beautiful in the firelight.

Activists scream demands, petitions smudge with sweat from forearms, old women in tie dye play banjos and curse. They are louder if you ignore them. Pick your battles. Remind yourself you can’t save everyone, but you can change the world (if only a little.) Know that underneath the aggression and anger is a deep wanting for basic good. Walk on and smile.

Fall asleep by the river. Moon, grass, laughter, music. There’s a couple just a few feet away under the willow and an old man snoring in the grass and a party going on in the dance tent. But it’s just you and the water and an entire year gone by. Wonder if you’ve changed since the last time you were in this place. Hope you’ve grown like the river, stronger each year.

Promise to stay in touch, promise to visit. You know it rarely happens. But these people, they know you. In the night, the day, the sun, the rain, the best, and in the worst. Promise you love them, promise you’ll see them next year. And you start to count the days.