Musketaquid!

"I love the Earth!  It's where I keep all my stuff."

-- The Tick to Omnipotus, Devourer of Worlds (The Tick, episode 15: "Alone Together")

Like impassioned bloggist and environmentalist Chris Clarke, I lived through Earth Day last Sunday without realizing it.  Unlike Chris, I probably napped through it.

It's not that I don't care about the Earth, and it's not that I don't think Earth Day is a fine and fun thing to celebrate.  The thing is, my town which I love, as I've said, has its own Earth Day festival, the Musketaquid Festival. 

And it doesn't happen on Earth Day, precisely.  This year it's set for this coming Saturday, April 28.

The event begins in the morning with a corny but so, so earnest ceremony on the Concord River. 

Last year the celebrants invoked the water spirit.  I forget the precise language, but it was something about "calling forth the river."  Given the amount of rain we had last spring and summer, and how high the river rose, and how much flooding we'd already had, my true love and I couldn't help but find this an ill-considered invitation.  I confess we snickered.  Nevertheless, you have to respect a small woman who will don a wetsuit and perform a ceremony which requires her to emerge from a freezing river in springtime (in Massachusetts, remember), costumed and reciting -- and barefoot -- and you have to love a community that will gather at the river to receive her with singing and dancing, loosely Native American-ish prayer-like utterances, and cheerful listening.

At some point in all that, little biodegradable floats made by town residents of sticks and leaves are released into the river where, last year, they floated out bravely but a few hundred yards before retreating back to the shore under the bridge.

My favorite part of the festival is the parade. 

After the singing and chanting and intoning, after the release of the floats, festival participants basically take the party into the streets of the town. 

Locals who have created giant puppets on tall sticks and wonderful costumes with themes celebrating nature gather together to walk through town. 

Some of the puppets are perennial, like the giant otter, the Bullwinkle of Musketaquid.

Some of the costumes get very interpretive --

very interpretive --

whereas others are more literal, but just as beautiful.

Some costumes are also practically floats.

People of all ages participate, and there are usually extra puppets -- cattails and such -- which on-the-spot volunteers are enthusiastically invited to carry.

After the parade, there is a small festival on the front lawn of the Emerson Umbrella for the Arts.  There are the usual child-engaging activities -- face painting, make-your-own crafts -- and informational booths.  There are musical performances and enthusiastic dancing by various local troupes.  Last year I saw a woman I knew as a dignified, middle-aged, middle-class matron, a Whole Foods customer usually wearing periwinkle Polartec and sensible shoes, whirling and leaping and smiling, barefoot and barely dressed (for New England, in the spring), joyous as a maenad.

(She is not pictured in the photo above, but these ladies were pretty cool, too.)

It is wonderful when people you see so often in one role -- and they you, to the point where you practically take each other for granted as symbols of your roles, not whole people -- reveal themselves to you joyously and passionately.  It can only happen because of love.  It may not happen because of love for you or even love you share.

Through the Musketaquid Festival, members of this community reveal their love for the land, and also for each other.  It's a kind of commitment ceremony, a celebration of things worth committing ourselves to nurturing and protecting, as well as simply enjoying.  I think that's the idea behind Earth Day.  It's not about guilt or fear; it's about love and awe and gratitude.  And commitment.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  I hope it finds you celebrating, too.

Comments

[Alice-Anne]

I love festivals and that sounds like a fun one. Enjoy.

[Sara]

It is fun, Alice-Anne! I hope you come back to see the pictures.

[Ron Sullivan]

Yow! Thanks for the pointer. I love the costumes -- the heron particularly -- and the bicyclefish.

Might one of those um interpretive costumes be a representative musketaquid? I see this as somehow combining a mosquito and a squid of course. The guy with the thing on his head, maybe.

[Sara]

hahahaha

Sadly, "musketaquid" is a local Native American word meaning "the place where water flows through grasses" or something like that. I believe it was an earlier name for Concord than, uh, Concord. I prefer the idea of mosquito + squid; we sure do have lots of mosquitoes, though not so much squid.

I love the fish bicycle, too. I regret to admit, though, that every time I see it I think of that old T-shirt slogan, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

This fish needs a bicycle. And a guy to pedal.

[bonggamom]

What an interesting festival, I would have loved to watch the parade -- and maybe don one of those great costumes and join the fun! And I love the significance of the festival as well.

[Sara]

Hey, bonggamom, you've still got two days to get here! ;)

Or, then, there's always next year.