Lessons lerned while camping out at the Fest.
While the Fest is going on, we don't usually spend a lot of time working on outdoor skills & such. There are Seminars to attend, bands to listen too, & since I get in free for being a volunteer, I have to be at my spot from 8pm to 2am. (Usually I hit my cot even later...or earlier...sometimes around 5:30-6am.) In 1991, Jesus People USA, from Chicago, bought a 625 acre campground, complete with a hundred acre lake, for a mil.. there are many mobile homes that went with the property & during all but one week, the property is used as a retreat for their staff to escape the hustle & bustle of Chi-town. One week out of the year they have the biggest Christian Music Festival in the nation. (www.cornerstonefestival.com). You can hear the music for up to 5 miles away & into the wee hours of the morning. This year they had almost 500 bands, many of them playing from "generator stages" at the same time.
When the Fest is over my adult son & I stay on another 3 days while he does HIS volunteer work: "Post-Fest clean-up." We always camp down by the lake & after all the attendees are gone I lay back & enjoy the solitude
of the outdoors; that's what I really enjoy!
Many of the young folks staying there leave lots of stuff behind as they're anxious to get back to their lives; many of them are city folks. I am also a scavenger & have salvaged lots of tent stakes, poles, working flashlights, etc.. One find I really wanted to lay my hands on was about 30' of nice, soft nylon rope that sombody had left strung around some trees...10' or so, up, out of my reach. So I trotted back to camp and grabbed my trusty walking staff, a roll of duct tape, & "Mora" strapped to my side. When I readhed the rope I duct-taped my Mora to the end of the staff & was able to saw through the rope & lay claim to it. (remember, the fate of stuff left behind is the city landfill, so I was simply re-cycling it.) The blade of the Mora sliced right through the rope with great ease, another tribute to it's versatility!
I also built a campfire, something I don't do during the Fest as we're not at the campsite very long & I refuse to leave a campfire unattended. Many of you will be impressed that my fire started right up after only one click of the long-barreled butane charcoal lighter I like to use. It also comes in very handy during the fest to light my double-burner Brinkman pro-pane stove that sits atop my Cabela's camp kitchen! I broke out my fly-rod and gave the local fish population something to scoff at while I worked on my casting. Good news...no snags! All in all a very nice time!:cool2:
