Day 11 0f 365

The Light fest

Today was a late one but it was worth it. The event actually started with a short drive to a local outdoor concert venue. I'm sure it's because the location is in the middle of farmland Wisconsin and remote enough to launch thousands of fire lit floating lanterns. I've never been to a festival like this one and as beautiful as it was in the moment I believe I will only need to do this one time in my life.

The arrival is planned in stages for parking and they attempted to prevent traffic from backing up by staggering ticket sales every half hour. It didn't work. We were part of the first wave of parking and it took thirty minutes to get in the lot. We set up our chairs and enjoyed a picnic as we watched the next 3 hours of traffic flow in to the parking lot. I'm glad we were a part of the first wave. I recommend this for anyone doing the event in the future.

They sell food and swag at the site but we brought a picnic and enjoyed the live performances playing on stage. It was a very long wait and cell service was horrible so bring a deck of cards or a reclining chair so you can relax while waiting for the lanterns to fly.

When we finally got to lantern lighting it went in waves and that was fun to watch. There is a trick to filling them up and the crowd was very successful as you can see in the video. It was a melting pot of human beings and the lantern came with a pen so you could write whatever message you wanted to send in to the world.

I wrote 3 messages on mine.

1. Love is love, for all in the world struggling to live life without judgment.

2. 365 Let your light shine, to light my path for the year.

3. Just Live, to remember that losing any life to suicide and depression needs to end.