By JASON CARPENTER
Photos from phish.com

LIMESTONE, MAINE ? Every year the Phish festival is a signal to me that the summer is about to end and I'd better enjoy what's left of it. It is for that reason I have found it necessary over the past five years to make the trek, which this year totaled 500 miles of road each way.
We began our yearly pilgrimage around noon. For the second straight year I was accompanied by my friend and former editor, Rob, and for the second straight year, the outdoor concert/camping trip was held in Limestone Maine. Never heard of it? Well there's a pretty good reason why; it's north of Montreal. In fact, it's even north of Quebec City and I have the map to prove it.
For those who don't know, Phish is a band. Their music is a delightful blend of good old fashioned rock n' roll with a distinct influence of jazz improvisation. Each member is acclaimed for command over his instrument. Collectively, the band has an uncanny dynamic that give the impression the members can read each other's musical minds.
Trey Anastasio on guitar, Mike Gordon on bass, Paige McConnel on keys, and John Fishman on drums literally play off each other with the greatest of ease. The band hails from Burlington, Vermont and is best known for its live epic jams?taking the crowd on an improvisational roller coaster that often ends with the spectators asking themselves, "How'd they do that?"
Phish is probably the most successful band in the country that most people haven't heard of. That's because their music receives minimal radio airplay and their faces aren't plastered all over MTV, music magazines or newspapers. Their success comes as a result of a dedicated fanbase. Phish is a band that people flock to; literally. You show me a Phish fan and I'll bet dimes to dollars that person has been to multiple shows this year. These "Phish Heads," as they're commonly referred to will travel to great lengths, repeatedly, to see the four fellows known as Phish. I'm no different?the two shows I witnessed on August 14 and 15 were my 34th and 35th career Phish experiences.
But the experience began long before I ever set foot on the abandoned Loring Air Force Base. It began hundreds of miles away en route.
There was nothing particularly interesting about the car ride until we got to within 200 miles of the venue. Thereabouts, we began to see homemade signs on every overpass of I-95 North. As we drew closer, the signs became accompanied by a couple of waving locals. Eventually we greeted by dozens of people standing on highway overpasses flailing their arms and little kids giving the "honk your horn" signal usually reserved for trailer trucks.
We eventually reached the most northerly point of I-95 in the country. I-95 covers the entire east coast Maine to Florida, and we reached the point where it seemed as if the road just gave up. It seemed so far away from civilization that I thought we were going to have to sign some waiver that instructed us to "continue at our own risk." As we made that turn off I-95 onto 1A north just a few miles from Houlton, Maine, we saw a sign that read Limestone?64 miles.
For 64 miles, my friend and I saw what seemed like every person in Aristook County waving at us while perched upon more of those nylon-checkered lawn chairs than I knew existed. They waved not just at us, but every single car that drove by. It was clearly the most action the freshly paved, single lane road and the people who lived alongside it had seen since last year's Phish concert?and before that since the base closed in 1993. So there these people sat, both arms reaching for the sky and waving enthusiastically.
It became obvious that nearly all the cars on the virgin road were heading for the Lemonwheel, as this year's event was called. We were driving in what seemed to be an endless caravan whose vehicles were clad with various Phish bumper stickers transporting several occupants sporting the traditional tye-dyed garb.
After a surreal 64 miles of waves and smiles, we arrived at the base around 9 p.m. We set up camp, or as Rob called it, the "control post." The two of us then set out into the flat open darkness that were it not for the stars and car headlights, we would not be able to distinguish where the sky ended and the earth began.
As I rode my mountain bike, I thought about the satire of the whole event, either intended by its organizers or not. I thought about how ironic it was that 72,000 new-age hippies would congregate at a defunct air force base that supplied bomber planes to destroy Iraq. Then my thoughts were interrupted by what sounded like a massive clock striking midnight. It was so dark that Rob had ridden full speed on his bike into the side of an empty dumpster.
We promptly visited one of the several medical tents set up across the base where EMTs set Rob up with some peroxide and a handful of bandages. Organization of the event was impressive, with a makeshift hospital, running water, and hundreds of porto-potties.

For three nights we roughed it, kind of. Sure, we slept in a tent in tight quarters, but we didn't really rough it because covering the tent floor was the softest queen size futon that any camper could have asked to sleep on.
As I awoke on Saturday morning and stepped out of the tent, the serene darkness had turned into what could have been a scene out from the movie Escape from New York or Mad Max or something. It was crazy. There before my eyes was sea of tents, trailers and spray painted school buses. Mobs of shirtless longhairs wandered around drinking beers and smoking cigarettes, those legal and otherwise. All of this at 8 a.m.
The men wore cut-off cargo pants and sandals, if anything on their feet. Thick hemp necklaces competed with gnarly facial hair for neck space. The women wore long paisley dresses that looked like tapestries from their dorm rooms tailored into makeshift clothing.
Many men and women displayed body art, with tattoos on their biceps, forearms, backs and ankles. They wore any combination of earrings, nose rings, eyerings and naval rings. They looked a little grungy, and some of them were wearing eau de armpit, but behind the scruff, these Phish Heads looked young, mostly between 17 and 21. They resembled hippies of the sixties (or at least video footage of them), except I don't think too many hippies back then got to borrow Mom and Dad's Saab 9000 to go see the Grateful Dead.
As I brushed my teeth and spat the blue foam into the trash can, I could hear the bootleg vendors opening up shop early. "Vodka shots here! Only a dollar," one said, with a small crowd of people at his Winnebago waiting for an eye-opener. As the day and the heat wore on, more vendors and more people crowded what used to be the runway. One vendor sold beer while sitting on a cooler mounted on a skateboard whizzing across the pavement. Others were on foot selling veggie burritos, hemp jewelry, magic mushrooms, acid, marijuana, hashish, bootleg t-shirts and anything else you could wear, eat, drink, burn, shoot, smoke or snort. This continued for three days.
Oh, and there was music too. Two 3-hour concerts to be exact, and more irony. For 23 hours and 50 minutes each day, the Phish Heads moved in relaxed, languid motions. But in the 10 minutes that it took to get from the wrist-band check to the stage, these people sprinted with grace of gazelles in a stampede to be closest to the band.
The concert area added another surreal touch to the weekend. I almost didn't believe my eyes when I arrived, but there was a Ferris wheel in the middle of the venue. One could even go on a tethered balloon ride while the boys ripped it up on stage.
I can't remember in what order Phish played the songs, or on which days, but I do remember some, and I do remember being blown away by their musical talent. Those guys played like I'd never heard before. I heard the epic "Fluffhead," which I hadn't witnessed in over three years. The band performed a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" and they even covered the Beastie Boys' hardcore anthem, "Sabotage" and the Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup."
Not the entire weekend was surreal, however. In fact, some of it was enlightening. The Saturday night show was the first of the two concerts. During the song, "Slave to the Traffic Light," I was treated to one of those truly inspiring moments that come along so infrequently. The band had gone off on a mesmerizing improvisational tangent and then it began: an occasional neon light stick tossed into the air by a fan. This quickly spread and within seconds, thousands of the glowing sticks blurred the night sky with flashes of fluorescent green, purple, yellow and blue. The band continued to wail on their instruments while the once impressive stage light show halted all together. The band continued playing in complete darkness, save for the soft glow from the light sticks in their rainbow-shaped trajectories. The small plastic lights pelted my head repeatedly, but I gladly picked them up and heaved them forward to partake in the awesome light display. It was a sight to behold. I had been proven wrong?it was possible to make 70,000 people feel like part of the show. The band really did notice us, and they played off our energy.
The finale of the Lemonwheel was impressive and included a fireworks display and the burning of a massive hundred-foot long papier mache elephant, but it didn't have the impact of the glow sticks. It just wasn't as interactive.
So, on the third morning, we began the trip home. It was 5 a.m. The return trip saw no smiling faces, no waving hands, no makeshift signs thanking us for coming. One truck stop still had yesterday's specials on the board: Phish and Chips, as a waitress on the new shift slowly erased the faded message. One trucker in the restaurant told us that the state stood to generate $25 million from the event.
No wonder those people were out there waving their hands at us.

Published in Hampshire Life Magazine 9/10/98