Storytelling at Tygart

I have to say it was an unusual experience. When I checked in at the lodge, I asked about the site for storytelling that evening. "The fire circle," I was told, "down at the campground."

So Jaime and I drove down to check it out. It was a fire circle, all right, next to a playground. No electric outlet for my sound system (and had I brought the battery-powered one? of course not!). The playground was right beside the fire circle, so I could already envision the challenges I would face trying to tell stories there.

I checked on the power--was there any way it could be run to the fire circle? No, apparently not. The person I'd set the gig up with had left and two others had been in the position in the meantime. Details got lost in the shuffle.

So I took it as I found it. The audience trickled in, two, then three, finally about 10 people at start time. As we sang my opening song, a few more drifted over. I went next to my raccoon puppet since the audience was half young children, half adult. The puppet is always a hit and this night was no exception. More kids and adults came over, a few kids on bikes stopped to listen. The crowd varied between 10 and 25 at any given time.

I had my story bag along, a fall-back measure in case the audience was mostly children (usually in the parks, I have adults, but occasionally there are more children present). A child volunteered to select an item from the bag. We told that story, then another from the bag, then another. The audience swelled and waned. Smoke from the fire was hard on my voice but the evening was chilly so the warmth felt good.

The playground noise grew, the storytelling audience grew, the fire smoked. I told stories for 50 minutes and finally had to stop because my asthma was struggling with the smoke. I thanked the people there for coming and prepared to leave.

That was when the evening turned surprising--and very fun. People came over to ask questions: where did I get the stories I told? did I tell ghost stories? how did I get started telling stories? and on and on. We stayed around the fire talking for almost two hours after the stories were over. No one was in a hurry to leave. When I finally said good night and left, there were still quite a few people gathered around the fire.

It was strange--I worked hard to reach an audience in a setting that was less than ideal. And yet a bond was formed and the diverse group became a community, bonded by stories. It was a hard gig, but also one of the most fun I've ever done.