It wasn’t the departure from high school that made me feel different that day, it was the departure from somewhere else. I was moving from a place of shelter and structure to a place of freedom and trust. This wasn’t going to be like the camping trips I had taken with my friends at the beach, or the weekend drives to Ithaca or Boston to visit my older friends who had already started college. This was primed to be the first truly independent trip I had taken with a friend, and it was a long haul and far away. It was the first time I felt like an adult, as if my parents were starting to see me more as an equal than a child.

To tell the truth, if I were in my parents’ position, I doubt I would have been so trusting. People regularly die at these events, most often due to a dangerous cocktail of heat, exhaustion, dehydration, and high concentrations of substance abuse. This tends to happen more at EDM (electronic dance music) events, which are hugely popular nowadays, but can happen at any large festival.

Many of these events are seen as menaces that endanger lives and promote excessive behavior, as many are all-ages events that are filled with inexperienced festival-goers. I’ve seen it way too many times: there are always the people who go to music festivals for the sole reason of having an excuse to get completely fucked up, disregarding consequences because of the seemingly unsupervised environment. These people aren’t there for the music; they’re there to take a ton of drugs, strip down to their underwear and not sleep for three or four days. Even the larger, more eclectic festivals fall prey to these attendees due to the exponential growth of EDM’s popularity, as they have gotten on in on the EDM trend to attract a wider audience, and thus sell more tickets and get more word-of-mouth out there for future events. EDM is wildly popular in mainstream circles, and festivals want to tap into that market.

These festivals cost millions of dollars and the organizers want to make sure that every ticket is sold. And so we have thousands of bros in neon shorts and girls in tasteless headdresses running around with no regard for anyone except themselves. If I had a nickel for each time some loaded shirtless dude in a sombrero mindlessly elbowed me in the face chasing after a girl in a hula skirt he thinks is his girlfriend, I’d be a very rich man. Talk to them during their hangovers the next day and they will have no fucking clue what they did or whom they saw the night before, only that they were “so wasted” and “had the best time.” EDM events are more notorious for promoting a dangerous culture of excess than the larger, multi-genre events, though the practice is unfortunately universal.

These are the people who make Coachella sell out of hundreds of thousands of tickets in forty minutes. These are the people who make you want to kill yourself after realizing that no, you won’t be getting a ticket, even though you’ve saved up for an entire year and this might be you’re only chance to see OutKast on their reunion tour.

But this also is where the love-hate relationship festival devotees share with theses evens can tilt more towards the ‘love,’ as recently tons of bands that you’d never think you’d ever be able to see end up reuniting and subsequently touring, most of them becoming festival mainstays for the season. Perhaps the strongest case was the recently reunited OutKast in 2014, who hit forty festivals over the course of the season. I’ve seen it with countless other bands: Canada’s Death from Above 1979 did so in 2011 (they broke up after only one album released in 2007), and over the course of the past decade or so The Replacements, The Dismemberment Plan, Grandaddy, and Sleater-Kinney have also followed suit.

As I write now, just months after my tenth Bonnaroo, it seems that every time I turn on the computer there is some new festival popping up. A new indie rock festival in Atlanta. A new EDM festival in Chicago. A festival for old bands of the ‘90s for rich people in Napa. Hell, they’re even throwing music festivals on cruise ships now. Just off the top of my head, I can name at least five festivals that celebrated their inaugural edition in 2015 alone, and I’m sure there must be at least twice as many as that. In 2014, almost 850 festivals took place in North America. It’s a trend that has been growing over the past several years. Why? Because people will pay if the lineup’s good and the event is close by, and if done right, they will come back. Nowadays it seems that on almost every weekend between March and November, thousands of festival attendees are descending upon some city or park or remote location to dance, drink, eat, and frolic for two or three days at a time. This is great for promoters and artists, as Internet piracy and streaming services have basically eliminated any money seen from album sales, making the summer festival circuit a consistent paycheck for musicians. It’s great for fans too, because these events allow us the chance to see multiple bands in one weekend.

Attendees flocking the famed Bonnaroo archway.

The people who are there for the music are easy to spot. We’re the ones who can’t tear our eyes away from the stage. We’re the ones who would rather pee in our pants than possibly miss that one song we want to hear. We’re the ones who count down the days to a festival’s lineup announcement day, the ones shuffling funds around in hopes that we may be able to just barely save enough money to see that one great show. Festivals have opened my eyes and ears to so many wonderful sonic experiences I have trouble keeping track.

That’s why I keep going back; it’s not so much the ‘coolness’ thing anymore, it’s something more visceral, more powerful than I ever imagined. It’s that hunger, that yearning to be amazed. There is still a level of ‘cool’ that goes along with being a part of festival culture, though since festivals are so abundant these days, it has been diminished to a sense of envy felt by others. Despite all the bullshit and commercialism that has taken over many festivals, there still is this glimmer that peeks out from the horizon, a promise for discovery. It’s a beacon, and it continues to bring me on this journey. It keeps moving through the years and each leg is just as astounding as—if not more than— the last. It’s a part of my life that I refuse to abandon.

*               *               *               *               *

“All right, you two! Let’s get a picture of the two travelers before they head out,” said Ben’s mom Bobbi, whose rosy face, twinkling eyes and slightly shorter stature are genealogically reflected in her son. I was in the middle of changing out of my suit into more comfortable driving clothes when the request came, only getting to take off my blazer and tie and untuck my shirt. Ben and I exchanged looks of teenage annoyance, sighed in unison, and turned to pose, each of us flanking the bumper sticker-clad tailgate of my big blue van, the two of us mirroring each other’s stances as we leaned in with one arm perched on either side. Our parents stood a few yards back. They clicked and snapped away with visible glee, Ben’s mother beaming back at us between shots while my dad gave me a goofy smile and my mother’s eyes filled with tears. We let them have their fun for a bit before Ben went to his car to gather his stuff while I finished changing and began arranging our supplies around the bare mattress that lay like a numb blue tongue in the back of the Honda Odyssey, the one I lovingly referred to as Helga.

As I sorted through our various sundries and travel items, the gravity of the whole experience I was about to have and the journey I was about to embark on began to set in. I paused and took one last look at the school that I had been a part of for the past six years. I saw the picnic table resting just outside the cafeteria door and thought about my very first school lunch I had eaten, sitting at that very spot as my friend Matt and I cowered at the presence of hungry yellow-jackets. I saw the stairs leading up the front of the lawn and thought about the many times I had fallen on slick icy mornings, cursing the administration for not calling a snow day. To the right I saw the gym (which I hated) and the Performing Arts Center (which I loved), and sighed, exhaling a bittersweet, silent farewell. The warm June breeze tousled my hair like a playful adult would do to a child, and I took it as a final blessing to send me on my way.

“You all set?” my father asked, approaching the open hatch and clapping me on the shoulder. He’s only slightly taller than me, but his brown hair and longer legs always made me feel like I was in some sort of comforting shadow, like I was leaning against an old oak tree.

“Yup, looks like we’ve got everything we need,” I replied without looking up. Hurriedly zipping up the spare tire compartment, careful that he didn’t see the large bottle of Jägermeister I had just hidden there. I turned around to meet his and my mother’s faces. Their blue eyes looked proud, but apprehensive. I approached them both and hugged them; thanking them for all their support. My mother’s stringy blonde hair that always smelled of vanilla fell beneath my chin. My father slipped some cash into my pocket, and handed me MapQuest directions to our hotel in Hagerstown.

“Just stick to the highways and you should be fine,” he said, offering his final sage advice on the matter, before coming in for one final hug.

“Ok, ok,” I protested. “We gotta go,” I said, noticing that Ben was doing just the same. We both said our final ‘I love yous’ to our respective guardians. I climbed into Helga’s driver seat, just as Ben was getting in the other side. My key chains rattled against one another as I turned them in the ignition.

A balloon welcomes Bonnaroovians 'home.'

We both turned to each other and I said, “Are you ready for this?”

“Yeah dude, let’s go.” His freckles smashed into one another as he smiled.

I plugged my iPod into the cassette adapter, turned on some Tom Petty, and away we went. The dust from the parking lot had barely time to settle before we made our first turn, the silhouettes of our childhood obscured by the setting sun. I knew nothing of the road ahead. I had no idea where it would go, or how far it would end up taking me. This was the entrance into an entirely different world.

Don't you feel it growin', day by day

People gettin' ready for the news

Some are happy, some are sad

Oh, we got to let the music play

What the people need

Is a way to make 'em smile

It ain't so hard to do if you know how

Gotta get a message

Get it on through

Oh, now mama's go'n' to after 'while

Oh, oh, listen to the music... All the time...

*               *               *                *               *

“Hey, man, are you OK?”

The voice came from just behind my left ear. I had been holding my face in my palms for I don’t even know how long, when the man’s words passed by me. I looked up and over my shoulder, into the face of the concerned stranger standing over me. He had kind eyes that drooped a little at the corners. His short brown hair was dripping with moisture, and I could tell that his shirt was pretty wet too, even though it was black. When my gaze met his, he looked worried at first, but then relieved, I suppose because I was clearly conscious. I sighed. “Yeah, I’m OK,” I managed to say, even though I was horribly anxious and physically uncomfortable with how damp I was. “I lost my friend this morning and my phone’s dead, and I’m just frustrated because I don’t really know where I am or how I’m supposed to get in touch with him.” I instantly felt weird about saying all that to a complete stranger, but his face softened into a smile.

“Oh, word. I thought you were like, having a bad trip or something,” he chuckled, reaching into his pocket. “Do you know his number by chance? You can totally use my phone if you want to try and call him.” He presented a silver flip phone and held it out to me.

I felt a wild combination of relief and disbelief wash over me. “Y-Yeah, thank you! So much!”

I actually did remember Ben’s phone number, as this was back when I still made 20% of my phone calls from a landline. I punched in the numbers, and the line rang. I heard a voice on the other end, muffled by a great din of music playing in the background. I couldn’t hear him at all, so I asked my savior—whose name was Blake— if I could text from his phone, he responded with a cheery “Of course!” and another wide grin.

Another minute went by when I got a text back from Ben that simply read ‘John Butler.’ I showed it to Blake in confusion, and he glanced at it briefly before saying, “Oh! Come with me, bro. I’ll get you where you gotta go,” and motioned me to follow him towards one of the large tent stages several hundred yards away. I tried to apologize for making him go out of his way.

“No worries, dude! Same thing happened to me my first year here,” he said.

“Wait, how did you know..?”

“Hahaha,” he laughed, deep and soft, kind of like the starfish from SpongeBob. “It’s written all over your face, dude...you look totally overwhelmed, but that’s not really a shocker. This place is a beast, but if you ever come back you’ll get to used to it.”

I rolled my eyes a little bit without him seeing, as if to say Fuck no, I’m never coming back here, but I stopped myself. He was being really nice to me and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

Assuming our natural Bonnaroo form, ca. 2008.

As we neared the tent, I could see a group of people standing near the stage, with little holes here and there breaking up the crowd, signifying where the really deep and nasty puddles were lurking. There was a man on stage singing into a microphone and playing guitar, backed by two other band members. We were about 100 feet away from him when Blake pointed straight at him.

“That’s John Butler.”

“Ohhhhh,” I said, and immediately started scanning the crowd for Ben’s red bandana. “Thank you so much, man, for helping me.” I was trying to look at Blake without taking my gaze away from the crowd, just in case I spotted Ben.

“No problem, dude,” he said. “I won’t leave you till you find your buddy, what’s he look like?” He tried to follow my gaze into the crowd.

“Well—“ And just as I was about to start describing Ben, I saw a flash of red, followed by a swaying mane of greasy brown hair that was following the rhythm of the music emanating from the speakers on either side of the stage. “That’s him right there!” I was so relieved that I didn’t even care that it had started raining again.

Ben must have heard me, or maybe he felt my gaze boring into the back of his head, because right then he turned around, and I started waving like a demented traffic cop. He broke from the crowd and jogged over, giving me that half-chuckled “Hey-y-y” he emits when something dumb and completely avoidable has happened. I introduced my old friend to my new friend, and Blake decided to join us for the rest of the show. He bought us beers, we all danced in the mud, and he gave the best high-fives ever. I had never felt so open in my whole life, and as I looked around at everyone dancing around me, I think it all started to make sense to me: This was all for us, to do with it what we wished. And as I scanned the crowd, those who met my gaze gave me wave, or a smile, or a wink and a nod, and that’s when I felt the grin creep across my face. So I surrendered to the rhythm of the music, adding layer onto layer of thick brown mud to my legs and feet with every splashing stomp.

It all felt right. It felt like home.

The Journey Continues Next Week ... Stay Tuned