"On the long road you got a long time to sing a Simple Song"

I just walked away from a festival carrying a sea of new thoughts, a head of musical inspiration and a new perspective. On and on, the Love Your Mother Earth Festival hoisted the banner of sustainability at the hot springs in Lolo, Montana.

With what seemed like hundreds of acres to play and explore in, the valley seemed to open up. "Shit, this place is ironic," a friend remarked. She said there wasn't enough recycling and trash bins. The workshops and classes weren't well-attended. It's just one big party with a whole lotta music.

I'm absolutely glad she raised these points. It was a fundamental dialogue that I can build my experience around, because it gave me something to meditate on (more on this in a few paragraphs). "Yeah?" I replied puzzled, and indeed I was set back by her comments on that second day.

The day we arrived, the Earth was seemingly bucking like a bronco. It rained. And rained some-mo'. This friend and I took to the hills, climbing from rock to rock along the dripping cliff faces. And as we watched the otherwise grassy fields line up with vehicles and tents, things looked grim. I was swimming inside my skin.

Ordinarily a festival of such magnitude would use much of the grid to power its amplifiers, circuits, cords and the microphones that are arranged next to the bongo drums on stage. But not this one. It was well-advertised that the energy used to power the festival was generated via the Earth, which I found to be more than appropriate. On the energy front, the organizers had sustainability on their side.

But what about the food that was provided? Were the vendors selling food concert-goers could be proud of? Yep. Tipus' Tiger, a local Indian restaurant lavished those unsustained in hunger and thirst with chai and samosas. Sunday morning featured a well-attended farmer's market and local beef was sold at a den called Mother Trucker's.

The way Love Your Mother Earth was set up (with energy, food and good will), my friend and I and the other guests should have had little impact. Unfortunately my friend's assessment of the scene by the second day told a different narrative and damn it, she was totally right on.

There was a creeping recklessness about. Now I was left to figure out what was at its root. Or as Merovingian concludes in the Matrix, "Our only hope, our only peace, is to understand it, to understand the why."

Did it spring from the parking lot where open drug-use took place? That certainly aided the problem, but no, that wasn't quite what bothered me, because it was expected and nearly unavoidable. Did the recklessness bellow from the camping area where the land was severely degraded by off-road driving and overuse?

I was convinced with an odd absoluteness--this was the problem--as I hiked out of the mega-hippie gigs on the second afternoon into the damp forest. It was something I couldn't get my head around even after I had turned the mossy corner of the path and could no longer hear the transcendent airwaves of the festival.

It was around this natural atmosphere that I was able to stand without human influence-- to, for the first moment, accurately pursue the question. Surprise, right. I had climbed on up the mountain facing the festival and from the top to the other side.

Here I meditated.

I began to really appreciate what the kind of opportunity the L.Y.M.E. crew had opened for us. The music, the hiking, the classes, the farmers market. They were each soup cans of sustainability waiting to be opened. Some of us had brought our can-openers, while some of the cans elicited a pop-can-esque top, which facilitated an easy bowl of clam chowder for the guests. Without a doubt, the festival was what you made it.

By surrounding guests with such an easily accessible lifestyle and mind-altering sustainability, the crew accomplished much of what it set out to do, I think. My only caveat is that locally produced theatre with eco-centered themes would have gone well alongside the musicians.

Michael Franti says, "On the long road you got a long time to sing a simple song." Yeah, I think a parallel can be drawn to sustainability. Festivals like this present the public with an opportunity to sing the simple songs and get together on behalf of our planet.

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