On the way to the mountain, we drove past some serious mansions in the town of Sturbridge, where there is “old money.” Not that the Berkshires, generally speaking, are exactly thriving, at least from an economic standpoint. Mansions and double-wide baby strollers notwithstanding, we were, according to my friend, in what could be considered “the Detroit of Western Massachusetts,” meaning that the middle or working class has been decimated by a loss of manufacturing jobs. “Oh, you mean it’s just like Manhattan,” I said, and we both laughed the resigned and rueful laughs of those too old to worry about the downward trajectory of western civilization, at least in any practical terms. Still, as we began our ascent, it seemed incredible that at one point in time a government agency had acquired the money (presumably through “taxes”) to carve out a path and steps through the woods, allowing any member of the public to make the hike and enjoy the view. Based on the evidence in front of me, we used to be very democratic!¹ If the New World were being discovered today, I reckoned the best spots would be sold off for condominiums with wraparound terraces and infinity pools. (Moreover, I would probably be first in line to buy one if I had the money.)

¹ I later learned that the preserve was given to a trust by a private landowner in 1899, along with an endowment, but whatever, you know what I’m saying. Just take a trip to your local state or national park, and you'll see what I mean.

Rather than lose myself in the quagmire of socioeconomics, I focused on the moss-and-fern-and-white-birch aesthetic that made problems of any stripe seem very far away. We passed a group of students staring at a tin of what I had to believe were hallucinogenic brownies, and I felt sorry and not sorry that I wasn’t also tripping my ass off. We paused to let a little eft cross the path in front of us. (The eft being the land-based stage of the red-spotted newt, and also a denizen of crossword puzzles.) “He thinks he’s hiding from us,” my friend said, and I knew exactly how the eft felt.

As we soldiered ever higher, I asked my friend why this mountain was called “Monument Mountain.” He told me that “during William Cullen Bryant’s sojourn in Great Barrington (1815–1825), Bryant penned a lyrical poem that tells the story of a Mohican maiden whose forbidden love for her cousin led her to leap to her death from the mountain’s cliffs. In the poem, Mohicans created a rock cairn on the spot where she lay buried, giving the mountain its name—Mountain of the Monument.” In fact, as you probably guessed, my friend said no such thing and I learned this story from an ex post facto Google search.

Another forbidden-love fact I learned from the website about Monument Mountain was that Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne had once hiked up here together. After being caught in a rainstorm they had found shelter in a cave, where they had engaged in a “vigorous discussion” that had inspired Melville to pen Moby-Dick.

Eventually we reached the summit, where we were joined by what may have been an Eastern Kingbird.

I admired the sculptural, wind-shaped boughs of the nearby pines. I looked over the vista in every direction. None of this forest was “old growth,” meaning that it had all been chopped down before it was allowed to regrow. It was a thought that was both sad and comforting as I watched the bird, now joined by its mate, scurry through the white rocks, looking for whatever it needed to stay alive.

Matthew Gallaway lives in Washington Heights and is the author of The Metropolis Case.

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But Austin during SXSW is not a good test-case for “real world application.” A restaurant in Austin can be “trending” with 225 people checking-in. Right now in Los Angeles, you’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant within five miles that has two check-ins.

Here the online world is your real world. And it goes both ways: here you actually become friends with online comrades, away, for a moment, from the keyboard.

There are lots of people who have specific purposes for being in Austin. Representing a brand. Promoting an app. Finding investors for their start-up. These people use their corporate cultures to attend events strategically: “This specific Venture Capitalist will be at X party at Y time!” And they’ll keep a calendar to maximize their time, and hand out the most business cards.

But those visiting Austin without expense accounts or immediate deadlines wander SXSW with no real idea where to go. Since we have no structure telling us what we should do, and there are too many events going on (and my SXSW app doesn’t work), we travel by our basic human desires.

I have become a hunter gatherer, mostly using technology instead of eyeballs. “Where can I get free food? Where can I take a shit? Where can I become intoxicated at no charge?”

Once you’re guided by base desires, you don’t worry where you’re going, or the context of the place. You just follow your social media applications toward free hot dogs and unlimited “organic margaritas.”

* * *

I left the press suite to upgrade from cold breakfast tacos to beers and grilled cheese. A friend heard about “beer and brats” sponsored by Miller. We shared stories about being preyed on by the Hipster Grifter because of our immaculate beards. I went to a "trailer park" sponsored by Hewlett Packard for sour gummy worms. (Trailer park = "a pop-up experience that houses a community of creative influencers.") I went to Cracked.com’s party for artisanal empanadas and cocktails. Many of these complimentary items were fertilized by the blood of Demand Media content farmers.

But you cannot have a conscience when you are looking to satisfy your needs. You should however at least wonder how long you can survive on booze and food that’s all the same color.

Previously: In Austin, Tweeting is Currency

Joshua Heller has a fake startup called Logjammr.

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A Haitian student walking home through Petionville, in Port au Prince.

Woman in a marketplace in Petionville section of Port au Prince.

Volunteers with the Materials Management Relief Corps (www.mmrc-us.org/), an NGO based in Port au Prince, play soccer with orphans at an orphanage near Port au Prince.

The U.N. airbase adjacent to Toussaint Louverture Airport.

En route to Saint Louis du Nord in the north of Haiti.

En route to Saint Louis du Nord in the north of Haiti.

En route to Saint Louis du Nord in the north of Haiti.

The northern coast of Haiti, in the vicinity of St. Louis du Nord.

En route to Saint Louis du Nord in the north of Haiti.

The northern coast of Haiti, near St. Louis du Nord.

The UN airbase in St. Louis du Nord, northern Haiti.

An Argentinian soldier stands guard at the UN airbase in St. Louis du Nord, northern Haiti.

A staff member and translator at a cholera clinic run by the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission, near St. Louis du Nord.

Next: The election.

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I'm also not sure why I'm so passionate about fake things. Maybe it's the mockery of consumer capitalism, or the satisfaction of the common man owning something he could never afford. I own a fake Adidas jumpsuit from La Paz. A pair of Phony (brand) headphones from Bogota. And a copy of Avatar filmed during a 3D screening.

And so I was delighted the other week, when I went to Mexico City for the sixteenth time.

I spent my time in the largest city in the Americas eating gourmet Mexican cuisine, discovering clandestine mezcalerias, cheerfully walking along the wide paseos.

Mexico City is definitely not as scary as you think it is. The taxi cab kidnappings and narco-executions-many of which are taking place further to the north-are eclipsed in Mexico City by a more ubiquitous crime... the crime against intellectual property.

Around the corner from Palacio Bellas Artes, Mexico City's most revered cultural institution, merchants line the street to sell less esteemed populist art.

Vendors have hawked MP3 CDs and DVDs at this intersection for years, but on this trip I witnessed something new. For the first time, people were selling counterfeit software.

"¡Compra! ¡Compra! ¡Encarta! ¡Windows Vista! ¡Fotoshop!"

The corner of Lazaro Cardenas and Uruguay is the epicenter of the counterfeit consumer electronics sector of Colonia Centro Historico. It's east of the light fixture district, and just past the blender repair zone. Here you can purchase any program that you'd ever want to torrent for fewer than 60 pesos.

I'm not really sure what a pirated copy of "YouTube" looks like, but these men with binders full of PC software make a living selling these products to passers-by.

This industry says a lot about Mexican use of technology.

For at least one thing, as software pirates become more visible on the street, we can assume that more people have computers in their homes.

A government study concludes that home computer ownership has increased from 18.6% in 2005 to 26.8% in 2009. Not all PC owners will buy their software on the street, but many can only afford to buy from the piratas.

Some might be historically economically disadvantaged, and/or others are likely too young to have a disposable income, since 70.5% of home computer users are between the ages of 12-17.

Many of those kids are playing World of Warcraft, though I suspect some are cultivating something more substantial than hit points.

Vendors hawk hundreds of programs that fuel the 21st century's learning explosion. Pirated titles like Corel Draw, AutoCad, and Fruityloops make me wonder if we'll see a surge of graphic designers, architects and musicians. When more people have access to technology, more people have access to knowledge and platforms for innovation.

Maybe piracy can even stimulate America's so-called "Creativity Crisis."

Though I didn't have use for a pirated copy of ¡Aprende Ingles! I did leave Mexico with something to add to my counterfeit collection: this fake torta.

Joshua Heller knows that Oaxaca is the new Bushwick. He was just in New York but now he's in L.A.!

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There's no doubt that Aspen is beautiful and lovely and historic, but it's hard to think of the town without envisioning the nation's wealthiest people frolicking around with their piles of paper; in the county, the median home price is now edging back up from the slump to $4.1 million. At midnight, when Time crossed the precipice into Our Lord's Day of Freedom, I saw this town of Aspen epitomized by two divergent pieces of its lore: the work Thompson did near Aspen cementing his place permanently in the hands of rebellious tenth-grade readers the world over; and, on the other end of the spectrum, the unapologetic excess of the boys and girls who summer there on Daddy's Dime. It's impossible to think that the suffocating amount of Money Old and New wouldn't rub Hunter the wrong way. I mean, wasn't this no different from the sleazeball America that he encountered in Vegas? The America that the Godfather of Gonzo witnessed through a lens of hallucinogens and then promptly derided in the pages of the then-great Rolling Stone?

With this pre-judgment of the town firmly in place, I went to investigate the authenticity of Aspen's Rocky Mountain-styled paean to the Amber Waves of Grain. I went looking for some "real" inhabitants of the town. Its current residents are mostly those escaping the smog and humidity of Texas and Miami summers.

A delusional sense of "belonging" can occur for these part-timers. Perhaps the heartfelt memories of consecutive summers spent sneaking cocktails at The Ritz and begging Mommy for another Burberry bag could amount to some sort of emotional citizenship. And on most days of the year, after a drink or twelve, I would acquiesce to these trust fund darlings the tenuous status of being a "local" of Aspen, Colorado-but not on Independence Day.

I wandered from the J-Bar-blown out by its song after song of seventies shit-rock-into the fabled Aspen village promenade. Look, it's a store selling expensive shit! And, look, it's people wearing that expensive shit! Entranced by the selling and wearing of expensive shit, I found myself in line for a bar where both these actions were best represented. After quick conversation with a girl whose dress was slipping down with precipitous speed-"It's the place to be," she said between drags on a cigarette-I descended the stairwell. There, nary an hour into the anniversary of this country's independence, I witnessed The Youngs eating up the freedom all those wars purchased for them. Girls giggled almost loud enough to drown out the music, and they wheeled strap-heavy bags strung on their shoulders into the bathroom. (Though, full disclosure, many of these girls were off-the-charts gorgeous-hooray for good breeding!) Unfortunately, a cavalcade of bros rose up and corralled them to a booth where their bottle of Goose pricked up in the center of a silver ice-filled cylinder. All around, awful thirty- and forty-somethings squeezed their longnecks of Whatever Light so hard you'd think they were actually clutching the last vestiges of their long-lost youth.

I awoke the next day awash in the sunbeams of Democracy, but after the events of the previous night, and my general preconception of Aspen, I wasn't exactly excited for the day's parade. I expected to be surrounded by hordes of moneyed men in fresh-bought Stetsons donned only for the occasion, their wives with fried blonde hair cracking from botched procedures, their daughters standing by, eyes shielded from the sun's rays by sunglasses that cost more than some cars. In person, their legs had no such shielding, however, and the sons of industry scions took quick notice of what ran down below those high-end Daisy Dukes. The Maid of Honor-America-seemed to be relegated to the second act.

But then something odd happened. As the parade started to roll down Main Street, directly in front of the Hotel Jerome, the cheering intensified. Girls on floats threw candy to the crowd. Items of clothing, regardless of the brand name, could be found hosting a likeness of our American logos stuffed into any possible location-I saw a flag and/or bald eagle on ball caps, stuffed into shirt collars and tank tops, everywhere. Then trucks rumbled down the street, and inside of them were veterans from Iraq, Vietnam, even Normandy Beach. And they, too, got immense cheers. They were even smiling, They were smiling and waving to the crowd.

It became nothing more or less than a Fourth of July Parade in an smallish town anywhere in America. And you could forget about the context of it all-no history of exorbitant wealth, no kids ordering bottle service with Daddy's credit card, no bickering between the residents and the vacationers.

And I was one with them. I ran some system checks: I had no fear, I had no loathing. Maybe Hunter had picked the right bar after all.

Nate Freeman is a proprietor of The ## and a former columnist for the Duke Chronicle-and, when he's done traveling, will be one of The Awl's summer reporters.

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* * *

On the second night, during Pavement's co-headliner set, I came to the knowledge that I am a bad photographer. An epiphanic accelerant is the iPhone's dingy camera, which is unfit to document so much as a Scrabble endgame, let alone the Dinotopia-resembling geography of the Columbia River Gorge. But really: I choose the wrong moments to take pictures and cannot summon the social confidence to stand there framing subjects (especially because I've always caught the subjects at the wrong moment), and so I abandon the effort even as the shutter sounds. The blurred shots I'm left with really document me turning away, ashamed.

* * *

Our parking/tent-pitching spot, Camp Bingo, is marked by a flag that reads "Bingo" and a dodgy apparatus assembled from PVC pipes and a tarp (in the end, just by a flag that reads "Bingo").

A couple of cars down from Camp Bingo is a cardboard sign advertising "Cookies," with a subtle marijuana leaf drawn beneath it. The business is run by a pair of brothers aiming to recoup their expenses. They come from a family of medicinal pot experts in Hawaii, but these aren't pot cookies. They are hash, and one is more than enough. I buy four.

A friend and I are to share what he refers to as a "one-and-a-half-person tent." It looks tiny. It is tiny. On the inside, each asks the other if he has enough room, and oddly enough, we always do.

The campground parties carry on into the wee hours. In the distance is a CanaDream RV blasting rave beats and neon lights; many recall with a shudder how close Camp Bingo was to this Canuckian landmark last year. At one point, when several self-appointed DJs are competing for their share of real estate, we hear the biggest bluff possible. "Turn off the music," a man yells, "or I will rape you!"

* * *

"Hey. Gonna fall asleep so fast."

"I'm still involuntarily dancing. If you're wondering what that is."

* * *

A friend was constantly receiving updates on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill via cellphone, updates he relayed without mercy to the rest of us. When we asked him to stop searching for updates, he told us that he couldn't help it, his phone automatically beamed him the news. When he informed us that the top kill procedure had failed, we laughed, because how awful was that?

"They've lost all hope," he said, some hours later.

Who?

"I don't know. That's just the headline verbatim."

* * *

Camp Bingo has ties to a few less-famous bands on the bill and as such is able to procure four backstage access wristbands to share. The first groups to go backstage come back with beer and Vitamin Waters and ice cream. They say it's a raging party back there, and that somebody initiated double dutch jump rope, and that Chuck D from Public Enemy tried to jump in and got tangled immediately.

* * *

"This is going to sound corny," says Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, sounding nothing like the acid narrator of his bleak acoustic songs. "But I goddamn love playing music!" He's not the only one in a good mood. A shirtless bro in front of us is overjoyed to realize that a shirt-wearing bro has found his backpack. They clutch each other and spin to the gorgeous climax of "This Year" in a way that trumps choreography, nearly falling on those around them, before the shirtless bro retrieves the all-important contents of his once-missing backpack: a Sprite bottle half-full of brown liquor. Toward the end of his time, Darnielle is still beaming; "I hope I never get sober," he sings.

* * *

Broken Social Scene is my generation's U2, and that's not even a bad thing. They end their tour here, in a blooming and limitless warmth, saturating us with clean, pure, anthemic love.

* * *

Pity the tourist in Manhattan. Whether you live here or not, it's tough to get a big suitcase through a subway turnstile.

* * *

From the wet asphalt of Seattle and the evergreen mountains, through the rain shadow into an arid sweep of brush and irrigated land and elegant wind turbines. Along the edge of the Gorge and its sharp series of ridges, which make up the audience slope of the main amphitheater. The bands playing with geologic narrative at their backs.

* * *

* * *

"This your first time?"

"Yeah."

"They clean them early in the morning, and then everyone sneaks out here."

"To christen them."

"Just wait. On Monday you'll be like, ‘Who had a baby in here?'"

"And then you'll feel responsible for it."

"Like you need to be its godfather."

* * *

Camp Bingo is stocked with cans of an ultracheap lager called Simpler Times and, inspired by this phony nostalgia, we end up singing an improvised jingle every time we pop a new one. Back then, we burned outspoken women: Simpler Times. Certain people couldn't vote: Simpler Times. If we wanted a savage's land, we'd just take it: Simpler Times.

* * *

Quasi has an all-lady rhythm section that can cut you in half. Drummer Janet Weiss, who provided thunder for Sleater-Kinney, is stormier than ever. Somewhere in the scalding breakdowns of "Bye Bye Blackbird," a friend wearing a ludicrous sun hat pulls out a small baggie-the kind you'd put drugs in-full of store-bought chocolate wafers. According to a previously established bet, if he can sell these cookies to a stranger for $5, without acknowledging the bet, he will win $50. Instead, the song takes over. He does some weird moves with the baggie, pretends to lick it, then makes strong eye contact with an already alarmed guy dancing nearby with his girlfriend. With that, the baggie is tossed. The alarmed guy, in a spasm of confusion, twists, and the baggie strikes him in the shin. He and his girlfriend look down at it, then take a step back, and their faces say that the weekend is ruined.

* * *

It's staggering how quickly you adapt to living out of cars and tents, to stiff unshowered hair and sunburned lips, to the daily trek from camp to venue. I guess this is my life now. This shift in brain chemistry is most apparent when you re-enter normal society and find yourself unable to read a restaurant menu.

* * *

"Is that guy peeing into a bottle?"

"Kinda."

* * *

As we drive away on Monday night, we listen to "Crystalised," a song by The xx, a band whose set we had reluctantly skipped in order to get front and center for LCD Soundsystem. Its seductive, smoky timbre is a perfect complement to the hypnotic onrush of road and, one can't help sourly speculating, impossible to recreate outside the studio.

* * *

The frontman for Cymbals Eat Guitars is named Joseph D'Agostino, which makes me hope he is heir to the family grocery business and decided to rebel by playing riffy/screamy/dreamy indie rock with a guitar-shredding face of pure Staten Island brohood, a face that stretches to accommodate an unhinged snakelike jaw and long vertical slit of a mouth, a face that you are so happy to see outside of the context of weight lifting and forced alcohol consumption.

* * *

Any attempt to exit a tent hungover looks like childbirth with complications.

* * *

I've seen The National twice before, but here, in front of some 20,000 fans, Matt Berniger is like the tongue-speaking minister of a megachurch, a figure of entrancing physical energy. I doubt they'll play "Mistaken For Strangers"; they open with it. I figure "Mr. November" will be their closer; they follow it with an oceanic rendition of "Terrible Love," a song from High Violet that hadn't clicked until that moment. Berniger ventures further into the pit than anyone else dares that weekend, and hands seek him like they would a messiah. The most I get is a grip on his mic cord.

* * *

My tentmate tells Camp Bingo that he woke up at one point with my naked ass in his face, which, given the strictures of the tent and sleeping bags, is impossible, and must have been a dream. But try telling him that.

* * *

On the drive from Seattle to George, Washington, we see a decorated van. "Sasquatch 2010" is painted on its passenger windows, along with a select list of artists who would play there: MGMT, Neon Indian, Kid Cudi, Miike Snow. In the miasma of loathing and Pacific Northwest mist, I was comforted to know: With enough options, everyone curates their own festival.

* * *

Actually, MGMT's and Neon Indian's set times conflicted, and I like to imagine the people in that van wept and raged and pulled their headbands apart when they found out.

* * *

Late one afternoon, I'm lying down and watching the sky, passively hearing whoever is playing. I'm thinking that you didn't need drugs to appreciate the way the clouds go slow quickly, racing yet drifting, and not moving together in one direction but pulling apart from one another. I'm high on this, I decide. Then I eat a hash cookie.

* * *

"You're getting a good sense of Seattle."

"You mean?"

"The passive aggression."

* * *

* * *

Acts I was sad to have to miss for whatever stupid reason: Phantogram, Why?, Caribou, tUnE-yArDs, They Might Be Giants, The xx, Girls, Dirty Projectors, Public Enemy (although apparently it was a technical disaster), No Age, Camera Obscura. All of you, please know you have a special place in my ears.

* * *

Early-morning visitors to Camp Bingo: folks on a photo scavenger hunt who were hunting for same-sex kisses and acid trips.

Late-night visitor to Camp Bingo: man who sings a song about his cat (named DooDoo) in exchange for a few belts of warm Old Crow whiskey from a Diet Coke bottle.

* * *

Todd Barry, following an afternoon stint at the comedy tent, informs those gathered at the Bigfoot Stage that the New Pornographers have canceled. He will be filling in with two hours of jokes. The New Pornographers then burst onto the scene and play with muscle and verve, every now and then taking potshots at MGMT, who they maybe feel do not deserve the concurrent slot at the much-higher-capacity amphitheater.

* * *

As a rule I don't aid crowd surfers, but I never forget to step aside and hope that they break their neck in the void I've opened.

* * *

"My new thing, when I want to talk to a girl, is I say, "I met you before.'"

"Every guy does that."

* * *

Japandroids spit some snark-which is galling if you consider they've canceled the past two years-before getting the job done on the Yeti Stage, a tiny afterthought designed for unknown local bands. By the end they've drawn the biggest crowd the little nook has seen all weekend.

* * *

Just before I leave my Hell's Kitchen apartment to catch the E train to the Air Train to my jetBlue flight to Seattle, I become annoyed at a bar code sticker stuck to the bottom of my left sneaker. When I walk into my friend's house in Seattle and take my sneakers off, not only is the bar code still there, also the right shoe's tread bears a damp pink flower petal.

* * *

"Is he retarded?"

"No, he's suicidally depressed."

* * *

Pavement are like Greek gods: monumental and bitchy. They've flown directly in from the Primavera festival in Spain and are obviously a bit run-down; a pedal malfunction brings "Rattled By The Rush" to a halt early on. "It's fucking pathetic," Stephen Malkmus confides, in the awkward silence. The crowd had sung him "Happy Birthday" not ten minutes before. A spectacular meltdown in the offing, they launch into "Kennel District" and then "Grounded," matching the splendor of the briefly golden canyon as the rain picks up on their fuck-it attitude. They've humanized themselves right before exposing inhuman skill. It almost could have been planned; it brings me close to tears. They stay sassy and sardonic in the cracks of their majestic slacker-rock, more truly themselves than most of us are allowed to be. "I think we're done," Malkmus mutters at the end, over cries for an encore. "No, we've been in this band twenty years and we've never gone over our time."

* * *

Arcade Fire are so universally beloved that the Seattle Rock Orchestra doing Arcade Fire covers at 2:40 p.m. on the Bigfoot Stage is a well-attended affair.

* * *

Why did no one tell me that Canadians are big, meaty, blotchy rednecks? A group asks me to take their picture, and when I'm done I tell them that I managed to get a nearby American flag in the background. At this, a female member of the group pulls up her shirt and reveals a horrifying series of red maple leaves tattooed up her ribcage, with little black lines inked to look like stiff arctic wind. Again and again, the Canadians prove the drunkest, and most physically intimidating, and most mindlessly patriotic of ticketholders.

They are, without question, south of the border.

* * *

At one point I hear that one of the guys from Midlake may have the same sunglasses as me (classic BluBlockers).

* * *

Tegan and Sara are about as comfortable with interstitial banter as I am with the Honey Buckets, yet they cannot get enough of it. I can't decide who should receive the bulk of my doubled adoration.

* * *

* * *

"He was British I thought."

"That was an Australian."

"He had a British accent. He said "cheers.'"

"Professors say "cheers.'"

"Australians say "cheers,' too."

"Is he gone? We could have asked him."

"Is he... no, he's gone."

* * *

Local Natives are too boring to even talk about. The band, I mean, obviously.

* * *

On the flight from New York to Seattle, I try to read a used copy of Donald Antrim's The Verificationist but am slowed down considerably by several hundred Post-Its™ applied by the book's previous owner, diligent notes written in a feminine hand about sex, sex and sex, all of which I feel compelled to read in full.

* * *

"I have maybe three years before I start having kids."

* * *

My Morning Jacket close out the first night with fog effects and psychedelic jams less memorable than the weird things Jim James does with a cape.

* * *

"I've gotta go, but I actually can't stick around here, so I'm gonna throw my backstage bracelet to someone. But you have to be cool back there. Don't go up to someone and say "I named my goldfish after you.' Don't say "I have a chess set of you made from my toenails.'"

* * *

The pit action is fierce for LCD Soundsystem. "We're a band of mostly long songs," James Murphy explains. "We're going to try to play as many as we can." From there on out it's nothing but groove. "Drunk Girls." I snap up my shirt several times just so I can rip it open in ecstasy again. "Us V Them." We enter a Newtonian realm; everyone surges in one direction and is blown back by reactive force. "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House." You can lie nearly horizontal and not fall, we are jammed that tight. "One Touch." We sweat as one nasty, throbbing organism. "Pow Pow." Two guys, one dressed in an arm cast and a top hat made from a cardboard Bud Light case, try to start honest-to-Warped-Tour moshing, and two other guys yank them apart. "All My Friends." We feel the first drops of rain and twinges of cardiac arrest. They have another song ready, we're sure, but there is no time, no space, no relief.

* * *

Complete list of black people spotted: Public Enemy, Kid Cudi, Massive Attack's guest vocalists, Craig Robinson and the guy who gets Craig Robinson another beer when he spills the first one on stage during a wacky keyboard-reliant set at the comedy tent where he makes all the men in attendance sing "I appreciate you" to all the ladies in a Barry White voice.

* * *

As techies arrange the laboratory necessary for Massive Attack's liquid-cool nighttime set, we discuss who should use the VIP bracelets to get backstage. Almost everyone insists they are too fucked up to go down there, and I am too, but I go anyway. The trio I walk down with are hyping up the free beer situation and kickass party that await. When we get there a security guard tells us there's no free beer, the party is over and we can't get stage access. We wander around the deserted private area, seeing scraps of vanished debauchery. I use one of the Honey Buckets. It proves to be just as foul as the ones normals have to use.

* * *

"Oh there you are."

"Hey."

"Did you see me step right in that big mud puddle after carefully avoiding the others?"

"Yep. Your face was like [careful, waspy enunciation]: "Godammit.'"

"Godammit Cheryl, I told you these shorts had shrimp cocktail sauce on them."

"Godammit, I'm not mad, I'm just hostile toward you."

"Godammit."

"Door slam."

* * *

Though I frown upon crowd-surfing, I greatly respect the impulse crowds have to carry these selfish prats to the front, where security can haul them off to points unknown but surely not as fun as the pit. It's as though we're saying, here, here's somebody to get rid of. One girl, realizing that she is being borne toward the outstretched arms of authority, tries to resist, but the riptide will not comply.

Likewise, icings are rampant and cruel. I'm blindsided by a mango ice when I stumble back into camp on the second night. There is a brutal icing just outside the venue entrance, in front of a sign saying "No Alcohol Beyond This Point." A friend entering his tent finds a warm pomegranate ice on his air mattress. In the backstage area, most people have an ice block ready. When Smirnoff supplies run low, phrases like "You just got Cheez-It'd" and "You just got Rockstar Guava Energy Juiced" and "You just got Smucker's Jelly Squeezed" are thrown around, though rarely with any conviction.

* * *

"I'm just stoned enough that Stephen Malkmus makes sense right now."

* * *

The Tallest Man On Earth, a fairly short Swede who sings like Bob Dylan over pretty finger-picked guitar, is the subject of several hundred insta-infatuations. "I'm nervous in front of so many people," he would say, or, "Here's a song about flowers." I feel unafraid of and liberated by the idea of death when he sings the line "And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone," because you could look out over the ancient land we stood on, its exposed volcanic rock and shapes carved by the Missoula Floods more than a dozen millennia ago, and let yourself fade into the air.

* * *

"Your lantern is really bright."

"It's a beacon."

"I guess you could say that. It's kinda blinding. Fuck."

* * *

The Dirty Projectors were pretty good, people said.

* * *

"NEED DRADES," read a sign held up by some guy at a midday performance by a band I refuse to name because the name's punctuation annoys me. We assumed this was a plea for drugs, but after some Internet research I now believe he wanted dreadlocks.

* * *

Who in Little Richard's name would want to watch, listen to or tolerate OK Go? I'm told they brought up the subject of viral music videos as soon as they got on stage-and in the past have recreated their videos in a live setting-because, as ever, they'd like you to look past their songs.

* * *

People who run at top speed down a hill packed with sitting, prone and dozing bodies are headed for a life of unplanned pregnancies.

* * *

Phone connection is miserable at best. I get two e-mails about short stories I sent to publications I admire, one acceptance and one gentle rejection. I want to write back to both editors immediately but can't get anything out. When I finally have enough bars to make a call, I get in touch with the significant other, and we excitedly talk about nothing but Pavement, a Band She Got Me Into that we'll be seeing together in Central Park this fall. She wants to know what they played, and how well, what they said and how they acted, and every detail I can conjure delights her more, even though the set was Wowee Zowee-heavy and her favorite album is Brighten The Corners, because "favorite" is a meaningless term when you like a band like she likes Pavement, and we go on naming their best songs until the call is dropped.

* * *

The weekend's best weather is wasted on Band of Horses, who lean into their mini-epics but so utterly lack personality that even the frontman's beard seems fake. The silver lining: the bros who embraced at Mountain Goats turn up once again, still amiably grabbing each other and sharing their smuggled booze.

* * *

Canadian Rednecks would be a good band name.

* * *

"What's the deal with these Cliff Bars."

"What do you mean?"

"Like are they any good for you?"

"Not really, they just package them that way."

"They seem like PowerSauce bars from that episode of The Simpsons."

"[Vigorous nodding while mouth is full of Cliff Bar]"

* * *

On the way to the Honey Buckets late at night, my foot sinks into a cold slush. Panic. It is too dark to know what it is, but it doesn't smell. I pray that someone has dumped ice out of a cooler. The next morning, when I get a good look at the area, it's just an average dirty puddle, and I laugh about how much it had freaked me out. Then a guy brushing his teeth trips and falls face-first into it, toothbrush and everything. Many people see it; none laugh.

* * *

The crowd at the Bigfoot Stage for Nada Surf is the pasty, inbred sort-as opposed to the crowd still at the amphitheater for Vampire Weekend, which is presumably the pasty, overbred sort. Nada Surf's fans clamor for hits from 2001, wanting none of the accomplished covers of Kate Bush and Depeche Mode featured on the new album, If I Had A Hi-Fi. Their sugary-cereal-pop-punk-yet-lullabyish guitar sound is especially well-suited to a giddy take on The Go-Betweens' "Love Goes On." The bassist has blonde dreadlocks, could be a cousin of Mickey Rourke and smokes at least six cigarettes.

* * *

"Tegan And Sara played the best show ever erased from my memory by LCD Soundsystem immediately afterward. Pavement was the best show erased from my memory by hash."

* * *

Patton Oswalt, before a bit about obsolescence of the circus and its stench, ridicules the hippie strains of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros seeping into the comedy tent. It transpires that he has no idea who is playing this music, and his evisceration is all the more satisfying for it.

* * *

"My eyes aren't big enough."

* * *

In Seattle, while riding a bus to the train to the airport, the bus driver keeps me from getting off at the wrong stop. The Link Right Rail's announcement system anthropomorphizes the machinery: "Doors to my right," it says.

* * *

With respect to that thing about not needing drugs: you really don't. It's the freedom of doing them in the open, I think, the not needing to impress or deceive anyone, which goes along with not showering, facepaint, unselfconscious dancing, costumes, advanced stages of nudity, etc. You are your body odor and bloodshot eyes. You are just an atom in a stew of atoms spiraling toward entropy, and nothing is so miraculous as recognizing an atom you bumped up against the day before.

* * *

Early-morning visitor to Camp Bingo: dude "giving away" books on Eastern philosophy who leaves $15 richer.

Late-night visitors to Camp Bingo: A few people who interrupt our conversation with an aggressive beatbox/a cappella performance of the rap from Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."

* * *

It is sadly funny that we got backstage when nothing is happening, but then the bracelets get us somewhere better: the pit. It's been slowly filling in the hour leading up to Massive Attack's show, and we slip in at the last minute, about seven rows back. Already I'm weak in the knees from hash. At last the very British trip-hop legends emerge and begin to tickle the base of my spine. Massive Attack make filthy, filthy songs for fucking, and as such have two basic modes: the pre-coital buzz/tease/tingle and the straight-up penetration. The former is equal parts sexy and slimy. The latter is full-body euphoria, and the pit, so violent earlier that day, is transformed into a painless zone of drugged-out absorption. I wouldn't be shocked to find my torso aglow. Mesmerizing guest vocalists are brought out, incoherent political statements and snippets of data flash on screens, the light show dazzles in otherwise total darkness, recreations of "Angel," "Risingson," and, unbelievably, "Teardrop" stun and fill us. The bliss of hyperentertainment consumes our eyes, spends them-and my breath is stolen by the decadence of it all, by the certainty that if someone from the middle ages could stand where I am now, his heart would explode at the spectacle.

* * *

"We just spent a lot of hours in that place."

* * *

Not long after returning to New York, I was walking to my apartment with my giant impractical headphones on, listening to a playlist of all the stuff I wanted to relive from the weekend. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a smiling young woman I didn't recognize. I took my headphones off.

"Hey," she said, "my friend and I were talking and we decided you're the love of my life."

"Wow," I said, flabbergasted that this was happening, and that it was happening back here, not out there. "I'm flattered."

She asked what I was listening to. I fumbled for an explanation.

Miles Klee is back now.

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My friend Sarah [not her real name!] and I were wandering the streets of Nice, wearing 60-pound backpacks. We needed a place to stay. I hadn't made a reservation. I hadn't thought you needed to make reservations at the kind of cheap youth hostels I'd been planning on staying in. My Lonely Planet guide hadn't mentioned that part, or at least I hadn't paid attention. Let me tell you, should you ever plan on making such a trip, to a vacation destination like Nice in the middle of the summer, make a fucking reservation.

"What about that hotel over there?" Sarah asked. "They might have some openings? And maybe air conditioning?"

"I thought we were going to stay in a youth hostel," I said, through gritted teeth. "We can find something. I know it."

Sarah and I had been best friends, freshman of college year. We'd gone skinny dipping at the reservoir, planned crazy road trips that usually never happened, played pranks on boys we liked; and often trekked to the diner at 1 a.m. for pie with ice cream. She'd left after our sophomore year, to go to culinary school or outdoor survival school or both, I think. We stayed in touch for a little while, but it got harder when she lived in the mountains for a few months. Slowly, we fell out of touch.

Until three years later, when I got a $10,000 settlement from a car accident (I'd been hit by a minivan while riding a moped, and was bruised but otherwise fine, thanks for asking) and decided to say fuck you to the working world and leave for Europe. I'd had full time summer jobs since I'd been 17, and had started working at a law firm two weeks after graduating college (yes, that's how I got such a big settlement. Next time you're negotiating with an insurance company, do it in the room your law firm hangs their awards in). I had been planning on going to law school before realizing that I was on the fast track to becoming the most boring person I knew. I wanted an adventure — to do crazy things I'd never done before. Also, that summer was sweltering. I wanted to topless-sunbathe on the beach.

Sarah, who had been dawdling her way towards an MFA at that point, was my only friend who both had the resources and was uncommitted enough to come with. I was going for five months; she would come for the first two weeks. Never mind that we hadn't really spoken in two years. She was perfect.

Until our plane landed.

As soon as we got to London, she started bringing up the idea that maybe instead of my whirlwind London-Paris-Nice-Barcelona-Portugal in two weeks plan, we could just stay in London for a few extra days.

"But," I said. "I bought the four-country Eurorail pass."

"You bought a Eurorail pass?" she asked. "Was I supposed to too?"

As a compromise, we knocked Portugal off the list. Paris was fantastic. Sarah had gone on a magical trip there in high school, and we spent a lot of time visiting those same sights. The Notre Dame was still just as beautiful as it had been back then. The Latin Quarter, slightly less interesting. We tried snails (me, for the first time, her again), and ate lots of pastries. And, before Sarah could decide she wanted to stay for a few extra days in Paris too, we'd left for Nice.

Finally, at the end of the hostel section in my guidebook, I noticed that it suggested we ask at a restaurant for a room. I dragged a sweltering Sarah to the address, and inquired if they had a place for us to stay.

Yes, the hostess there assured us, they had room. "You do?" I asked, I trying not to let the smugness creep into my voice.

"Sure," she said, "it is on the couch. Is that okay?"

I couldn't hear Sarah's reply over my enthusiastic "Yes!"

She then led us to a living room to wait on one of the most disgusting couches I have ever seen. This thing was long, covered in sheets and occupied by the owner's crippled, blind dog. The dog had obviously been using the couch to relieve itself when it couldn't make it outside. It also could only use one of its front paws, and so spent most of the time we were in the room with it doing a kind of rock-slither thing across the cushions, occasionally emitting the most blood curdling bark-yelp-moan I've ever heard. It was as if, robbed of all the normal attributes that might make a poodle terrifying, it had decided to disgust us into submission. We did start to wonder if we should help it when it almost rocked itself, head-first, crashing onto the floor. At the last minute, the dog saved itself and let out another blood curdling moan. It then promptly threw up.

"You don't think... that this is our couch, do you?" Sarah asked.

"Can't be," I replied, my faith in the power of adventure still unshaken.

And it wasn't! Our room was worse.

The hostess came back and led us up four flights of stairs to what was going to be our room. She turned on the light and immediately a flock of two-inch cockroaches scurried out of sight. There were molding dishes in a sink and three bunk beds crammed into what felt like a hallway. Backpacks, men's underwear, magazines and sneakers were strewn everywhere. There were mattresses on the floor. Hesitantly, we asked the hostess if we were the only girls in the place.

"Well," she said, "I think there's a girl the boy in that bunk over there sometimes sleeps with."

"This is your couch," she said, pointing to a molding, stained piece of foam that was, I guess, folded into the shape of a couch. She unfolded it. Its insides were more torn than its outsides. She flopped the edge down on the floor where moments earlier, an entire town of cockroaches had been mating.

"Here you go," she said. "Fifteen Euros each."

While we were settling (read: figuring out how to unpack without having any of our stuff touch the floor) a young Irish man wandered in. "Oh," he said. "Are you sleeping there?"

"Yes?" we replied. "Sorry, was this your spot?"

"No, it's fine," he said. "Madame charges me less if I sleep on the floor for the night."

He moved his pillow from on top of the "couch" we'd just been maneuvering and laid it on the floor in front of one of the bunk beds.

Since Sarah and I got blackout drunk that night (the dinner that came with our room consisted of wine and a baguette), I can't remember exactly what happened. What I do remember is wandering the streets at 2 a.m., screaming that I had to take out my contacts and my case was in my pack. Sarah, in turn, was screaming about not walking anywhere alone. I think she insisted on coming with me? I'm not sure. Neither of us knew where we were going. I may have screamed at her that she didn't have to have come on the trip with me in the first place. Somehow we ended up back at the beach, where we spent the night, away from the cockroaches: me contact-free and she making out with an American boy we'd just met.

When we were woken up at 6 a.m. by the men who sell beach chairs, neither of us talked about the fight. We quietly agreed to find another place, any place else, to stay. After one night in an air-conditioned Best Western, we moved on to Barcelona. There the heat seemed to have hit new levels of oppressiveness, in the hundreds and packed with humidity. We were staying in a 20-bed room with no fan and no window. The was an opening in the wall that looked onto an airshaft. The airshaft, with its clear plastic roof, actually made the air ten degrees hotter. Occasionally through the opening wafted the vague smell of sewage.

Sarah got sun poisoning from our first trip to the beach. I hadn't slept in three days and was starting to get a series of small red bites across my stomach that I hoped wasn't from bedbugs. We went to a cheesy nightclub where we got hit on by backpackers and danced to American hip hop. You didn't even want to drink, it was so hot.

"Don't you want to go to the beach?" I kept asking her, each time hoping that maybe by then the 100-degree temperature in our room had helped her sun poisoning fade. As a result, I spent a lot of time wandering the streets alone, discovering the wholesale jewelry market. Sarah spent a lot of time sleeping.

By the time we flew back to London, she and I were barely talking. Since we'd pushed back our itinerary by so many days, we were getting in just in time for her to make her flight back to America. I rented a cheap hotel room with a shower for us to both freshen up in before we parted ways. At that point the only thing I felt was exhausted and overheated. I also had a strong desire to take a million showers and maybe get this bedbug thing checked out by an expert. I think Sarah just wanted to go home. I'm not sure. We didn't really talk about it. Instead,

Sarah put on her bag and looked at me.

"Well," she said.

"Well," I said. "Thank you so much for coming!"

"Totally!" she said, and turned around and went down the stairs to the cab waiting to take her to the airport.

We haven't talked since. Also, 14,802 people in France alone died from the heat wave.

Erica Sackin found out later that she did indeed have bedbugs from staying in that hostel. But don't worry, she hasn't had them since.

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During its heyday, which lasted through the 1950s, Jungle Garden was Florida's most popular tourist attraction, but following the construction of ____ World in Orlando, attendance slipped badly. The garden fell into serious disrepair and went bankrupt in the 1970s, when all but 18 of the original 80 acres were sold off to developers, who subsequently built condominiums and golf courses.

The remaining 18 acres, which were also zoned for redevelopment, sat idle and were reclaimed by Mother Nature, who moves very quickly in subtropical Florida (where it is not uncommon to find a vine wrapping its tendrils around your ankle if you stay in one spot for more than ten or fifteen seconds).

In 1995, a group of Vero Beach residents were like WTF and formed a non-profit trust to purchase the land for $1.7 million, and raised an additional $10 million to restore the garden. The new McKee Botanical Garden, as it now called, opened in 2001, and I'm happy to report that while the site remains a work in progress, it features many interesting specimens and is definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in the vicinity. To give you a sense of the restoration, here's a shot of the Royal Palm Grove, the same spot seen in the above picture from 1995.

[Next: the Horrors of the Cypress Stump!]

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