2007 Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm

Please note: there are many spellings of fairie/fairy/faery, but "fairie" is how Spoutwood has chosen to spell it, so that is the form I have used throughout.

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On the first weekend of May, I attended a most remarkable event. Nestled into a peaceful corner of York County, PA, near the borough of Glen Rock, is Spoutwood Farm. Most of the year it quietly produces fresh, organic-quality vegetables from its community supported agriculture gardens, honey from its hives, and grapes for a local vintner. It also hosts educational programs related to sustainable agriculture, simple living, and the environment.

Once a year, however, this sleepy farm is transformed. Like Brigadoon coming out of the mists, it becomes the site of the annual May Day Fairie Festival. The Fairie Festival was the brainchild of Rob and Lucy Wood, owners of Spoutwood, and began 16 years ago as a party for 100 friends. Last year, 2006, some 12,000 people came through the gates over the three days the Festival ran, and this year, the number was closer to 15,000. Patrons came from as far away as Japan, and performers from as far as Scotland.

Why do they come? To "celebrate the beginning of spring and the return of the nature spirits to the warm world," according to the professionally-produced program. It is a participatory celebration of the spirit of nature and of the springtime, and judging by the expressions of joy and wonder on the faces of patrons both young and old, the enchantment runs deep.

To be sure, the Fairie Festival is not for everyone. I think the reality is that what one sees in the Fairie Festival is, to a large degree, based on what one brings to it. If you bring a desire for order, structure, and normalcy, as society understands these, you may be disappointed. If you're looking for creativity, freedom of spirit, and openness to difference, change, and transformation, you'll find it, in vast and indeed bewildering variety. For some, it can be an experience of sensory overload -- even, perhaps, intimidation.

Yet the spirit of the Fairie Festival is a spirit of whimsy, play, and celebration of the mythic imagination. Fairies, sprites, and pixies, dryads and Green Men, brownies, gnomes, and elves, and maybe even a sleepy dragon are among the mythical creatures found represented there, by performers, presenters, and patrons alike. Fairie wings and pixie dust abound, along with Maypole dances, the throbbing rhythms of drums, the skirl of bagpipes, the haunting melodies of Celtic music, and the driving beat of world fusion.

Music and dancing is in many ways the heart of this embodiment of the Fairie Realms here on earth: a celebration of the growing light and warmth of spring, the re-emergence of the life of trees and flowers, plants and animals -- and the re-awakening of human beings, too, as we throw off our winter torpor and embrace the springtime pulses that flow in our veins. In the drums and penny-whistles, bagpipes, fiddles, and guitars, the human spirit soars and leaps with the spirit of the season.

Food and drink (of the non-alcoholic variety) abound as well, as do rows of booths where merchants sell their fairie-themed, and usually hand-made, wares. Whether your taste is for ceramics or leather goods, jewelry or wood-carving, decorative ironwork, textiles or other visual arts, you can find it among the stalls on Frodo's Hill, Glimmer Place, Rainbow Court, or elsewhere throughout this temporary fairie village.

The Fairie Festival is about more than merriment and mythical imagination, however, important though those are. It is also about reawakening a sense of wonder and appreciation towards nature. Fairies, after all, are generally conceived as spirits of nature, of the elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- and of the Earth herself. While evoking the "Otherworld" of the Fairie Realms, the Festival also seeks to evoke love, respect, and care for this world, in all its imperilled beauty and wonder.

A particular theme of the last few years has been zero-waste, and while that ideal has yet to be fully realized in practice, the Festival generates far less waste than any event of comparable size I've ever intended. In part this is because of a policy that requires food vendors to offer serving containers and flatware, even cups, made of recyclable paper or compostable corn, soy, and potato-derived materials. Nearly everything that could be waste is compostable, recyclable, or both.

"The fairie and May Day themes," the festival brochure continues, "go back to ancient times in almost all cultures, especially to the Celts of the British Isles who had a festival on the first day of May called Beltane. It was a time of great rejoicing at the return of the earth's abundance in spring and the impending bounty of summer. The Celts celebrated the spirits of nature by honoring not only the plants that they could see and smell but also the unseen beings of the fairie realms."

So, on the first weekend of May each year, do the thousands of people who pass the portals of Spoutwood Farm for this mythical, mystical rite of spring.