Back at the turn of the century, Susan and I were in our sixties and beginning to think about retiring from active participation in our business. Peg Mayo, local author, psychotherapist, all round good woman, and her partner Don were doing gatherings of friends they called “Hoo Ha’s.” A Hoo-Ha is a pot-luck on the sandy beach of the river flowing through their property. It always included a huge elaborately designed fire, built and executed by Don. Besides the general convivial atmosphere, she usually provided a ceremony and group activities. At one, she asked each of us to think about something we wanted to do or accomplish in the coming decade. Out of the blue, knowing little about it, I said, “I want to go to the Burning Man Festival.”
Two years later we did just that, and it was the beginning of seven years of coordinating what became “The Elders” theme camp. We daily hosted an afternoon party with wine, crackers and brie, a background music of Bach rather than the more common techno, and opportunity for much intergenerational talk. We called the party “Brie, Bach and Talk.” Already we, and our 25 or so other elder camp mates , were well beyond the average Burning Man participant age. Would people come with hundreds of other opportunities available?
We were actually surprised that it worked. We would commonly have 80 to 100 people drop by, partially to drink wine, but mainly they came to talk, to chat with us about life’s issues, hopes, dreams, desires and problems. I enjoyed these afternoon get together immensely.
I remember one afternoon two couples came by, we chatted, and all of a sudden the two young woman just got up and left. “What happened?” we wondered. A few minutes they came back, red eyed and tears still streaming, and they said, “We just love the elders, but where are you in our daily lives. ” They were from LA, and they went on to say that they simply never have any contact with people outside their age cohort, other than parents and grandparents, and they are often far away.. “Where are you,” she plaintively asked. That is still our question. As we age it is very difficult to find and maintain young twenties, and thirties friends.
These memories of a decade and a half ago surfaced this morning as I was moving photos from Microsoft’s one drive. They had just sent me a note that I was over their new limit for free storage. A short video that I had done as a prelude to a Burning Man presentation popped up.
It’s, unfortunately a low resolution version, and I have no idea where the original might have gotten stored – if it did. But, I decided even the low resolution three minute montage of slides might be interesting to folks. It certainly has been one of our more intense and enjoyable aging experiences.