and finally, a heck fest wrap up

I am a blogging delinquent. Months of foreshadowing What the Heck Fest (aka Shipwreck Days), plus a week or two of intensive refs, and then the event happens and I don’t write about it. I am a cyber-tease. I am a UrHo showgirl. I apologize.
The problem is that spending two and a half days away from my textbooks and laptop nearly sank me. I have been swimming against the current trying to catch up on homework, and sadly my blog (and friendships and relationship and and and) have suffered for it. I should be reading 60 pages on charter schools and voucher programs right now, instead of blogging my heart out, but I ran into Activist Amy a moment ago, and she berated me for being so behind on Perfect Heart, which was flattering and guilt inducing all at once, so here I am.

What the Heck was totally epic. The girls couldn’t get off work early on Friday, so we ended up leaving Portland at almost 7pm. I had burritos waiting, and they ate them in the car as we sat through the remnants of weekend rush hour traffic. Once we crossed the bridge into Washington the cars thinned out, and we made great time. The drive was fun. Rebecca and I took turns driving while Rachael, who wasn’t feeling very well, dozed in the back seat. Rebecca and I realized we shared a teenage enthusiasm for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so after four hours of mix tapes we shut off the stereo and sang Rocky songs at top volume, which Rachael may or may not have appreciated. (Okay, she did not.) We were in top spirits when we rolled into Anacortes at half past 11. We drove around until we found the late show in the basement of city hall. My heart was thumping. There were so many people I was anxious to see. We ran into some Portland friends outside the venue, but I high tailed it inside, hoping to catch Calvin, Kyle, or any number of other out-of-towners. I immediately spotted Calvin near the stage. Kimya Dawson was about to perform. I threw my arms around Calvin, who I hadn’t seen in months. We peppered each other with questions. Where’s Zac? Where’s Steve? Where’s Kyle? Where’s Heather Dunn, Chris Sutton, Michelle from new Jersey, Jake, Jona, the other What the Heck regulars? Both of us got really emo when we realized that the dudes we were expecting to see just didn’t show. My eyes welled up when he told my Kyle cancelled his show at the last minute. His band, Little Wings, is basically my favorite. Two years ago his show stole Shipwreck Days all together. This year he didn’t even come.
Kimya Dawson began her set, and the emo zone deepened. I’ve never been a huge Kimya fan, and that night her political ballads about our fucked up world just brought me down. Most of her songs don’t really speak to me, by that night one really got me. It’s about friends passing away. I jotted down the chorus on a bank reciept:
It’s been raining
Such a long time
It’s been raining
At least 40 days
I’ve been crying
Since the first time
Someone I knew passed away
The Microphones (aka Mount Eerie, aka Phil Elvrum) played next, and again I was disappointed. I’m usually in love with Phil’s music, but in the last year or so he’s sort of lost me. This show found him playing with Adrian Orange and Karl Blau (two awesome dudes). They played all songs from Phil’s new album. It sounded preachy and condescending to me. The sense of wonder and quest in his music was absent, replaced with certainty and smugness. I was out.
It was raining. We couldn’t figure out where to stay. In past years Calvin has helped me hook up with Brett, the What the Heck founder, to sleep in his backyard. This year Calvin seemed distracted my a new lady friend. The girls and i didn’t want to fish around for invites, so we ended up sleeping like sardines in the back of my volvo. We put the seats down and squeezed in. It was sort of fun, sort of emo. We were on the side of some road, on the side of some mountain.
In the morning I woke up before the others and went for a walk. We had pulled over near a trailhead, so I walked up a way. I was depressed. Shipwreck has always meant so much to me. Some of my best, most vivid memories are from the festival. I fell in love with Jake in Anacortes, I sparked friendships with people who later became dear friends. I wrote a 30 page essay about my first year there, and I can easily remember nearly every moment of my second. Last year I was returning from Ireland the weekend of the festival, and it broke my heart to miss it. I had so looked forward to this year, and it seemed like it was going to be a total wash. I called Jake from the trail. He was in LA prepping for his art opening at a weird gallery down there. He was feeling emo too, so we comiserated for a while. Last year he went to heck Fest without me, and felt so shitty about it he left early. We talked about the strangeness of being in that town without each other, when most of our memories of the place included each other. I missed him so much in that conversation.
When we hung up I walked back to the car and woke the girls. We drove into town just as the weather was breaking. We parked near Main Street, and my spirits began to rise as the sun began to warm my shoulders. The flea market was in full swing, and everywhere you looked there was something you wanted to buy. My eyes were immediately drawn to this photograph, which I bought for five dollars:

We spent the day shopping, eating, and making trips back to the car to drop of loads of booty. We ran into random people and had lots of fun hunting for treasures and chatting with dudes. We were getting sunburned and starting to feel really good. Check out Rebecca’s awesome banners:

By 4:00 the boothes were closing up and we were ready for a swim. We headed over to my all-time-favorite-lake, Little Cranberry Lake, for a swim. There were lots of hip kids there when we arrived, and Rachael hung out with them on the rocks while Rebecca and I swam across. The knot that had formed in my gut the night before finally unwound itself, and I believed in Shipwreck Days again. The girls and I were really connecting, and everyone that actually showed up seemed real glad to be there.

We ate dinner at Cafe Adrift, this amazing organic restaurant in town. We all had soup and salad. I had wine from the nearby Widbey Island, and Rachael and I had the best homemade mint ice cream of my life. The shows that night lifted me up. Karl Blau was magical as always, and Laura Viers played a set that was surprisingly strong. In between bands the girls and I snuck off to drink 40s near the docks. We wrangled our new friends from Grand Rapids, Michigan into boozing with us, and walking through the deserted streets, 3 girls and 3 boys, not really knowing each other well, felt so awesomely high school. I think the boys thought we were sort of crazy, but they were sweet and good natured, and we adored them. After the show everyone I liked ate donuts together at the only all night joint in Anacortes:

We slept at Brett’s that night in this huge tent he’d set up in his yard just for drifters like us. In the morning a rooster’s call woke me, and I went out and lay on the grass, happy as can be. Brett and his wife Denise are incredible. Everytime I stay in their yard I wake up feeling peaceful and so safe. They have two sweet daughters, Louisa and Maddy. They live on Brett’s family farm, with goats and chickens and a little house that is heartbreakingly beautiful. It fills me up. The 20 or so people who had crashed in their yard ate fresh eggs together, read the New York Times that someone had picked up, and had great conversations. Rachael visited with the goats. After a few hours it was hot again, so we all headed to Trafton Lake for a swim. Trafton wasn’t as nice as Cranberry (though I am quite biased), but it was really fun nonetheless. Calvin drove us there, and I finally got some quality time with him:

We stopped at the Worst Subway Ever on our way out of town. Terrible, terrible service. Anacortes does not do fast food well (which is probably to its credit). But we got floats at A&W as well, and root beer makes everything okay. We had great talks on the drive home, and saw this Dairy Queen sign:

“My oh pie
Dream pie
Blizzards”
It has become my mantra.

I can’t wait for next year.