Magic on The Land
All photos courtesy of Ilana Bar-av
It was magical. Michigan Fern Fest 2022 was magical.
I traveled to The Land in Michigan, once home to West Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MichFest), in early August to perform, having found out about it from one of my favorite people on earth, Connie Lane.
The week was mesmerizing. We camped on The Land. We sat at Grandmother Oak’s roots. We laughed and listened to music and danced under the full moon. We ate steaming hot carne asada tacos and tamales in the pouring rain while we played Bananagrams.
We summoned all the women who had gathered on that land year after year for Mich Fest. We summoned the artists and their voices. We summoned their love of The Land. We summoned the magic — and it caught fire.
Michigan Fern Fest is a reincarnation, of sorts. It was imagined into being by Abra Wise. She called on her friends. She reached out to musicians and comedians and performers and artists. And they all said yes. And they all returned to The Land — returned even if it was their very first time.
“Welcome,” the women say as you enter the gates. I could feel it as soon as we entered The Land — or maybe it was as soon as The Land entered me.
Abra invited me to come speak. In the program under my name it said “comedy,” something I had been told could be mine but that I was too frightened to claim. But Abra isn’t scared of calling things by their name. Like Fern Fest, named after Eden Fern, the beloved daughter of two of her closest friends. She named Fern Fest. And when she did, she manifested it, too. And there, among the ferns, a festival rose.
Patrice Pike and The Gnomies and Tiffany Christopher and Laura Goldhamer and Ubaka Hill and Kate Peterson and Mimi Gonzalez and Elivira Kurt and so many others performed. There was a BIPOC Sanctuary. There was a mission to embrace the term women “to include all who identify and live in the experience of being a woman.” There was a team of interpreters and a commitment to inclusion in every sense of that word. It was a week of kindness and respect and generosity.
Abra arranged for a tent to be set up and waiting for me complete with air mattress since I was flying. Two women attending the festival, Carolyn and Michelle, generously picked me up in Grand Rapids to bring me to The Land, filling me in on the history as we wound our way into the woods. We took rapid COVID tests before we even exited our cars. There was a log book with volunteer opportunities awaiting us, including “shuttle driver,” which, I was told was a great way to meet people.
My first day there I made friends while I was sitting under the massive oak tree that all who know The Land know as Grandmother Oak. Darla and Fern and Laura welcomed me into their gang of three, and I immediately felt at home. Darla made us pancakes in the morning, and Fern made us what I would argue was some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I was nervous about performing and Darla taught me to reign in the racing thoughts with a boisterous “STOP!” It works.
I made another gaggle of friends as I wandered The Land. Mollie Rose Fischer literally bathed us in the sumptuous sounds of her cello every morning as it echoed through the ferns and trees, and she crocheted mile long bracelets of thread and beads that the women of FernFest wrapped around their wrists like talisman.
There was Ilana Bar-av, who I later learned takes the most incredible photographs, the kind you find yourself melting into. I made a friend as I was simply walking down the path — Kaye, a new friend that felt like an old one the minute we met. I met the sister of a friend I haven’t seen in probably 15 years. Like worlds colliding, Joan and I could not stop laughing and talking about, well, everything.
It might be best explained at the diametric opposite of Fyre Festival. Everyone and everything was cared for. The coffee truck had to cancel, but suddenly there were urns in the kitchen tent and people volunteering to brew. It poured one day, and suddenly events were moved and tents were secured and people chipped in to do what was needed. The port-a-janes were spotless. The recycling was honored. The woods were protected. Extra of everything was shared. No one went without, and everyone was respected.
And because of all of that, we were free to just enjoy. And we did — the music and the friendships and The Land and performances and the bouts of laughter and the sharing and the tears and even the processing when something didn’t go right.
Because we all committed to taking the time to make it right.
For the very first time, I performed under the billing “comedy,” and everyone was so generous with their laughter and their support. I felt held. And before I went on stage, Darla put a necklace around my neck that she had made. A tiny jar filled with dirt from The Land and the tiniest fern, and suddenly I was ten feet tall.
I am terribly afraid of the dark. But on The Land I walked alone at 3 a.m. down the long path from one camping area to my own, and when I got to my tent I stood in the middle of the field in front of it and shouted “I’m safe!” to Grandmother Oak, and she replied, “You are.”
I don’t wonder why Fyre Festival and the most recent Woodstock failed so miserably. Money and greed and men and their egos led those disasters. But Fern Fest was led by women and heart and the power they honor and an ache for The Land and for connection and for spirit. It was led by a longing for home, and so home we were granted.
I can’t name everyone or tell you everything, because they are not all things to be listed or told. They are things to experience and breathe, because so much of it belongs to the ferns. Besides, memory fades, and word counts loom. But all you really need to know is it was magical, and I will be counting the days Until I return.
Re-entry has been challenging. When I arrived at the airport, all of the men were too loud and took up too much space. But Fern Fest and The Land are in me now, and so I can always spread my fronds to protect my power and my space. And my magic. Until I return home once again, among the ferns, about the land, to Fern Fest.
