Lost Lands and Acorn Soup

The ponderings of a nostalgic mind after a life-changing Lost Lands 2023. Is the wonder of childhood actually ever that far off? When did we convince ourselves we lost it?

I dream that I’m back in that magical festival moment, when all I saw was my own hair flashing around me, in front of me, against my ears. When I came up for air only to watch the stage or the smile in so many big eyes. In my dreams I’m back in those blonde tangles, brushed out just to tangle up again. I’m back in flight, bounding off the ground for only moments at a time, seeming like forever and never at the same time. My only thoughts in these moments are a sort of abstracted generality, only able to be summarized by a happiness that blankets everything, not quite forming an opinion, but just pushing a smile onto my face. 

In these dreams my only goal is to keep balance as I bang my head, and to bang it so hard that my neck hurts. I look up and see friendship and love like sweet honey dripping from everyone’s smile, everyone’s laugh. There was a childlike wonder to all of it, a thoughtlessness and a simplicity. A safety and excitement that transcends anything I’ve felt to this day. What else could I have been thinking about? There was nothing else but the music and the family.

I often find myself chasing the questionless wonder I had as a girl. I watch children now playing soccer on the field I walk by daily. Their only thoughts are of the ball they chase, or the lunch they’ll eat after they kick it around a bit. Maybe there’s a daydreamer somewhere on that field, just like I was, whose head flies above the field, maybe in a plane, maybe with a bird, maybe not on this planet. That little dreamer will go home and sleep sweetly in their bed, planning on nothing more than waking up again tomorrow. I’m jealous of that thoughtlessness, when there’s no thought telling you to hold onto an unburdened mind, to no thoughts at all.

I stand at the base of a tree just halfway deadened, red on top, yellow in the middle, green on bottom. Leaves lie in a neat little circle at the base of it, as wide in diameter as its farthest reaching branches. Autumn in Minnesota. The trees are so quiet here; they don’t pulsate with the light they had in that Ohio valley or sway to crossing rhythms. They don’t get the hugs they did there, but rather sit solitary, making their own gentle rhythms. There’s abundant beauty in it all–the quiet park, distant sounds of children, the monarch disguised amidst falling leaves–but in the wake of the ecstasy felt under Lost skies, the quiet sounds more deafening than the bass of any song.

I walk over rain-softened acorns and then think of my sister, and the Acorn Soup we made as children. I want to text her, telling her it’s the time of year to remake that soup, but the thought of texting brings me to reality, to what exists now. I close my eyes and wish upon those watery acorns that I could go back to before I knew what a text was or the internet. To when I could simply pop my head up to her upper bunk and suggest an acorn soup session. Or when we would simply already be outside, as if we always existed there. We wouldn’t need to say a word to know that next we would be making our recipe in that green, dirt-caked pail. 

Making Acorn Soup goes like this: first the key ingredient goes in, water and acorns. Water goes first, so the acorns each make their own little plunk sounds when dropped in one by one. Then leaves go in, then dirt. Mix it all thoroughly, scraping the old dirt off the sides of the pail to mix with the new. Add twigs, mix some more. This is where you improvise, throwing in old dandelion and clover stems, bugs, worms, flowers, grass, any of it. When it’s at the right consistency, offer it to family and friends. Chase them around with the pail, just fast enough to spill a bit here and there, just close enough to the house for Mom to tell you to keep it off the porch, just high enough to avoid the dog’s bobbing snout. Take a break, have a snack, and leave the pail to gather rain. It will soon evaporate and everything will cake to the sides, and the process can restart and restart until it doesn’t anymore. The kids then get phones and cars and lives and worries–but before all of that you have it in a perfect moment: a surefire recipe for a memorable childhood.

Now, decades later, my sister grows someone else in her stomach, someone that will inherit our secret recipe. I’ll be right there making soup with that little someone, digging just a little beyond the acorns, beyond the worms, finding where my childhood lays to rest. I’ll unearth it and toss it into the sky like a proud father, catching and planting it firmly in the ground again so it can grow upwards again, in soil more rich and dense than it has ever had before.

Those Ohio skies and sounds brought me back for a fleeting weekend to those simple moments–songs that make you forget anything you think and dance, toys that you can swap and play with all day, jokes that have your body and your cheeks and your very heart hurting with the joy pushing at its seams. Of course, we do more adult activities now, said and unsaid, seen and unseen. We hurt and love and understand more deeply. We work so hard, try to stay strong, get broken down and built again a million times over. We work so hard to be Lost again, so we can wonder at things again, the way we did as children making Acorn Soup.

I try to capture these moments as I live them, but my brain is like a lagging internet browser–I’ve moved on to a new topic by the time it fully processes. It’s usually little things that snap me into the realization of things that aren’t present anymore. This time around, I found myself in the car when the realization of it all hit me–that I even went to Lost Lands at all, that I found people who see me. Those people are hard to come by, but not hard to keep, I’ve found. As I rode, I changed the music from electronic to a simple fall song, one I’ve loved for years. One that always brought me quiet comfort. Just shy of thirty seconds in, I felt tears bubbling up hot and spilling down my cheeks, and I thought:

Take me back to the bass hits that touched the deepest reaches of my soul that hadn’t received care in ages, and didn’t know they needed it. Take me to where dust flies low, lights fly high, and hearts soar above everything. Take me back to scrunched faces, gritty bass, sore legs, and tired smiles. Take me back to Lost Lands, where I found so much.

Fighting off post-fest depression goes like this: the key ingredient is yourself. Sit with yourself for a moment, in the quiet, in the stillness. Let the silence be loud for a moment, don’t try to hold your mind or breath back. After a moment–you’ll know how long of a moment–breathe deep. Slow down. Let everything be slow. Go for a walk, a run, a bike ride, a workout–don’t listen to music. Let the sounds of outside be their own music, their own beautiful. See the squirrels chase each other and the Monarch flit around. Open your chest, let them flutter and patter around, dinging against your ribcage and running up and down your spine until they escape into the nearby treeline. Allow them to massage you, heal you. Feel your legs move with the muscle that walked and ran and danced you through that magical Ohio valley. Feel the grass between your toes, growing through your feet, connecting you to the ground. Appreciate it all. Make yourself a good meal, and soak up the nourishment from it. Lay your head on the chest of your person or people, and know that nothing is real, everything is leading you where you need to be, and wonder has no age limit. The quiet will stop being so loud soon.