Oregon Country Fair

Katie D.

July 13, 2009 - 9:30 AM

Prepare yourselves. This is a place unlike any other.

The Oregon Country Fair is probably the craziest expression of a sub culture I have ever witnessed. We're talking body paint, acrobats, fire starting demonstrations, feathered masks, and beautiful artwork.

Imagine yourself in the Oregon woodlands. Trees of different species and ages all around you, with moss dripping from the branches. Imagine open meadows and small meandering creeks. Now start building little wooden structures among the trees. Add dirt paths-a lot of paths in acres of woodland. Make some of those wooden structures two stories tall, and begin to fill them with handmade art and crafts: photography, blown glass, ceramics, tie-dye, metalwork, stone sculptures, bonsai trees, and on and on and on. Hundreds of these little booths. Then sprinkle food booths around. Food from all over the world. Half-a-chicken booths, vegan ice cream booths, Indian and Afghani and sno cones. Then (we're not even close to finished, folks) add stages. Six or seven formal stages with rough stadium seating and space for musicians, theater, and aerial acrobats. Seven or eight more small spaces for individuals with guitars, or drum circles. These stages are full all day, overlapping performances from spoken word instruction in greening your life to juggling to folk singing to Cirque Du Soliel-style contortionists.

So that's the setting. That's the lead-in.

Now add people. Lots of people. We're talking in the thousands. Start with the people working there: the hippie craftsmen with their jewelry and their tie-dye clothing. And they're all happy. Really happy. There isn't an event like this for the next 362 days. This is their moment.

Then the Fair goers. This is where the real fun begins. There are tourists everywhere, from all over the state and from further afield. Some come in feathers and flowers, others in khaki and baseball hats. Then there are the natives who have been before and know exactly what they're getting into and just how far they can push this crazy event. Masks are popular. So are small ceramic horns. Face painting is everywhere, as is body painting. Both men and women walking around topless and sometimes in nothing but loin cloths and paint. And it's all a joyful and beautiful thing. People are happy. They are genuinely excited to be there.

I went on both Saturday and Sunday this year. Sunday was dreadful because there was a torrential downpour that turned the whole place to mud and closed craft booths.

But Saturday was perfect. Absolute perfection. I saw theater, comedy, juggling, acrobatics, dance, aerial dancing (with dancers suspended twenty feet above the stage in two long ribbons which they wound and unwound around their bodies), folk singing, a trash fashion show, and a demonstration of stone age fire starting. All these events are free-will offering events: they pass a hat at the end and I was always so excited about the incredible talent I had just witnessed that I always threw some money in the pot. It was infectious: all these people who had obviously worked really hard to perfect some crazy demonstration of offbeat talent, and here were the cheering crowds to welcome them.

While enjoying myself thoroughly, I was also working at the Fair. I was there with the American English Institute Humphrey Fellows (adult fellowship winners from 25 developing nations). I was nervous about what they'd think, to be very honest. Quite nervous. You never know how an adult will react to hippies in loin cloths. But they loved it. They reported back about the craziest things they'd seen, or about the acting and dancing, or about taking the opportunity to watch more adventurous folks try some free juggling lessons.

I had warned them many times that I wouldn't have all the explanations for what was going on. I was a first-time Fair goer myself, and my youth prevents me from being able to comment much on the foundation of the hippie culture out here on the West Coast. I told them this was a unique little slice of American culture, and that they should consider it something crazy that they would never see the match of again.

I, however, plan to see it again. If at all possible, I'll be going to the Fair again next year. I'll go for the performances and the people watching, the food and the shopping. The whole experience this year was one of total sensory overload: of insane happenings in all directions, as if the whole world was no longer subject to those normal cultural barriers that keep the inner hippie inside us all quietly wearing khaki and going in to work.

I'm still a little dazzled by the prisms and rainbows, still a little Fair struck.

Peace and love, friends. And maybe next year I'll see you at the Country Fair.