Another round of festival season is slowly yet surely approaching – and this year will bring together music lovers, festival frequenters, and first-time explorers alike for a gathering of shared interests and values. Such days will be filled with love and whimsical shenanigans with one another – squad and strangers alike – as we all escape the boring/harsh/mean realities of everyday life. However, nature does inevitably call at times, things can and do happen, and such wide-scale events, which are mostly outdoors (especially in the summertime), are susceptible to change(s) at any given moment, for any given reason.
The past year alone has seen some unplanned festival circumstances, for example:
- Brazil’s Atmosphere Festival experienced the tragic loss of DJ Kaleb Freitas, along with 3 injured, due to a high-wind storm on 17 Dec.
- T.O.’s own Electric Island, after an entire summer of being held on the mainland rather than at its home venue (Toronto Island) due to flooding, got to celebrate its 2-Day Labour Day season finale on the island – only to evacuate the island on the second day (4 Sep), thanks to an approaching thunderstorm.
- The 20th annual Shambhala Music Festival (11-14 Aug) was under heavy watch by the festival’s organizers and local government officials, because of the British Columbia wildfire situation occurring throughout the summer.
The latter state of affairs was quite an event in itself, to say the very least. As amazing as the festival undoubtedly was, being fully aware of the severity of BC’s wildfire situation really helped reality sink in, amidst all of the magic, surrealism and wonder taking place deep within the mountains that week.
Although the haze concealed the glorious mountain scenery, the smiles were inevitable and strong throughout the weekend.
As a quick refresher of what went down over the extended weekend: on Wednesday, the first evening of early entry onto the festival grounds, we received notice of an evacuation alert nearby – it didn’t affect us at the time, but was meant to make us aware, should the situation change. It wasn’t until Saturday that we received an update, which announced the evacuation alert extending to the festival grounds, as well as a full-blown evacuation order for the nearby Nelway area. Later that same day, Shambhala made the announcement that it was cancelling its third and final night.
The first thing on a lot of our minds, after literally months of saving, budgeting, planning, dreaming, creating, and sharing on social media how ecstatic we were to celebrate such a milestone, was a despondent wave of sadness. Nonetheless, we fully understood the situation- it was to ensure our utmost safety; being shrouded by heavy smog from the constant wildfires helped us grasp the gravity of the situation. Still, there was a small glimmer of hope deep within, which told us that “maybe it could somehow come back on.”
10:00am Sunday morning, after sleeping through my 9:00 alarm, my buddy ventured deep into the forest to find my tent, shake me awake, and inform me that the festival didn’t come back on – thus we all needed to leave. Just as he and I dismantled/packed up my tent and belongings, we heard two people screaming and dashing through the forest, hollering that the organizers have decided that the show will go on for the final evening after all!
What if the conditions didn’t turn out like that? What if, through some unfortunate turn of events, they got worse?
What’s more is that later that night, after 50 days of drought, we were doused with heavy rainfall, 3 minutes to midnight. All we could think to do was cheer incredulously, dance in the rain, and hug one another as we cried into each other’s shoulders. Monday morning, as we packed up and left the farm, I took a long, hard look at the first instance of a clear blue sky, since arriving in the province almost a week prior.
Such a happy, magical fairy-tale-like ending is undoubtedly perfect for a place such as Shambhala. But back things up a bit, in regards to the reality aspect once more. What if the conditions didn’t turn out like that? What if, through some unfortunate turn of events, they got worse? There were those who, like me, slept scattered throughout the forest because we stayed up ’till sunrise to catch Calyx & TeeBee and Spiral Architects at The Village, well past sunrise, knowing it was in our best interests to leave as soon as possible for safety’s sake.
On the other hand, those who took heed of the weekend-long warnings and left early to avoid traffic for the evacuation were reasonably upset by the “change of mind”, if you will. Some claimed to have already gotten as far as Kelowna, an approx. 4-hour drive from the farm, and well beyond. Despite the option to return to the festival hassle-free (with wristbands intact), it wasn’t feasible for some – which led to some inevitable disdain, missing out on the final night.
There’s no such thing as a perfect situation when it comes to things like these. And the decision to hold the final night after all was far from an easy one for the coordinators to make, given the artist cancellations/replacements that followed, as well as potential financial losses – for attendees, workers, festival organizers, and everyone in-between. From an attendee viewpoint, there were some costumes that likely never got worn. (Yes, some of us came with a different costume for each day!) Flights/trips back home were probably thrown out of whack for some, especially those who left early.
And to top it all off, it was damn near impossible to take in one particularly hard truth. Shambhala is so wondrous, to the point that it doesn’t seem like it’s real. As I mentioned following my first Shamb experience last year, “everything is like one continuous dream which you know is actually occurring“. To have that knowingly taken away/cut short was a brutal wake-up call – being deprived of its loving sense of farmily/community, along with some of the absolute best of the underground (Shambhala itself is quite a tastemaker in the electronic music scene), was quite a dampener on an extravagantly-hyped summer.
Despite all these setbacks, the way in which it was handled by the Shambhala team, from pre- to start to finish, was top-class, given the situation’s unpredictable nature. Staying on top of the wildfire updates every single hour, for multiple days on end, was an arduous task in itself, especially while simultaneously ensuring that the festival was running smoothly and to schedule. And as much as the wildfires were raging in the back of our minds, there was a general feeling of safety throughout the week, which helped put some, if not most, of our minds at ease for the better part of it all.
Looking towards the 2018 season, no matter what may go down this summer, I wish to say have fun, be safe, and let’s continue to be there for one another in whatever way we can – let’s prove that PLUR isn’t truly burnt out. <3
PIctures courtesy of Alex Pflaum – check out the full Shamb 2017 gallery on our Facebook page!
