Sometime a couple generations ago my friend Melissa’s family built a cabin outside the fledging town of Grand Jean.  A generation later the cabin was fit with propane powered appliances and remains unelectrical.  This summer Melissa has stayed there proudly as one of the seven or so residents of Grand Jean proper, working in several faculties at the lodge there.  She invited us to stay for a couple days, and we divided our time between campfire jams and soaks in the nearby hotsprings.  There were awesome shooting stars each night, the first one of the week was enormous, and it’s tail hung sizzling forever.  The second day Melissa and Brian were in Stanley on a supply run and ran into the Freepeoples (who played the festival a couple nights prior) and invited them up to the cabin to stay.  They arrived a bit later with great energy, a battery-powered bass amp, and a bag full of percussive toys, and, collectively, a few decades worth of stories about being professional musicians in the Bay area and SoCal.  We jammed around the fire, cooked ears of corns and breasts of chickens over the fire, circled up in the darkness of the driveway and played hand drums while Melissa spun fire– channeling Polynesian ancestry magnificently– and even got to try out a couple new spinning-toys she just got.  Lots of soaking, a couple trips to the lodge for burgers and huckleberry shakes, and a stop at Kirkham Hotsprings on the drive back for one last earth-warmed shower to wash the mountain off us before returning to the city.

by Jesse Shell