Approaching the Dark Mountain

April is coming to a close and the Dark Mountain Camp and Festival at the end of May is fast approaching. For me, the question looms, How do I swing a trip to Llangollen Wales for ten days when I have no money coming in and face the slight, yet real prospect of being trapped across the Atlantic if the Norse Gods decide to ratchet up the Ashcloud! Along with these questions, come others, should I be "selling the cow" to buy these particular beans? Will such an outing do me any good at a time when practicality would insist I work to take care of business instead? What good could possibly accrue from traipsing a few thousand miles to camp in a muddy field and go unwashed while marginalized people gather to do, what?

I missed Woodstock, was out of the loop when Burning Man began, went to nxne – the Maine Boatbuilder's Show – instead of sxsw this March, is it just the need to make one of these events before I die?

I don't think so. Over the last decade, I've been working on a variety of currents that at this point seem to be culminating in a strong pull to be at that particular place at this particular time. I always have been moved by Richard Dreyfus, forking his mash-potatoes and tossing a garbage can full of soil in through his kitchen window. I've felt like that guy many times in my life. This time, I feel like I've found the place where all that scratching and all that yearning has been leading me. That it is to some hopelessly charming little hillside in Wales with a hopelessly unpronounceable name, standing in for a mythical Dark Mountain apparently guarded by a volcano in a far-off north land of fire and ice, shouldn't be any less plausible than forging one's way to Devil's Peak with the tones Da da do Da mutely sounding in one's head lost behind the chopper's thwack, thwack, thwack.

This post, beyond airing out this mixture of doubt and declaration is also a re-direct. I've just posted on the – Uncivilized.ning, On Sanity…. This is a volley in my ongoing attempt to jump-start a dialogue with the all too frail and all too real humans across all that distance I hope to meet and engage with next month. Reading posts, following lists, watching videos or listening to mp3s just do not replace face to face contact. They tend to both exaggerate and diminish those you are attempting to "know."

I can't help but think of the Iceman. At a time, in a place where travel was much more arduous than it is today, even post – fingers crossed – Ashcloud, he and many others faced those challenges to journey far to make and maintain connections. This is a time to take advantage of what remains of our accustomed ease of travel for me to do this one more time.