Isabel by microphone FLy~
[audio:http://john.paganetti.com/wp-content/uploads/Isabelle.mp3]
One of the things I’ll probably miss most about the old location for Grey Fox was the storms. It might sound weird, but they were so incredibly central to the Grey Fox experience. Nearly every year (we can remember two exceptions) there was a good sized storm that rolled through during the festival.
One of these storms prompted my dad to ditch camping in tents and buy a trailer. It had been raining all night, and a section of the tent’s roof had started to collect water. When my dad woke up, he pushed it to knock the water off the tent, but his hand went right through it, and he got a nice cold wake up shower.
The first year I was ever on the mountain, I was about 10 weeks old, and my parents carried me up the mountain, because they had closed the road due to the rain. I obviously don’t remember this, but I’ve been told many times about that year.
I watched a dome tent roll down the road, blown by a strong wind. After a beat, a half dozen people appeared, chasing after it.
I can remember standing on top of the hill after we thought the storm had passed us, and looking at the massive cloud over us, we realized that it was just circling above us. It is really incredible to see. It ended up hanging around our general area for a few days.
In 2001, we nearly didn’t go to Grey Fox. The Tall Ships were coming through, and I guess it was a big deal, because we went out to go see them during the first part of the week of Grey Fox. Late in the week, I started to bug my dad about how we oughta go for the tail end of the festival. He talked to some of our friends already on the hill, and they told him it was rainy, and gonna stay rainy. He checked the forecast, and it said 8-10 inches of rain over the course of the weekend. We went up anyway, and slept in the back of the Pathfinder. The mudfest that year was actually caught on tape in A Bluegrass Journey.
But the one storm I hope I never forget was a few years ago (three? four?). I remember it was a beautiful afternoon, but as evening approached, I noticed some big clouds in the distance. We climbed up on someone’s RV to get a better look. I had never seen a wall of clouds like that before – it was really incredible. It looked like a tidal wave, visibly moving closer and closer to us. When it reached us, we found it that it was a really powerful electrical storm, and they actually had to close down the main stage for a while, something I had never seen happen before. The sound of thunder when you’re outside, in the middle of a gigantic thunderstorm, is not to be missed.