33. Festivals, fortitude, flexibility, and friendship
On dropping everything for an unplanned summer adventure
Hello friends,
There’s something that gets into your bones from growing up with summers off. Entering the working world confronts you with the depressing fact that, unless you work in education, you may never get three summer months off in a row again until you retire.
If you’re lucky, you could get laid off in June and receive a severance package. That’s exactly what happened to me in 2003, and again in 2025. Before finding my next job after being laid off, I had a summer of fun.
On Monday, August 10, 2004, I received a phone call from Mark. “I’m in Boston,” he said. “Scott’s wife just went into labor, and he’s on a plane back to Portland.”
Scott was Mark’s new Phish buddy, and they had booked a mini-tour of shows at Great Woods, New Jersey, and Coventry, Vermont, which was to be Phish’s last show ever, a camping and concert festival on the grounds of the Northeast Kingdom Airport in northern Vermont.
“Can you get here for the show tonight?” Mark asked. “Then we’ll do the tour and go to Coventry. Just bring your sleeping bag.”
I was unemployed. All that stood between me and going to Boston that day was plane fare, the time it took to pack, and flight schedules. Mark used frequent flier miles to book me a ticket and picked me up at the airport the next day for a weeklong adventure that would include four shows, a lot of driving, a lot of mud, and Mark meeting my parents for the first (and only) time.
On the way up to Coventry, we stayed at Scotty’s house in East Corinth, Vermont. Mark later told me, “Scotty lived up to every part of his legend.” Scotty’s spare bedroom happened to be his camper van. On the way back, we stopped in to see my mother, who still lives in the house Scotty built for us in Benton, New Hampshire. Mark said, “I got to have a flash of young Lee Ann's life experience. It connected everything.”
I spent years of my life sleeping in a camper—which seemed so far-fetched from my corporate jobs and life in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. I spent years living in a primitive house on a slope of land with a view of the backside of Kinsman Notch in the White Mountain National Forest. Mark is the only person from my San Francisco life to experience a bit of that lifestyle, and it’s probably contributed to our friendship that has endured for more than 20 years after we parted from coupledom. Experiences like that—and what happened at Coventry—tend to form strong bonds.
Festival of fortitude
Coventry was like an Outward Bound experience in the guise of a music festival. For three days, the camping and concert site would become the largest city in Vermont, with 65,000 people attending the two-night run. But the Phish organizers couldn’t have predicted the tail end of a hurricane that would dump several inches of rain on the site that week, turning hayfields into mud. People who came early got their cars stuck and had to get towed out by enterprising farmers who showed up with their tractors. The organizers brought in wood chips and built plank walks between festival attractions. In those days before text message updates or GPS navigation, Phish commandeered a local radio station and announced that no more campers would be permitted to enter the site. Not to be deterred from their last chance at Phish fun, thousands of people abandoned their cars alongside the highway and walked in (up to 15 miles!).
Mark and I drove past the abandoned cars and stopped at an intersection near the site to decide what to do. As people trickled past us towing coolers on wheels and carrying sleeping bags in their arms, I melted down. Were we going to have to turn around? Were we going to abandon the rental car and walk in?
Like everyone else, we couldn’t give up on Phish. But we weren’t average fans, we were super fans. There had to be a way in, we thought. We just needed more information.
A light emerged at the end of my tears with Mark’s decision to drive us to a store. The clerk gave us a map of the area, which showed several back roads leading to the site. We picked a dirt road, and lo, there was a makeshift sign that said “CAMPING.”
An enterprising farmer decided to turn their (not muddy) land into a campground. It was only about a mile from the concert site, and she would drive us in on her hay trailer (the “Vermont bus”). After each night’s show, we got rides back in “Vermont taxis”—pickup trucks owned by locals who charged $5.
The shows were musically disappointing, and emotional. We thought Phish would be gone forever. In truth, band leader Trey Anastasio was having a midlife crisis and in the throes of addiction. Two years later, he was arrested for DUI and drug possession and sentenced to a 14-month drug court program. After he got sober, Phish began touring again in 2009.
Flexibility in the flow
Last Sunday, I decided to tap into the late August vacation vibes and planned a drive to the Pacific Northwest. I drove to Portland on Thursday, where I stayed with Ben, my roommate from Boulder in 1995.
I’m sending this email from Seattle, where I’m staying with Chris, my roommate from the Pink Palace.
Sometimes last-minute changes of plan are the best thing you can do to put yourself in the flow. This Pacific Northwest road trip is already refreshing my spirit with friendship, tall trees, and saltwater air.
May tapping into the flow bring you some happy adventures this week!
Love, Lee Ann
