Happy Wheatland!

Summertime in Michigan means lots of great music festivals all around the state, including a growing number of traditional music festivals. But one of the biggest and best is the Wheatland Music Festival, held in Remus (surely you know where Remus is?...right smack in between Mt. Pleasant and Big Rapids) the weekend after Labor Day. It started out, the story goes, as a few hundred hippies in a hayfield, but has grown into a three-day, 14,000+-festivalgoer extravaganza of acoustic music performances, arts and crafts, music workshops, impromptu jamming, food and fun. And the locals -- who, after a few years realized that Wheatland was better than Christmas, retailwise, for a down-on-its-luck farm town in the middle of nowhere, and who have also benefitted from the Wheatland Music Organization's commitment to community education -- have embraced Wheatland weekend as well.

I've been going to the Wheatland Music Festival since I was out of college. It's hard to describe Wheatland to someone who hasn't been there, but try to imagine a cleaner, soberer (more or less), non-electrified Woodstock run by an amazing team of volunteers who constantly wrest order from chaos, do combination roadie/concierge duties for the musicians, direct traffic, keep the place clean, heal the sick, tell really bad jokes, teach folks about the environment, expel troublemakers, wrangle children and teenagers into wholesome activities and otherwise make Wheatland an enjoyable experience for everyone from young families with little kiddos to oldsters who remember(more or less) the good old days.

Wheatland's temporary village includes a nice little juried art fair; music vendors of various kinds; food vendors ranging from tie-dyed purveyors of co-op veggie fare to a cappucino stand to the local Knights of Columbus; 24-hour police presence; a health and first-aid tent; a masseuse; Friends of Bill W.; a Catholic mass and a pagan sunrise circle. In order to keep the driveways passable, especially in bad weather, there's even a regular shuttle bus service into the town of Remus. There's rough camping available at campsites scattered about the property. While the event is embued with a delightful retro mellowness, pets, loud radios, amps, fires and general rowdiness are verboten, and smokers are made to curb their habit around easily combustible wooded areas. While concert-goers are discouraged from driving in and out of the parking areas -- hence the shuttle buses -- if you do venture into Remus proper you will find a great diner, Helen's Restaurant("Where Friends Meet to Eat") -- the buckwheat pancakes are a rare treat -- a fun antique/ice cream store, numerous roadside fruit and vegetable stands and innumerable yard sales scheduled to coincide with this community's annual big event. You can also enjoy a lovely scenic ride up and down the country roads, taking in the sights and scents of the waning days of summer.

A good friend from my old job, sitting next to me one year, sighed, "I wish the whole world ran like Wheatland." I wouldn't go that far, since I have an unapologetic fondness for flush toilets and private hot showers. And these days I've given up the camping (partly because I lost my peer group, partly because I lost patience with things like slogging mud into my tent and freezing on cold nights), and just spend the day on Sunday, the grand finale. But you could find worse places to spend a late-summer weekend, and worse people to spend it with. If you're in or near Michigan, check out the link to the Wheatland Music Organization and consider heading up/down/over to Remus. A good time is had by all. You just need to remember the all-purpose greeting/goodbye/expression of general merriment and content: Happy Wheatland!