Please enjoy this beautiful write-up from father/daughter duo and Strawberrians, Vienna and Michael Harvey. To learn and read more, visit their website Leaving A Clean Wake here.
Written by Vienna and Michael Harvey
Nothing says “Strawberry” like a banana.
A banana popsicle, that is, from the popsicle cart at the Strawberry Music Festival—a core childhood memory for the Harvey girls! Bonus points if you get it dipped in chocolate and nuts.
That said, we first learned about the festival several years before any Harvey girls appeared on the scene. While trying to get home from the New Orleans Jazz Fest in the early 90s, Michael got stranded in a small hotel by a storm of epic proportions. The first floor flooded, roads were impassable, and all flights were grounded. (As far as we know, no bodies in any local cemeteries floated to the surface, although that does actually happen in New Orleans during major floods!) In one of those serendipitous encounters that keep life so interesting, Michael struck up a conversation with a stranded Jazz Fest couple who told him about Strawberry. It immediately went on the “must go someday” list.
Nestled in the Sierra Nevada, the Strawberry Music Festival launched in 1982 and has been going strong ever since. For decades, the festival was held twice a year over Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends at Camp Mather, near Yosemite. Then, in 2013, the largest wildfire in California’s history to that point broke out near enough to the festival grounds that organizers were forced to cancel the event. Although Camp Mather itself was spared, San Francisco County authorities and festival organizers realized that inviting thousands of people to a remote mountain retreat with only a narrow road in and out would make safe evacuation in the future too risky.
The disruption and relocation to a new venue might have tanked almost any other event, but the festival proved amazingly resilient thanks in no small part to its founding ethos—the Strawberry Way—an ethos that deeply permeates the festival to this day. The commitment of staff, volunteers, and a diverse audience allowed the festival to rebound and thrive. Long before Burning Man, the Strawberry Way emphasized kindness, community, and a strong leave-no-trace sustainable mindset. Given the focus of this newsletter, you will not be surprised to learn that the Strawberry Way and Leaving a Clean Wake have much in common… More on that in a moment
The Harveys first attended Strawberry in the fall of 1997 when Vienna was three and Rhiannon had just turned one. We flew from Seattle to Sacramento, rented a car, and—with only a vague idea of what to expect—joined nearly 7,000 attendees in the night-before lineup along the winding road in.
Once inside the festival grounds, the hunt was on for a campsite. Experienced attendees headed for their favorite spots. We followed our noses to a flat area under trees near a meadow and pitched our tents. (Actually, “tent,” singular. Ginny and the girls enjoyed the tent while Michael slept in a bivy sack!) We found ourselves next to an experienced father and daughter camping in their van and quickly struck up an enduring friendship.
For the next several years, that same spot and those same friends became festival touchstones for us and we attended regularly until we set off on our boat trip. (As it turns out, getting from Central America to northern California is a lot more challenging than getting from Seattle to NorCal!)
Almost immediately, we found ourselves ensconced in “The Strawberry Way.” Everyone gave a warm “hello” to everyone. In addition to the music unfolding on multiple stages, programming included non-stop activities for families with toddlers and young kids: face painting, arts and crafts, nature walks to find frogs, a parade, swimming in the lake. Teens got to set up their own radio station to broadcast during the event alongside the official festival “Hog Ranch Radio.” Impromptu acoustic jams wafted through the air into the wee hours of the morning. As dusk settled over the venue, free-range kids of all ages played with glow sticks in the meadow adjoining the main stage with parents generally confident that their children would find them before dark.
No surprise, families with young kids remain Strawberry mainstays, and years later those kids return as adults with kids of their own. Couples have gotten engaged and babies have been made at Strawberry (although as far as we know, no babies have actually been born there!).
And the music, oh the music! For the same reason that reading a print magazine is so much more satisfying than reading an algorithmically generated selection of digital news, attending a music festival curated by a creative team with a strong vision always delights and surprises. Alongside the well-known headliners over the years—John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris, Bela Fleck, Mary Chapin Carpenter—we listened to countless acts we never would have heard of otherwise. That first year, for example, we were blown away by Nickel Creek, already virtuosos at ages 16 and 17, opening the evening set on the main stage. Ours were not the only jaws that dropped during their set.
After many years away, we made a glorious return to Strawberry in 2024. It was our first time at the Nevada County Fairgrounds, but the new-to-us location proved to be lovely and the spirit of Strawberry had carried over uninterrupted. We spent five glorious days in an RV, reveling in our return. We discovered new bands and revisited some we knew and loved (the Banana Slug String Band, anyone??). We ate lots of popsicles and tried not to melt in the heat of the day, only to layer up for the much cooler nights.
Like Leaving a Clean Wake itself, the Strawberry Way isn’t a prescriptive checklist—it’s a way of being in the world that informs how we show up. It’s grounded in awareness, care, and mutual responsibility. And like Leaving a Clean Wake, its flexibility and adaptability help explain why it has endured so long and so well. It is hard to overstate how deeply affirming and restorative it is to spend time enmeshed within a community deeply committed to a shared ethos that prizes a genuine regard for your fellow beings and the world around you. While our Clean Wake maxim may not be known, its spirit lies at the heart of Strawberry and is fully embraced by organizers, attendees, and musicians alike.
But it’s not just us who feel like something magical happens at Strawberry. From the beginning, we’ve been particularly struck by the fact that just about every single act gives some kind of acknowledgment during their set that Strawberry is and has something special. Performers consistently gave shoutouts to the festival organizers, sound engineers, staff, and volunteers; the audience; the location; and the overall feel of the whole thing. Meanwhile in the audience, we cheered enthusiastically for everyone on stage, and everyone got a standing ovation at the end of their set.
This year, possibly the most enthusiastic audience participation, though, was for the Banana Slug String Band as they returned to the Strawberry main stage to celebrate a whopping 40th anniversary as a band. The Banana Slugs are known for kids’ songs that spread positive environmental messages and science lessons disguised in funny lyrics and costumes.
Adults in the audience had made signs: “Need a hug? Hug a slug!,” “SLIME ME,” and the like. Everyone, no matter the age, committed to dancing the Water Cycle Boogie (and, based on our personal experiences, we can guarantee that a lot of people had it stuck in their heads for quite a while afterwards). People (including us) reminisced about seeing the Banana Slugs years ago, including some fond memories from many adults of being among the kids who got to go on stage with the band.
Beyond the Slugs, the performers over the past two years have continued the sterling music quality that Strawberry is famous for. Headliners like Dan Tyminski and Aoife O’Donovan & Hawktail shared the stage with newcomers and lesser known acts like Yasmin Williams, Abby Posner, Brianna Mai Colliard & the Desert Marigolds, Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley, and Water Tower, this latter possibly the most energetic bluegrass band we have ever beheld. Their performance on the main stage rocked the house, but their set at Amy’s Orchid Lounge, Strawberry’s 21+ after-hours club, was absolutely over the top. If you get a chance to see any of these performers live, take it.
We could go on and on extolling the festival and the Strawberry Way: the “Strawberry Stroll” where it’s actually fun to wait in line early in the morning to claim your spots in the music meadow; a ubiquitous focus on sustainability (no single use plastics, encouraging attendees to bring their own reusable cups); the Straw-bar-ry daily happy hour hosted for free by a family who sets up near the entrance gate every year just because; adults without kids who nonetheless stay to cheer for the kids’ parade…
Not dissimilar to the readjustment we had to make when returning to life ashore after four years of sailing, with its leave a clean wake ethos, there is always a bit of a letdown when leaving the festival and returning to the real world. Rhiannon notes the culture shock when people don’t automatically smile as they wish each other “happy Strawberry.” But with more than forty years of history behind it, we are confident that the festival will endure—and that, at least twice a year, any one of us can get a glimpse of what life might look like if kindness, mindfulness, and leaving a clean wake were the norm rather than the exception.
If you ever get the chance, we promise that making the pilgrimage to Strawberry will more than repay the effort it takes to get there. If you’ve been to Strawberry (or a festival like it), let us know in the comments—we’d love to hear your memories. And if you decide to go, who knows? Maybe we’ll be there to wish you a “Happy Strawberry!”
Photos Courtesy of Vienna and Michael Harvey
