Festival of the Supermoon and Lost in the Woods

I had been invited to a small festival in celebration of the supermoon. The “festival” was set to be at a small community outside of town, surrounded by mountain and desert. I’d never been invited to something so hippyish in my entire life, so I was very interested and strangely excited to get to be a part of it.

I received some spotty directions and told my friends that as soon as I wrapped up work I would head straight over. My freedom was granted around eightish. I quickly shoved my work things into a backpack, hopped on my motorcycle and after about forty minutes I found myself in a foreign land with dirt roads. I was told that shortly I should see an “unmistakable” pull-out containing my friend's souped-up El Camino. Once there I would find a lone trail and I would follow that trail till I heard the sound of drums.

The directions seemed incredibly iffy to me, especially the bit about following the drums. When I reached the El Camino I took the first trail I saw and followed it for about twenty minutes. Evidently there had been more than just one trail, in fact there were about three trails. The first two I took led me wandering down in the complete wrong direction. Over an hour went by and just as I was giving up hope a wild skunk appeared. I halfway freaked out thinking that I would get sprayed and halfway wanted to approach it. I had never seen a wild skunk before so I wasn't sure how large they were supposed to be, but this guy looked about the size of an average dog! I ended up hopping over some cactus to get away and upon doing so heard the drum beats that almost seemed to be mythic by that point.

I found my friends and the night progressed well. It was far less hippyish and more peaceful than I was expecting. On the way back we didn't take any trail, we just walked through the desert until we reached the road. I’m pretty sure that trail never even existed.

By: Jonathan Terry