Thursday night Mother Nature released a trailer of coming attractions. It was about 5:30 PM and I had just rounded the corner into the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Dining Tent when a capricious gust reared up, throwing a flurry of leaves at me. In my mind’s eye, I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. A weather vane nearly impaling me, I had to duck to avoid a hapless cow. Without preamble, bolts of lightening lit up the muted sky, a clap of thunder announcing the downpour.
With a Zoom H2 field recorder on my person and no rain poncho to protect it or me, I was stranded long after I'd finished my meal. The rain finally eased up and after asking the kitchen help for, and wrapping my device in a spent bread bag, I made my way back to camp. While T-storms and rain had been predicted (30%), we hadn’t expected anything that extreme. With inventory to protect, later in the evening we secured tarps over nearly everything.
Cut to: Friday afternoon. I had taken the company bike, a retro-fitted model with an extended rear skateboard cargo rack and saddle bags, along the Pokieman Creek Trail. Taken all the way, you end up in Valley Forge - where Washington was holed up one bitterly cold winter. I only took it three to four miles to the Township of Green Lake. Heading back the way I’d come, I stopped briefly at a place in the creek where it widens, for a quick cool-down swim. As soon as I got back on the bike, I heard the roar of distant thunder. Uh oh.
Wanting to avoid getting drenched and hoping to make a Friends of Bill 6:00PM meeting at the Camp Stage, I pedaled to the metal. I’d hardly set the kickstand at our Priscilla encampment when the sky opened up like a chasm cleaved by Thor.
Lights. Camera. Action!
In the end, protecting the Green Market’s goods or the After Dark stage’s bamboo awning was a fool’s errand. In the concert area, four lashed-together carnival games flipped backwards into the dining area. By the time the tempest subsided, SLR’s infrastructure had taken a solid hit. It looked as if a tropical cyclone had plowed through.
Pulling back to a wide angle: Several people were taken to the hospital for minor injuries, though gladly no one in the SLR crew. In the center of the field a steel camera-tower came down like a felled tree, a miracle no one was hurt.
Nothing of this sort has happened at the Philly Folk Festival for twenty years, when in 1991, a storm flattened the entire campground.
Shit happens all the time. That’s just the way it is. What counts is how we respond to adversity. And if that’s the measure of character, then the SLR troupe gets high marks.
By early this afternoon everything had been repaired, replaced or set right.
Except for us, no one was the wiser.
lovely, enjoyed.
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