Horse Festival Dream
4.11.2008 by nambot
Horse Festival Dream
The festival took place in my hometown, Nevada City, which was, in its day, one of California's most lucratie Gold Rush towns. Gold mines in Nevada County operated for about a hundred years, and everything within the downtown area has been designated a National Historical Landmark, as have many additional sites nearby. The downtown district consists of about a dozen blocks lined with vintage "Old West" buildings constructed just after the last spate of city-wide fires around the turn of the last century. These streets are closed off for various holidays and festivals throughout the year, and this was the case in my dream. However, instead of celebrating, for example, Christmas with kettle corn and kids shoved onto the streets in Victorian garb playing nostalgia-laden instruments, we were celebrating horses. Both admission and horse-riding were free, and the boundaries of the festival included Pioneer Park, which is about a third of a mile down the road. Cars were not allowed anywhere in sight, any parked vehicles that remained on the streets the night before the festival were towed. Visitors were either bussed in or encouraged to ride bikes.
Although the proceedings seemed to have been well organized, once festival-goers were matched with a horse there were no rules whatsoever, and everybody was riding around and going nuts. Horses were corralled in a large pen at the bottom of the main street behind The National Hotel, waiting for riders to take them out. The festival was well-attended, but there was always lots of room, and my friends and I stuck together in a pack. When somebody got lost, we'd call them up on their phone. By mid-morning, horses had taken over town, and the streets seemed to have responded to their new hooved traffic by turning into a grassy, weedy, rocky, dry field, becoming a huge, grid-patterned pasture. Even a bridge over the freeway, and the empty freeway beneath, had turned into grassland. At one point, an iconoclastic long-time resident and firm believer in alternative energy crashed the event in an electric golf cart, but was thwarted and dragged off by the police. Of course, the festival encouraged renewable fuel options, but was more concerned with human or animal-powered transportation, and specifically celebrated The Horse.
After three days of eating, drinking and riding, the city reopened its grassy streets to cars. Accustomed now to a more wild state of being, the streets never bothered to return to their previous paved incarnation.
The festival took place in my hometown, Nevada City, which was, in its day, one of California's most lucratie Gold Rush towns. Gold mines in Nevada County operated for about a hundred years, and everything within the downtown area has been designated a National Historical Landmark, as have many additional sites nearby. The downtown district consists of about a dozen blocks lined with vintage "Old West" buildings constructed just after the last spate of city-wide fires around the turn of the last century. These streets are closed off for various holidays and festivals throughout the year, and this was the case in my dream. However, instead of celebrating, for example, Christmas with kettle corn and kids shoved onto the streets in Victorian garb playing nostalgia-laden instruments, we were celebrating horses. Both admission and horse-riding were free, and the boundaries of the festival included Pioneer Park, which is about a third of a mile down the road. Cars were not allowed anywhere in sight, any parked vehicles that remained on the streets the night before the festival were towed. Visitors were either bussed in or encouraged to ride bikes.
Although the proceedings seemed to have been well organized, once festival-goers were matched with a horse there were no rules whatsoever, and everybody was riding around and going nuts. Horses were corralled in a large pen at the bottom of the main street behind The National Hotel, waiting for riders to take them out. The festival was well-attended, but there was always lots of room, and my friends and I stuck together in a pack. When somebody got lost, we'd call them up on their phone. By mid-morning, horses had taken over town, and the streets seemed to have responded to their new hooved traffic by turning into a grassy, weedy, rocky, dry field, becoming a huge, grid-patterned pasture. Even a bridge over the freeway, and the empty freeway beneath, had turned into grassland. At one point, an iconoclastic long-time resident and firm believer in alternative energy crashed the event in an electric golf cart, but was thwarted and dragged off by the police. Of course, the festival encouraged renewable fuel options, but was more concerned with human or animal-powered transportation, and specifically celebrated The Horse.
After three days of eating, drinking and riding, the city reopened its grassy streets to cars. Accustomed now to a more wild state of being, the streets never bothered to return to their previous paved incarnation.