But I wore my best kandi...

We humans are contradictory messes sometimes. For instance, I've felt like a grocery store saint lately with all my grain fed egg purchases and organic banana buys. I've been spreading the message of healthy eating by sharing my new hand-crafted kale chips and refusing to buy that piece of salmon in the grocery store that’s “from the farm.” But I’m the first person on a Friday night that will go in on a plate of nachos and you had better believe all my drinks are doubled up with the poisonous venom that is alcohol. It’s appears I’m always willing to toss away any semblance of a healthy value I might hold in the face of a double caeser and a late-night patio snack.

And we do these kinds of things all the time. After I crawled into my house, emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted from the four intensive days we just called Boonstock, I swore not only to myself, but to my friends and mother that I was to live a life underground for the next few weeks, all in the hopes of recovering my voice, health and mental stability. But here I find myself just a week after said event, planning for my weekend road trip to Calgary, which will follow my Friday night dance-a-thon.  All talk, all the time.

Where I find the contradiction so blatant, the disparity between our actions and words so great, is at our beloved music festivals. Amongst the beautiful night skies, the riverside beaches and perfectly constructed stages. Under the powerful flashes of light and color we see during performance-ending fireworks, you will find us… lazy “wanna-be” hippies, tossing our water bottles and sandwich wrappers to the ground like ill-mannered children. 

You see, festival season in theory is amazing. Beautifully planned events, all over the world, where fellow music lovers can come together to soak up the sunshine and sound. It’s understood that everyone you meet is potentially a new life-long friend. The instant connection you can feel with another person, in a certain moment during a certain set is actually astonishing. The shared love of music brings people together and when we've all bested our own set of circumstances to arrive in that special place, the feeling of instant gratification is often indescribable.

Girls wear their intricately designed headbands, custom made with flowers and gems. The 13 trips that were made to Michaels Craft Store now all seem worth it, as they pose for the hundreds of pictures being snapped throughout the weekend. We feel free and beautiful, uninhibited and happy.  Together we preach values of friendship and love, peace and respect. We've all come together to enjoy this moment as friends.

But the contradiction is glaring. I first noticed it in a picture my friend took at EDC Las Vegas a few weekends ago. It was of a friend and I as the sun came up, early that Sunday morning. There, directly in the center of the shot, were two beautiful souls enjoying an embrace, soaking up that special moment in time. If you look at our faces, our smiles are so heartfelt and so genuine it’s almost impossible not to smile too, just by looking at them. But unfortunately, it wasn't our smiles you were left to look at. It was the mounds of litter and the graveyard of plastic water bottles that caught the eye. 

How funny it must be to those of an earlier generation (those who began the tradition of musical festivals that we now enjoy) to see such a blatant disregard for the earth. You see, those before our time still met under the same sky, dressed in their flowers and their beads, all in the same hopes; to enjoy a moment of music together. But their actions headed the advice of their words and their values were not just seen, but felt. You see, it takes more than a flower headband and your best kandi to be a hippie. Your fuzzy boots and t-shirt monogrammed with the words ‘peace’ and ‘love’ don’t make you an old, earth loving soul. We so often look the part, and yet act so much different.   

There’s already a lot of garbage surrounding the events we’re attending this summer: the 1000 Dasani water bottles you’ll probably have bought by the time September rolls around, the $15 taco you had to buy at Shambhala (because all the ice melted in your cooler and now your salad is swimming in a pool of dirty water) and all the shuttle passes, cab fares and bus tickets you’ll eventually end up purchasing just to get you to that $300-a-ticket dance floor. 

Times have changed. There was a time where music festivals were once Woodstock’s; events that preached messages of anti-violence and peace. Where events didn't cost you your entire winters savings and where outfits didn't take three months to prepare. Festivals that didn't charge you $10 for a sandwich and allowed for areas to dance where YOLO-swag wearing bro’s weren't fist pumping around your head. There’s already enough change and enough garbage surrounding the festivals of our day. Why then, are we all contributing to it?

I’m assuming all of us want to make an impact on the world, in some way or another. Let us then make a large impact in the lives of the people we find around us, not on the earth we’re using as our festival grounds. Let the impact we leave be felt in the hearts of our families, friends, and the new people we meet this summer. And let the impact we leave at the Salmo River Ranch or the Las Vegas Speedway be minuscule, at best. It’s sad that a picture with my beautiful friend does not illustrate the love felt in that moment, but instead a disgusting street of littered water bottles and thrown away trash.

I’ll be the first one to admit that when I’m having a musical moment and in desperate need of both my arms to flail, I’ll toss away my empty glass, forgetting about it the second it leaves my hands. But I no longer want to be that “wanna-be” hippie, my mouth full of preachy values while my hands clearly disregard my surroundings. It’s something I never really thought about before and even as I shuffled through the garbage left ridden across the raceways at EDC, it never occurred to me that my four personal water bottles helped contribute to that mess.

We can all dress like dirty, homeless hobos at Shambhala and most of us did dress like flower-loving, peace-preaching hippies at EDC, but really in the end, that’s just a costume. The real hippies will find a garbage can. The real lovers will walk the ten feet to throw away their trash in a bin, not on the floor. 

C'mon people, we're better than this.