This past weekend I was at the Great Clearwater Hudson River Revival Festival. At this event they celebrate the great revival of the Hudson River, local music, the environment, and peace. This year was an inspirational time, despite closing early due to severe weather washing out an access road. These are my experiences volunteering at the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace booth.

Several peace activists piled their camping gear into a couple cars and we proceeded south in the pouring rain on Friday afternoon. The rain stopped by the time we took a brief rest at the Thruway stop, with beautiful sunshine overtaking the sky. We continued our drive down through periods of rain and shine, up and down mountains, over the beautiful Bear Mountain Bridge, and down to the festival.

The rain started and stopped. We got our tents up as the humidity rose. We brought our festival materials down to where we would have our booth on Saturday. We had some modest things for dinner and walked down to the beautiful Hudson River and along it's shore. It was an amazing sunset, filled with reds and yellows generated from the clouds, humidity, and pollution. You could look south on the river and see Yonkers and the Tappen Zee Bridge.

Mountains in this part of the state are so beautiful. They reach right up to the river banks on both sides, and roll down to the shore. They are not sharp and peaked, but our rounded hills that appear to go on forever. Industries, small cities, and wealthy developments dot the shoreline. Listening to the water splash on the shore from the distant passing boats was so soothing and relaxing.

It got dark and without a lantern we went to sleep. In the morning there was beautiful weather and we went down and set up our booth at the festival. I could swear that we had several thousand bumper stickers, pins, and hundreds of t-shirts and books that we were selling to raise funds for peace protest buses and other events that our organization sponsors.

Before long, our booth had attracted large lines of people browsing our materials. People where fascinated by all the different bumper stickers and pins we had. Many people picked up literature, bought bumper stickers and books. The important thing was that we where getting our the message about peace, and inspiring people to get involved and change our society for the better.

I walked over to hear Pete Seeger open the show with a river blessing on the beautiful Hudson River stage. The music was enjoyable as was sitting next to the beautiful river that is coming back to life. It was so amazing to hear and see Pete in person, and to see how much energy and passion he still has after all these years. It's been nearly 60 years since Pete lead the Weavers, yet he still has much to give to our society.

I helped out for a few hours in the afternoon at the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace booth. We straightened up our literature and replaced the pins that we had sold on the board. We talked to many enthusiastic peace advocates who where excited to see all the work we had done. We sold a lot of things and raised quite a bit of money for our organization.

I went out for walk and explored several booths, spending time reading through brochures and talking to the people who ran the booths. It is always fascinating to learn more about the environmental issues facing our river and beyond. I also learned more about the problems of nuclear power and some of the exciting possibilities for renewable energy that have yet to be tapped. Many booths I visited twice and some three times—there was so much to be learned and absorbed.

Besides visiting the booths and learning about a variety of environmental and social justice concerns in our communities, there is the Green Living Expo tent. This tent has retailers of several "green" products, along with a massive booktable with discount books, many under five dollars a piece. They have many good reads, and many of the books are new but highly discounted and sold to support Clearwater's work to protect the river.

To break up the stress of the afternoon, there is the Dance Stage, where a variety of musicians play a variety of music to dance along with. I heard everything from blue grass to big band to folk-rock being played there. It's fun to show off some of your moves, and make a complete fool out of yourself. Everybody should take a few minutes out of their day to dance.

Later in the evening I wondered down to the riverfront to talk with some of the people hanging out by the river. You always meet the most interesting people down there. There is always time to hear stories about how people got here, like hopping a freight train or hitch-hiking, or the latest in conspiracy theories on how government is keeping the development of renewable energy at bay.

Evening came and it was time to head back to the campsite and enjoy the evening. Buggy from the humidity, most people just took a quick shower and went to bed. It was nice to get some sleep after that long day of talking to people and exploring the area. I was glad that I was staying both days at the festival so I could see many of the booths that I had missed the first day.

When I got up on Sunday morning, it was cloudy but incredibly humid. We decided not to pack away our tents as there was a heavy dew. We had breakfast and headed down to our booth. We started to set up the things we packed away, when a person stopped by our booth and warned us to get ready for potentially gale-strength winds and golf-ball hail from a storm that was blowing our way.

We packed parts of our booth away with those warnings and a sinister looking sky to the west. Fortunately, the storm passed to our north, and the sun came back out and it started to get nice. Then it started to pour out and we had to scramble to put literature, bumper stickers, and especially books out from the rain. We got our booth secured, and the rain poured for over an hour, sometimes with heavy wind.

I went over to hear Pete Seeger and the Magpie band accompanied by the fifth grade choir from the Beacon Elementary School at the Rainbow stage. It was pouring rain and lightening all around, but Pete once again showed that he could sing and be a passionate advocate for social change. His performance reminded one of some the recordings of the Weavers that he preformed in the early fifties. It was great, despite all the rain.

I walked back over to the River Stage and listened to The Kennedys until their performance came to an end. I walked around once again to many of the activist booths and other ones, although many where closed. It started to pour and rain hard. Several loud claps of thunder and rain coming down so hard and with so much wind that it looked like it was coming horizontally. I continued to walk around, with my cowboy hat and rain jacket keeping me dry.

I went back to the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace booth, much condensed and trying to keep their precious books and materials dry. By now things where starting to get very wet, and the field where the festival was being held was flooding. The heavy rains lead the emergency access road to wash out and created concerns about safety hazards with the amps at the stages getting wet. Westchester County declared the grounds unsafe and festival was closed down around 2:00 PM.

Everybody was disappointed but being so wet people where ready to leave and go home and get cleaned up. We packed up our very wet gear and headed back home. I wish that we had not needed to leave so early, but the time I spent there was very enjoyable.

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Clearwater 2008 Photographs