The search for Brigadoon

I haven't been to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival since 1995, but I dream about it often - especially in late summer, with August approaching, heralded by drumbeats and the mist rising, and the gathering from all corners of the earth--all cultures, all walks, all women. It is a village created once a year on sacred land, and it vanishes at the end of each festival, only to rise again the following year, after year, after year.

It never looks the same in a dream. There are always hills and roads and sometimes snow. There are often houses around, where they aren’t supposed to be. Sometimes I don’t have my gear, or it’s too dark, or I don’t know where to camp. Other times, I can’t find the site.

There are times when there is a side journey, a familiar dream-spot that goes off the road and up a hill and then down to a gulley, into a forbidden place, along a treacherous shore. I search and search. And then I will find myself, somehow, standing above it, looking down, hovering over the trees, as if my astral body is visiting there because my own broken heart cannot allow my physical body to return.

I called it Brigadoon, like the rising of the moon.

It comes but once a year, and then it disappears.

I am searching for two contexts. I can’t say things, because that would be the wrong word choice. One is a place, and one is a person. I always think that the person will be at the forbidden spot at the end of the long road along the gulley, if I don’t slip and fall in. If I can cross the bridge made of rickety sticks, I will be on safe sand and then, maybe only then, I will be enveloped in welcoming love. It never happens, though, because I always wake up. I know we'll never meet in this place again, as long as I live, but I can't forget. The vision is here, on a stage. Or wandering, dusty, barefoot in the Crafts area, with tents and tie-dye and gleaming sterling silver and pottery and artifacts, newly noticed ornaments at every turn.

The magic is never, ever far from my dreams.

As a shopper at heart even in dreams, I am always, always looking for the Crafts Area. If I can only find it, I will be all right. I am searching and I have to hurry, because it is getting dark and I might not have time to set up my tent. And as a city girl at heart, I don’t even want to be in a tent. I want to find a house, with a real bed and central air and coffee in the morning, the Internet and a bubble bath and showers and my cell phone and Internet access and my cats. I just want to be there so I can feel the festival vibe, inhale the scent of the towering pines, walk the paths, eat watermelon, sit in a circle in the grass, lay my blanket on the ground for the night stage concert, braid my hair, and go wandering through the crafts area. Shallow? Maybe. But my foot is planted firmly in each world, I swear.

It is ethereal. I long for it every day of my life. It is the place where I used to go to the Candlelight Concert. It is probably the last place on this earth where the universe in its forbidden forms was welcome and kind to me. I want to go back there – just for a day. Just for a few hours. I don't want to make an impression on the earth. I want just to walk lightly, and only for an hour or maybe a day. To buy something. To blend in the crowd and pretend that I am still the Lizza who, before the turn of the century, was seen on the land at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.