The rain came down, that Friday the 13th, came down brief and hard, strange remnants of yet another Gulf of Mexico hurricane. Here in the Ozarks, hurricane-remnant rains are unsettling. The storm lines come weirdly east to west, and the rain itself falls as sheets of fine mist, blinding winter flurries with summer heat.
Rain is the bane of festivals and I sweated that whole Friday, day before StateoftheOzarks Fest '24. Also, sweated literally. We had marked every booth space on Downing Street with chalk, some 97 spaces, all by hand at 6 o'clock in the morning, only to have the rain wash most of the marks away by noon. We re-made the empty chalk spaces again that night, dodging the dinnertime traffic. It was worth it and now StateoftheOzarks Fest '24 is now just a bit of Ozarks history.
Sweet bittersweet relief, gratitude and a strange emptiness accompanies the days following each successful festival and this particular StateoftheOzarks Fest was particularly successful. The weather certainly helped in that regard, with sunny highs only in the 80s and cooling wind gusts in the afternoon. The number of vendors was a plus (we booked 97 spaces this year). And, as always, the crowd showed up, but this time earlier than even I had hoped, and they stayed later, spurred on by the nice weather.
Hand-crafted festivals, crafted by a small team of volunteers (including me), are special things. Deep care goes into the choice of vendors, the location of vendors, the layout of the street. In a world in which there are cookie cutter templates for every occasion, StateoftheOzarks Fest stands out. Am I biased? Certainly. But I believe in care, I believe in vesting myself, heart and soul, into projects, refusing to phone in a performance of any kind. I'd hate myself in the morning were I to do so, despite the toll it takes on my psyche.
I used to visit other festivals covetously, often leaving depressed. Their crowds were bigger. Their branding better. StateoftheOzarks has long been the underdog, pinching pennies to make magic happen. This year, I am not feeling such loss. We succeeded. Succeeded in creating magic, and magic on a large scale. Such things are not to be taken lightly.
Something to the tune of 7,000 folks wandered through the festival space, buying art, buying food, shopping our downtown merchants, watching Bald Knobber gunfights and Medieval mercenaries in full armor, being accosted by goblins, learning history, and — most importantly — connecting, laughing, talking, experiencing a moment out of time, a moment in the Ozarks making. For short moments, we were kinder, out of place in the best way possible, partisan election worries and pressing economic concerns forgotten for the day. In short, StateoftheOzarks Fest accomplished what harvest festivals have been meant for since time immemorial — a moment when time stops in the best way possible.
And then, just as quickly as the festival had sprouted that morning, the festival was gone from the street. Some 97 spaces cleared in one hour and 11 minutes (I counted). And there I stood on Downing Street near dusk, admiring the sudden absence of my months of handiwork. The festival was gone, gone like the leaves in the wind, gone like the minutes on an old kitchen clock, strange marker of mortality and the passage of time, never to be recaptured. But along the curbs, chalk marks remained... | 38 | | 39 | | 40 | …. I stared.
Each empty space was all that was left of the magic of each vendor, their heart, their soul, often their life's work and hopes and ambitions, all momentarily showcased. My heart turned thoughtful, as it often does these days and especially this time of year. We each are given empty chalk marks in this life, a space in time and place in which we can place our hand prints, our hearts, our souls. We may choose to fill our given space with meaning and care, or we may walk on with indifference, perhaps at the cost of our souls. The choice, forever our own.
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