In the Woods

Leaving Charlotte, NC, as it turns out, requires a smorgasbord of rides with the kindly Carolina folk. And maybe you, like me, can stubbornly apply the use of multifarious accents and vocabularies - all this to 'fit in' with your newfound friends.

Gosh, I musta started that 'thout thinkin' 'bout it, way back in Indiana. Like I can think of the Western way to say somethin' right as I pronounce and proclaim it in my situationally nuanced Southern drawl. Strange thing is it works.

The triumphs of living in the woods outweigh the troubles – peace, tranquility, the sense of community against profound uncertainty and the worst case of poison ivy anyone has ever gotten. The great thing is that the friends you meet could possibly email and facebook you after you're gone and they're gone - some sorta nostalgia for the Carolina meetings that were.

And then there's the great and beautiful possibility that if you're walking in the woods and you tread real soft, come to a clearing and hold your tongue and your breath and such: you'll see the jazz pop act Over the Rhine emerge and songwrite your socks clean off you.

Such was Wild Goose Festival, that grand little shindig engineered by Shane Claiborne and friends to be a  point of connection for the religious left in the US - Christian Anarchism was the phrase tossed around by onlookers and participants. Thereabouts you could see the left-coast leaners of the big-city non-churches, the who's who of the emerging church mixing and mingling, stumbling through the selfishly lovely selfish and loving confusion. There I saw David Bazan, razorwitting with the crowd, while he played a set of post-Christian melodrama for mid-Christian fans. And there I saw Over the Rhine do their classy downtown bar songs for a Southern festival crowd,  even prefacing a tune with "this is just a naughty little song." Brilliant.

Clay's Hopi suit made people wonder what was happening.

It was there I left on Sunday with this guy: