Greenpeace

Monday, I met up with the Rolling Sunlight crew in Chattanooga the day before we headed out to Bonnaroo. Raccoon Mountain’s welcoming campsite allowed us to build a fire. Yummy fire grilled vegetables wrapped in a toasty burrito was the perfect meal to fuel our bodies and prepare us for the work ahead. We spent the rest of the night sitting around the fire brainstorming food ideas and tasks for the upcoming week. My eyelids were getting heavy and nothing was getting in my way of some precious zzz’s. The brown recluse Ruthie and I found in our tent made for quite an adrenalin rush, but with Ruthie’s stealth skills it was exterminated. After a bit of worry of future creepy crawlies in the tent, I surprisingly went to sleep pretty quickly.

The next day ‘Aunt’ Ruthie and I took a trip to Publix and bought enough loaves of bread for everyone in that store and so much food that it was overflowing out of the buggy. I mean, she wanted to make sure it was enough to feed her little baby birds!

Today we were finally going into the festival two days early, before the crowds came, to set up and prepare. It was my first time to Bonnaroo, so I was super excited to see the turn out. The huge oil spill has been hitting home and affecting a lot of people. It’s on everyone’s mind and I was pumped to get out there and tell people that they can take action now! Let them know we have to stop these huge polluters and ban off shore drilling. With the help of Mike and his mighty fine construction skills, this design dream team was ready to impress these Rooer’s with our eye-catching tent and huge oil derrick. The insane rain storm on Wednesday made for a muddy mess but a nice cool-down from everyone’s hard prep work. Mother Nature even created a gigantic slip-n-slide for Brady, where he truly embraced the rain.

Thursday the gates opened and we were ready to take on the masses! This was a good starting day; people were trickling in and we getting these music-hungry hippies to take action before they even knew what hit them. Throughout the week I self-declared my petitioning spot in centeroo near the watering hole, the Adult Swim games, and Fuse’s ridiculously air-conditioned barn… it was my golden position too. This is where I racked in 719 signed petitions during the 4-day festival. It seemed to be pretty rare to find folks that didn’t support the cause, but don’t get me wrong… there were definitely a few negative nancies. I met some really interesting people dressed in trippy costumes and a few topless folks too… and yes, they signed my petition. After the sun went down is really when you came across the crazies- the hippies that were truly… ‘loving life’. Some of them were far too distracted by the colorful lights on the Ferris Wheel to even begin to understand what you were talking about; haha they were fun people to say the least. We spread our publicity everywhere that week; handing out t-shirts to the shirtless and well-informed, giving away enough stickers to cover 50 elephants, and pins that found homes on thousands of backpacks nationwide.

When we weren’t petitioning we were out listening to some pretty fantastic bands and dancing around like the flower-children that we are. One night Amy, Ciarán, and I stayed up late to hear the amazing Disco Biscuits. We dressed as robots, protected from the aliens and covered ourselves in silver tape.

That jam band rocked on 'til the wee hours of the morning. It was 6am and daylight before we knew it, soon we would have to be up and ready to spread some environmental awareness. Of course no matter if you had an early shift or not you were forced to wake up no later than 8am because around that time is when the tent turns into a massive sauna.

During that week of preparation, petitioning, and closing up I made some pretty spectacular friends. We all worked so hard in getting petitions signed and it really paid off because we got a wopping 2,700 signed! Take that BP!