Backwoods at Mulberry Mountain “23 Compendium

It was a time for magnanimity. Better not to fall victim to hubris when living in the pocket of the forest. The morels and ramps were bursting in Boone as Bfly and Lucienda hit the road for Ozark, Arkansas. They’d received the call from Backwoods media and for the third year the wranglers krewe was heading to Backwoods at Mulberry Mountain. They came together for a weekend of music, art, haggling and interconfusion with Kansas City chicken hawks. It was manageable, reasonable fun with visual artists, vendors, pizza and moments of blinding confusion accompanied by fetal positions. Scattered memories of The String Cheese Incident, The Floozies,  Big Gigantic, Lettuce and more continued to flashback combined with visions of late night speakeasies, blackjack, tanks and tea parties. It’s greasy, mountain fun. Welcome to Backwoods at Mulberry Mountain.

The rest of the fam was attending Billy in St. Augustine, camping in Anastasia Park, right on the Atlantic Ocean. That would have been the plan for the wranglers but when Mulberry Mountain shines the wook signal, it’s time to go. Arkansauce, Keller, Andy Frasco, Neighbor, Papadosio, Sunsquabi, Pigeons, and The Polish Ambassador filled the days and nights with more music than can be danced to. Kamp Happiness posted up in the shade of VIPness where they got run off from ADA and ended up on Shakedown. Bfly liked to be on the skreets where she could vibe with the passerbys and work the Circle K? Trading Post. The Chesafreak was there, just back from Coachella with a new sore above his lip. Tough titty said the kitty but the milk tastes good.

Andy had green hair like a Wisconsin chicken hawk and he brought the world’s cheapest tequila. “Welcome to Wisconsin, we eat people.” The last time Lucienda consumed El Toro was Sandy Hook, NJ and a night of black-out fun. “Why no officer, I don’t remember anything out of the “ordinary”. Friday night was a serious experiment in interrogation techniques. Bass all night? Music can be used as a tool of psychological warfare. The term “music torture” is sometimes used to describe the practice. While it is acknowledged by United States interrogation experts to cause discomfort, it has also been characterized as having no “long-term effects”. Good news to be sure as the bass did not stop at Backwoods. Might as well, might as well.

Methods of interrogation often reported include prolonged sleep deprivation (check); cheap whiskey (check); exposure to loud music (check); prolonged boofing and exposure to bright lights. She’d been a Seabee and had witnessed her share of of sleep deprivation interviews. With strobe lights and loud music, she said it would take four days to break someone doing an interrogation, sixteen hours with lights and music on and four hours off. What some call torture Lucienda called a Friday night in Arkansas. Don’t be askeert.

Ka’aoli would have agreed, Saturday’s are for the ladies and this one was no exception. String Cheese and inordinate spending were the faces of the day. Who was that artist with the neck tattoos who made spit bubbles when she spoke

This is  Backwoods. You best know what you’re getting into.

The Kansas City thugs were hell bent on winning back Baitbucket’s 50th birthday party which he’d lost at this very table two years earlier. Kicked out of Suwannee with Holly? Yes? Birthday celebration? No, ceptin’ some groundscored crotch vodka. Homesteading the week before Hulaween is about as easy as finding a public restroom in Nicaragua. Wook fishing was definitely in season in Arkansas with a length of 40″-65″ and a bag aggregate of 3 per angler. Lures to watch out for were candy bracelets, lighters and light sticks. Lucy had shaved her back and was ready for action.

Somewhere along the line Lucienda had done something strange and terrible to her central nervous system. Maybe it was the Toro, maybe something else in the chemical toilet that was her stomach. She’d found herself in a portal-let trying to escape her union suit which proved endless blockage under the multiple layers. She was reaching some kind of breaking point and everything was again slipping into the bad place. Why was a bowel movement turning into a damned Rubik’s cube? Why was he wearing a straight jacket in the shitter? She’d never worn a onsie into a portal-let in her life and here she was having a tug-o-war with Clayopheus’ long johns.

New Directions? Go to the muddiest campsite and take a left two clicks. Then look for the stealie flag and the blinking lights. You can’t miss it. What you call candles, the law calls incendiaries. Also, mortars are incendiaries and can be used at the blackjack table and must be smuggled in cleavage. When times get real crispy, make your way to  Cody’s for a bonafide tea party, in the middle of all this upside down silliness.

Visit the Backwoods website and like their social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Kudos for the Green Team as they kept the site sparkling fresh in spite of Kansas City trash like Matt and Ryan. Save the date for next year. 4/18/24-4/21/24

Check out more Backwoods articles from the archives including The Year of the Goat and like the wrangler social media channels on Facebook, Instragram, Twitter and YouTube. Yes, goats need tennis balls on their antlers and apparently some people smell their stink more than others. Guilty as charged. Once the goat stink is one you, it doesn’t come off. Remain close to the pocket and follow the wranglers’ festival krewe as they head to Something in the Water, Shaky Knees, Hangout and Rockville. Paul and Lil D Big Arel will be at Gulf Shores covering Hangout festival. The easiest way to find them is to use your Google maps and type in, “thugs near me”. The real trouble comes when the crowd meets up at Summer Camp in Chilicothe and then next week at Mountain Music Festival in New River Gorge, WV. That’s plenty of silliness stuffed into two weeks. Tick checks are important because bells palsy is no excuse for bad behavior. Plan A remains in effect.