No, I did not take part in a celebration of the one-of-a-kind fantasy holiday created by perhaps a top-five sitcom character of all time, Frank Costanza. However, this past weekend, at my very first full-send music festival experience, I absolutely took part in Festivus feats of strength.

Or feats of endurance, in this case. Unfathomable amounts of endurance needed to dance my face off into the wee hours of the night/morning Thursday through Sunday.

And if we’re grading performances here, as the weekend wore on my GPA dropped precipitously. I, my friends, am not cut out for four nights in a row of dancing to electronic DJ music. I am not cut out for four extended consecutive dance marathons, period.

This was not my first experience with electronic music concerts, so I was not completely blindsided. My good friend, the aforementioned Todd Heckert, who is also the tattoo artist responsible for my Norse ink, had brought me to a couple of one-night-only shows in his previous hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. I was not a complete virgin when it comes to bewilderment that comes standard in these settings.

But Future Forest was a bonanza of incredulous sights, sounds and experiences that I’d never thought I’d be privy to. Let alone at 45 years old. Two thousand red-blooded, fired-up, raring-to-go people (mostly Atlantic Coast Canadians) descended upon this little patch of nature outside of Fredericton, New Brunswick, and burned the house down, as they say, dancing to house, techno, psytrance, deep bass…you name it.

I had no idea there were so many flavors of electronic music. I am more learned now.

But I’ll say this: Future Forest definitely had a “for the rest of us” vibe in a brilliant way. For my money’s worth, the beauty of this festival isn’t the music, dancing or art. It’s the community that comes together to agree to leave judgment at the gate. Everyone can be himself, herself, themselves, no matter your sex, sexual preference, race, heritage or religion. None of that shit matters in the forest.

People wore every costume you can possibly conjure in your mind. And they also wore next to no costume, leaving very little to the imagination. Everyone comfy as a La-Z-Boy on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The Borat man-thong onesie was a popular choice.

You couldn’t pay me to have fabric so tightly rammed up my ass crack for any length of time, let alone hours on end. God bless those brave souls.

The point is, I loved the fact that at this festival you come as you are, and often as who society and the real world scorns, judges, belittles or rejects. You come to cast off the shackles of who you are supposed to be and embrace the freedom of your true self.

There are no black sheep at Future Forest. We were all one giant community of freak-flag flyers in our own unique way.

Todd has been imploring me to attend one of these festivals with him for years. I’m outgoing and can rev myself up to cut loose with the best of them when I’m operating at full tilt, and the stars aligned peculiarly well for this particular event. I was going to be in Canada for the first leg of my nomad life. He has a friend in Fredericton he had met on a healing retreat who has a house and offered it up for us to stay in. I would be led through the festival gauntlet by two seasoned veterans.

When the universe offers up synchronicities like that, you don’t ask questions. You buy your tickets and get in line.

Thursday is actually a pre-festival entrance day. Only two of the three stages would be open, and music would “only” play until 3:30 a.m. Todd and Blake had driven their camper vans to park in line overnight to get in right at 8 a.m. I met them as soon as I could get done with work.

I was stoked. I’ve really tried to adjust my life to not carry expectations into anything, but I’m going to be honest with y’all: I had high fucking expectations.

I was certain that I was going to experience healing breakthroughs of mystical proportions, that I was going to meet friends from all over North America who would supplement my nomad destinations and add to my ever-growing network. I was itching to see if the dance skills that I thought were awesome in my drunken twenties would still hold up in my sober forties. At any rate, I was at least hopeful that dancing carelessly would unlock some hidden childhood trauma and whisk it away.

None of that shit happened.

Night one Ryan lasted until about 2:30 before exhaustion set in.

Night two Ryan made it to about 2:00 before the youth and festival veterans started dancing circles around me.

Night three Ryan made it to 1:30 before my body threw a full-out protest and forced me back to camp (and to spend most of the night running to and from camp and the porta-potty – no holds barred here.)

Night four, THEE last night. THEE last hurrah…Ryan made it to 10:30.

And nights one through three also included me ramming an earplug so deep into my left ear that I had to get help pulling it out. Nights two and three, I had to enlist the First Aid peeps, who had to surgically remove it with tweezers.

“You again? Earplug stuck?”

“Yeah man, it’s like a rite of passage for me.” 🤷‍♂️🙄

So did Future Forest deliver exactly how I hoped?

Hard no.

But does life ever deliver how we expect or in the timeline that we hope?

Fuck no.

Future Forest did hold tremendous lessons for me, and it was a fantastic time. I DID enjoy the hell out of dancing, and I DID meet some cool people. I grew the bonds with Blake and Todd, and maybe the most important healing piece to come of the whole thing…

I learned that I can sit and be with no stimulation. I became quite adept at non-doing.

I would be awake for hours before my brave comrades who had danced the night away, with no cell phone service. I had a book that I read a bit of here and there, but I spent many hours just sitting and waiting. Not impatiently, not in a rush. Nowhere to be, no deadline, no responsibilities. I was able to just sit and be present with myself and nature.

It’s rather ironic. I’m reading Wherever You Go, There You Are in an effort to bolster my meditation practice…but I became a presence master at a four-day electronic music festival that I’m still recovering from four days later.

And the recovery this week has also been enlightening in its own way. Once the symphony of stimulation stopped and everything became quiet again, I found there were other things waiting for me in that stillness.

The stillness following all the bright lights, loud noises, anatomy-defying movements and circus of people exposed some wounds I’ve been carrying that have done a sneaky good job hiding beneath the joy, wonder and awe of nomading.  

This stillness my body needed to return to a normal, corporate, functional rhythm has given those wounds space to breathe and come to the surface.  It’s brought tears in unexpected waves and it’s coaxed reflection.

And that, in turn, has allowed me to lean into those wounds a bit more than I have these past couple of months and to sit with them again. To become reacquainted with the feelings and emotions that crash into me with the force that I hit my inflatable mattress with each night this past weekend.  Enough to knock any man out for the count.

And that is a wonderful thing. It’s what makes me human.

And that’s what everyone at Future Forest is.

Just humans allowing life to hit us with all its best shots.