At dawn on July 4th I headed down to the Twisp River Park, as I have every July 4th for the past 12 years (except for 2020-2021, due to — of course — the pandemic). The previous night’s downpour had driven rivulets down driveways, broken branches, and generally made a mess of things.
It had also filled up the canopies of eight of the 20 pop-up tents my Methow Arts colleagues and I had set up in the park in preparation for the 35th Methow Arts Fest, causing the pole frameworks to snap and collapse in a twisted wreck. The morning of Arts Fest we weren’t yet sure if the tents were salvageable and what we would do if they weren’t, but that concern paled in comparison to weather worries; the forecast was grim — rain, heavy rain, thunderstorms.
As I drove into the mist, Bill Withers’ silken voice poured through my radio: “I hear the crystal raindrops fall and the beauty of it all when the sun comes shining through.” Withers’ lyrics (on the anniversary of his birthday, no less) flipped my perspective. The rain would come or it wouldn’t, and the festival would go on, and compared to what was happening in the rest of the county, the country, the world, we’d be lucky if the worst thing that happened was a rainy Arts Fest.
We got even luckier; it didn’t rain until the end of the day, the tents held up, and the festival went as planned.
Throughout the festival, students who last attended Arts Fest as children returned as teens to help us with nearly every aspect of the event, from set up to ticket sales to art booths to clean up. Many of these kids put in six or seven hours of volunteer time that day. As they were leaving, a few of them remarked on what it felt like to be part of the team coordinating an event that was so important to their younger selves. Suddenly on the other side of the table, they saw Arts Fest in a new light.
Coincidentally, this year’s Arts Fest theme was “Superheroes.” While volunteering at a nonprofit event doesn’t quite fit the classic definition of “heroic,” seeing this new generation of youth stepping in to help where they were needed reminded me that it is these tiny acts of generosity and selflessness that build awareness of one’s own role in creating community.
Later, after Arts Fest, someone commented on the “countless volunteers” that make Arts Fest possible every year. Sometimes it feels that way — these scores of volunteers bustling about making events happen. But in fact they’re very countable: 124 this year — 124 humans, every one of them doing a very specific task to ensure the success of an experience, their cumulative efforts adding up to something bigger than the sum of their parts. It’s a good reminder: At times we may feel like we’re one of the “countless,” but each one of us can do something that counts.
