Jammin' at Hippie Jack's and Dale Hollow Survivor

Left Fall Creek Falls for Jammin' at Hippie Jack's, a bluegrass festival held each year on Jack's farm near Crawford, TN. A thing about Hippie Jack: he's a photographer; he has photographs in the Smithsonian. He has made it his life's work to help the Appalachian people who live in the mountains. His festival collects busloads of donations each year. As I pull up, I hear volunteers excitedly telling each other how there's a truck that just pulled in with the whole bed full of canned food.

They weren't as thrilled with me; I wasn't supposed to bring dogs. Oops! So I beg of them to let me park the camper and run the dogs back down the narrow roads to town. It's Memorial weekend, the odds of getting a spot for two dogs is really bad, especially since I have no relationship with any vets or kennels here. The guy at the gate, Marty, recommends a few places and even gives me his cell number to call if I need help. Cell phones don't work here, so they let me make a call from their landline. The first kennel is full. The second is at lunch, so I leave a message and head to town, hoping for the best.

The longshot worked out, and this really nice spot agrees to take the pups. If it had felt in any way weird, there's no way I could have left them. But I knew it was fine. You could say they're "just dogs, not kids," but not the way I do it. I probably cater to them. Maybe profoundly.

Ran back up the mountain and put together my camping space. People are great at this; I just have a folding chair. They have a full spread, those awesome collapsible garbage cans, grills, extra chairs, tables, rugs, a butt can, the whole thing. I'll get it figured out eventually. I don't want to buy anything. I just purged a whole house and the idea of ever having that much junk again is totally haunting. Having too much stuff is trouble. And it's really bad for you, in a million ways I could have never explained until I got rid of it. I'll never go back to that, and I hope to never have a home more than 1,000 SF. Maybe not even have a home, just a camper or a yurt or some other random temporary structure. I don't know. I just don't want to buy anything else that owns me. It's stressful, and the stress isn't worth anything. Really.

I sat down on my quilt in the grass. Those feelings came over me again, as I watched all these people coming in through the gates. Four in this car, two in that one, a whole family with little kids running around setting up camp across the way. My friends are coming, but I haven't seen them yet. For whatever reason, when I get to this stuff, seeing all the people filling the cars, vans, busses, trucks, and rv's, it makes me feel bad. Like I've made a mistake, that I've bought this thing now, this thing I'm so excited about, yet have nobody along. There were a couple of tears, before this beetle crossed over my feet. Instantly I had this relief, this feeling that this is what I'd been looking for... again, in reference to my dreams, several years ago I had a dream where I was hunting through a forest for just this bug. I called it a scarab beetle in the dream, and when I held it, it glowed gold. I suppose taking comfort in dreams is odd, but hey, whatever gets you over the hump and makes you feel like this is how it's supposed to be, right?  Just this turn of mind, that this music festival could turn out to be a particular thing I've been seeking, changes everything, instantly.

I headed towards the gates. I've heard the tales, that you come for a weekend and leave with lifelong friends. And I did. And music festivals are the gold I was seeking. There's something in being swept up together, part of something you love. I loooove bluegrass. Other people who looooove bluegrass as nerds, like me, and I like almost every dang one of them. Some of them I totally love.

And I finally met Lara. She's the one who let me stay at her place in Nashville, and the one who found me help in Bowling Green. And we'd never even met. She's just that nice. And in person was no different. I was just struck by what we had in common and that I felt this feeling of, "Man! I'm going to be friends with her forever!" She told me this amazing Todd story-- that eventually I'll recount. Todd's the reason we ever even met. He's a singer/songwriter I've been following for several years, and his fan group seem to be about the best people you could ever meet. Part of me just wants to travel the country, meeting the Shitheads.... Every band fan group has a name; like Beyonce's beehive and all that, but Todd's group are the shitheads. It fits.

Chuck and Laura are here too-- Chuck's the dude who helped me buy a truck and a camper. He helped a complete stranger do all that nonsense, just based on the fact that we like the same singer. That's pretty awesome. They also suggested I try to make it the following weekend to Hartford Festival, up in Indiana. So I figured, what the heck, music festivals are awesome; I've been wanting to see Billy Strings, the Infamous Stringdusters, Chicago Farmer and four other acts that would be at Hartford, so I took a few days to unwind at a campground, then headed to Indiana.

This is where I got into another jam. GPS, that old so and so, once again had forsaken me. I even waved my fists in the air, the way some people in movies curse God. But I was cussing out GPS. I feel like I need to give her a name, so I can yell back, "Dang it JANET, I can't do a U turn, for fart's sake, I'm pulling a trailer you dum dum!" or whatever. So I can vent a little bit.

She sucks.

Long story short, I ended up on this narrow logging road heading up a mountain. At first, I figured, "Eh, Tennessee is like this; their roads are windy and terrifying to midwesterners, people used to living and driving a flat grid."  But the road narrowed, curved and wound, until I got to a place I figured I'd never get out of. So I got out and shook my fists in the air and told Janet exactly what I thought of her. Then I formed a plan.  By the end of this deal, that I thought was surely the end of this adventure and the end of the world as I know it, I felt so good about myself I couldn't take it. It was actually a mystery to me how I'd pulled it off. This is why I needed to leave Nebraska. In this situation, I'd have called any number of family members to dig my dumb arse out, but now it was not an option. I was in a bind and only myself could dig me out. I pulled myself together and did my best MacGuyver. And it worked. And I got off the logging road and there were people who were amazed, but I kind of think maybe they were being nice, acting impressed. It just mattered that I was-- that I had the confidence now to know I could get myself out of something I thought was hopeless.

It was a good day. Eventually I sat back and thought, hmmmmm, wonder what kind of shenanigans I'll get myself into, and hopefully out of, tomorrow... And the most ridiculous of all thoughts, hmmmmm, maybe it's good, getting in a tight spot. Maybe it's awesome. Maybe I should do it on purpose sometimes, just to raise the bar. Just to get the story. Just to feel great at the end of the day. Nope. NOPE. Veto, brain. Veto this idea.... or maybe.... ?

I bought myself a beer coozie, from Dale Hollow Lake. I just wanted to write on something, "I SURVIVED DALE HOLLOW LAKE." Sometimes you need a memento of the bad stuff more than you need one of the good stuff. It reminds you. That you're surviving. And all I got were these muddy feet.