Okay, okay. Since there is no Strawberry Musical Festival (as well as FDF Grass Valley) this year(2020), let’s get in the time machine and take more than a few steps back in time to 1987.It’s 1987, and I’m making my way from the Sonoma Valley to Camp Mather, near Yosemite.Chances are good you have been there.It’s a five hour ride, wife, twelve year old son, and four year old daughter accompany me in our used VW bus. Why?It’s getting close to the start of the Strawberry Music Festival, and we want to be in the audience. The Yosemite wild fire of the future has not arrived yet to destroy the forest that surrounds the large grassy meadow where the gigantic white tent and big stage support the bands. The time machine is real.Some of the headliners playing during the next four days(if I have it right) are Nancy Griffith, Hot Rize, Riders In The Sky, Tony Rice, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Osborne Bros, Doc Watson, and……wait for it……Bill Monroe. (Right now, in the year 2020, I’m thinking they don’t make music festivals like they used to). My family is young. All of us are young. We have too much energy. We want to do everything, and we are afraid of nothing. Just like you were back then. We have no wrinkles. We have no aches and pains. We are going to live forever. And at Strawberry, we areat the best place in the world right now in time and space.Arriving at our campsite, we unload and get ready. Everything is going well. We get to the giant meadow and the inhale the bands of the day and evening. We get back to our campsite, and go to bed. It’s all good.
The next morning we get up, have breakfast, take a hike, go swimming at the lake, have lunch, catch the entertainment of the day and evening, and go to bed. It’s all good.Day three is basically the same as day one, and day two. Day three is going to be all good too. After the day has given us its best, we are back at camp. My twelve year old son says, “Dad, I’m going for a short walk.” I say, “Okay, but be back in an hour.” “Okay dad.”The time is 7pm.It’s dark now. It’s 9pm. The lad is not home. Worry sets in. “I’ll give him half an hour,” I think to myself.It’s now 10pm. I set out on foot to begin the search. My wife is asleep in the tent with our 4 year old daughter.It’s 11pm now, and I’ve searched every square inch of ground for at least a mile. Every trail that goes by every campsite and small wooden cabin in Camp Mather that I can think of. Nothing.With anxiety rising I go to the lake to look for a body floating in the water. With relief I see nothing. Then I happen to find the security cabin that houses the mountain police, or whatever they call themselves. “I’m looking for my twelve year old son that has been missing for twelve hours,” I say to someone in authority. “How long?” he says. I think more slowly and say, “I mean five hours.” It is midnight. “Well, we are dealing with eight teenage boys now who tried to have their way with an under aged minor female.
Do you want to see if your son is one of them?” With horror I say, “Okay.”
Looking at the lineup, with a wave of relief I see that he is not one of them. Then I head back to camp on foot, pretty sure that he will finally be there when I get back. He isn’t.So I crawl into my sleeping bag to get in the fetal position, ready to spend a restless night.When I see the sun finally come up I think that it’s possible I got one hour’s sleep, but I doubt it. I look to my right, and no, my son is not fast asleep in his sleeping bag.When my wife and daughter wake up at 7am we stumble through a worried, no appetite breakfast. We don’t know what to do. So that’s what we do. Nothing.Facing the worst day of our life,we settle into our camping chairs,and we pray. “Lord, why did you let us down?” It’s 10am.While sittingin my chair, staring off into the distance, looking at a trail that stretches out for about 100 yards,I see a boy about the height of my son,walking toward our camp. “It’s him!” I scream.“Okay, okay. Where in the heck have you been?” My wife and I scream at him, with her taking the lead, and me taking high tenor.“Oh, I met a couple of girls, we went to her parents’ campsite, and I decided to spend the night,” the boy calmly answers. Now I’m thinking to myself,“I’m never going to go camping again.”So that was the only bad news experience of Strawberry 1987. The rest of Strawberry was good news, plus one.
I bought a fiddle. I still have it.P.S. The whole family kept going back to Strawberry for many years after that. And when my son left our camp, day or night, I didn’t worry.
