In the small hours of Monday morning I made my way in the Michigan night, following the directions that had come with my ticket. A mile along a country road, two miles along another one, four miles here, watch for that turn... Rounded numbers that made me afraid I'd miss a more-subtle turn in the dark. And was it dark! It was a flavor of midnight that an east-coast city woman never has a chance to get accustomed to, no matter how many nights she spends camping. My little old car, the size of a roller skate and packed to the gunwales with gear (and there's another story), chugged along while I squinted into the pie-slice of my high beams and worried, exhausted, that I'd end up irretrievably lost.
I spotted a pair of headlights coming up the deep blackness behind me. They were far away but moving faster than my map-reading was allowing me to drive. A truck. Uh-oh, I thought. Who's out here in a truck the middle of the night? Could be a farmer. Could be something much more dangerous.
Suddenly I wasn't just anxious anymore; I was out-and-out afraid. I was afraid like a lone woman in the dark is always afraid--that terror instinct that the straight white men I've known, not conditioned to be prey animals, never quite understand. The reflexive fear tightened my gut as I squeezed the wheel. Hide, I thought immediately, a reaction as automatic as a hand jerking from a hot stove. But no, there was no hiding on this stretch of barren midnight road. When 'hide' isn't an option, the prey instinct says, 'Don't be a threat. Make yourself little, too insignificant to be worth their while. Hope they go away.' I pulled over to let the truck speed past.
It went past, all right, but it didn't speed. Instead, it slowed, a dirty, beat pickup truck with New York plates. A dozen feet ahead, it stopped, close enough that I could read the bumper sticker. "See you in August."
It was a woman! A Fest woman! She had no idea who I was on this back country road, she had no reason to stop, there was no reason on earth for her to pause her journey. But she did! That stranger from New York, she waited on the road until I fell in behind her, and without ever having exchanged a word with me, she slowed her pace so I could follow her all the way to the line outside the gates.
That was my very first experience with MWMF Festival magic, and what it could be like to live in a cooperative world of loving womyn.
~~~
Life ain't that heavy
If you look to the light
See one side of things for most of my life, I'm tired
If life gives you just a moment of bliss
Don't take that minute to bitch how long it took you to get it
This is a ride of a lifetime, this is a ride of a lifetime
And all you really need to be happy
All you really need to be happy
All you really need to be happy
All you really need to be happy
All you really need to be happy
Happy, happy...
Laughin' my ass off on a path in Michigan.
--Hanifah Walidah, "Happy," Black Patti
