Woodstock musings

By Mike VanBuren
From the early November 2013 edition of The North Woods Call

    There’s a sign along Hurd Road leading north from Bethel, New York, that says, “Drive Peacefully.”
   It’s a nice thought to contemplate, although one wonders if we have it in us to drive—or live—in harmony with our fellow travelers.
   My wife and I are in the Empire State to visit our new granddaughter in Harriman, but we have a few extra hours this morning and decided to take a drive into the country.
    We have discovered many wonderful natural areas since we arrived two days ago and I’m starting to re-think my image of New York—and the entire East Coast, for that matter—as uninhabitable urban areas filled with congested roadways, crowded commuter trains and ant-like human beings scurrying back and forth between their homes and office cubicles.
     There is some of that,  to be sure, but large sections of the state have picturesque rural areas that rival the best of northern Michigan.  There are even two of the world’s largest freshwater lakes—Ontario and Erie—on the north and west borders.
    So much for my midwestern superiority complex.
     Just 35 miles northwest of our hotel, the landscape on Max Yasgur’s fabled farm is drenched by a warm October sun.  The gently rolling hills, green pastures and colorful woodlots are as beautiful as any rural America has to offer.
     Nearly 45 years ago, this was the gathering spot for more than 400,000 peaceniks, flower children and back-to-nature types who thought they could change the world by partying, rejecting the values of their parents, and attempting to “self-actualize” through a host of less-than-honorable pursuits.
     They succeeded in shocking the Norman Rockwell in us, clinging like zebra mussels on a Great Lakes freighter to numerous things that were supposed to be “free,” but came with a heavy price—sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.
     The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held on the Yasgur farm Aug. 15-18, 1969, during a rain-soaked weekend of muddy misery billed as “three days of peace and music.”  The whole affair was messy and disorganized, but it became a cultural watershed that featured landmark performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana, Melanie Safka, Canned Heat, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly & the Family Stone, The Band, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Sha Na Na, Arlo Guthrie, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Johnny Winter, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
    It was probably the largest mass camp-out in the history of the nation—and an interesting study in human ecology and behavior.
    I was a bit too young and unhip to attend the “aquarian exposition,” but most who did seemed to embrace the many rebellious pop philosophies of the day.  Make love, not war, and all that stuff.
     Unfortunately, the long-term reality of those ideas didn’t quite fulfill the promise and dream.  Turns out the younger generation was just as foolish, corrupt and dishonest as any previous ones they reviled—maybe more so.
     In little more than a year, Hendrix and Joplin would be dead from drug overdoses, and the systematic breakdown of the family and civil society was racing ahead at full throttle.
    The party was over, so to speak, despite efforts to “build the world a home and furnish it with love.”  It seems real love, responsible stewardship of resources and selfless giving was in short supply, as it has been throughout human history.  Now, thanks in part to the somewhat confused Woodstock generation, our future seems more precarious than ever.
     We say we want to live peacefully, save the planet from ecological disaster and care for the poor—as long as we don’t have to sacrifice much ourselves, particularly our relentless lust for personal pleasure.
     Even in 1969, when we were in the thick of anti-war sentiment and laying the groundwork for the modern environmental movement, Woodstock revelers showed little concern for the neighboring crops and personal property that was destroyed during the event, the piles of trash they left behind when it was over, and even the attempted admission fee at the gate.
      It is particularly amusing—to me, at least—that rebellious Baby Boomers espoused all manner self-centered freedom, eschewed government control of their lives and encouraged everyone to “question authority.”  Yet many have grown up to support the same liberty-squashing policies that they protested against during their younger years.
    Today, the musical counterculture heroes of 1969—as well as Max Yasgur himself—have largely moved on, although several have returned to Woodstock over the years for concerts and other events at the festival site.  And the ashes of Richie Havens were ceremoniously scattered over the Woodstock grounds after the singer died earlier this year.
     Capitalist entrepreneurs purchased the property in 1996 and built the $100 million Bethel Woods Center for the Arts—a beautiful campus complete with a 1960s museum, multiple concert and performance venues, a cafe, educational classrooms, paved parking lots and flush toilets.
   Further up Hurd Road, several decidedly upscale homes have been constructed along the small lake where the nation’s mud-covered future leaders once shed their inhibitions and peasant clothing to bathe nude in the refreshing water.
    “It’s your thing; do what you want to do,” the old song goes. We’re just getting back to (human) nature.
     I really hope my infant granddaughter’s generation will have some better ideas on how to change the world and preserve our natural resources.
    Until then, peace.
    Oh—and party on.