CAPTIVE IN COVENTRY

                Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:42pm
                Subject: Phish in the Kingdom

                To begin, a story:

                As my friends and I are moving our three car caravan out of the campgrounds and
                into day parking (the better to make a fast getaway, when the time comes), we
                travel along the back road, nearest the entrance.  It's about 12:30 or so.  We
                move slowly down the muddy track, and, as we move, there materializes a gentleman
                with an exceptional mustache, sporting a grey tee shirt with the slogan 'I Live
                Here' written on it.  There are amazingly good vibrations coming off this man, and
                as we pass him I say, "Nice shirt."  To which he smiles a bit, and waves, and then
                he is behind us, making his way into the heart of "the maelstrom."

                Second, let me offer a blanket statement of gratitude:

                After 22 hours in a car to get to a rendezvous in Montpelier, and after spending
                the better part of the next 24 hours on Highway 14, words become inadequate in
                expressing what it is like to feel Rt. 5 under the wheels of our car, to look down
                that hill and see Coventry village spreading out below us, to see the encouraging
                signs and smiles of the people who live in this magical place.  What you have done
                with this narrative photoblog is to capture that feeling in megapixels, to make
                for posterity a chronicle of what it was like to be there.  And for that, if
                nothing else, you deserve steamy gushes of thanks.

                But there's more:

                For letting us come to your town, for putting up with the perfectly named trust
                fund brats, for understanding that a lot of the people cruising by your little
                piece of paradise were doing their best to keep it paradisical by keeping their
                trash in the damn car, for making every possible sacrifice for 70,000 strangers,
                and, most of all, for getting in the middle of us and seeing it, really taking it
                in, the beautiful and the beastly...thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

                In closing, another story:

                Sunday night, as we are making our fast getaway for home, inexplicably traveling
                freely back down Rt. 5, I sit in the backseat of our car, watching the dark
                Vermont countryside blur past.  The love of my life is nestled against me, two of
                my best friends on earth are in front, and an era in my life of unlooked for and
                wholly transcendant musical bliss has just come to a satisfactory conclusion.  I
                look to my left, and floating on a perfectly picteresque Vermont barn is a
                Christmas-light peace sign.  It is stunning in its brightness, it is gorgeous in
                its rightness.  And a final piece of some ever changing puzzle slides into place. 
                I am content, and I am on my way home.

                Thanks again, and long days, and pleasant nights, and peace.

                John Shepherd
                St. Louis, MO