Serenity Gathering | Feeling Serene at Serenity [Recap]

What a way to kick off the festival season than at the beautiful Woodward Reservoir in Oakdale, California. magnificent backdrops of water and sunsets, daytime temperatures in the mid 70’s, a full moon in Scorpio, and headliners such as Dirtwire and Kalya Scintilla set the stage for a magical weekend that we will never forget! This was Serenity Gatherings 5th year anniversary and man did it go off with a bang!
On Friday night at Serenity Gathering, we ventured out to the main stage to find hip-hop artist Zion I playing with a full live band called Lespecial! With a mixture of Jam, funk, and hip-hop they really got the crowd ready to get down and dirty with Stylust Beats and then finally closing the main stage was none other than G Jones. While all this was happening we found time to stop into The Heart of Serenity area where you could find workshops ranging from Ropedart tutorials to Sound healings. We partied pretty hard Friday into Saturday so we utilized Saturday night to have a bit of a RESTival. After a nice little downtempo set from Ott we scuffed our way back to camp to get ready for a Sunday Funday that did not disappoint.
Sunday morning we woke up, made our traditional tequila watermelon, blew up our air mattress and headed out to the main stage. The Sunday lineup was massive! It started out with Everyman doing a heartfelt set dedicated to the late DJ Pumpkin. Following that was an airy and uplifting set by none other than The Human Experience. The main stages lineup was so good it was hard to leave, but we finally got up to go check out some other stages. We went to the Pisces Moon stage to find Mike Ill B2B Suds. The last thirty minutes of the set we were blessed with some brand new material from their collaboration they call Date Modified Tomorrow aka DMT. Not only were the beats killer, the fire performers at the stage were absolutely mesmerizing. Dirt wire and Kalya Scintilla concluded the festival’s music on the main stage, but we were in for one more treat.
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We came across some pretty interesting creatures throughout the weekend, the most exciting was a 3 ft. fish carcass that we found! We discovered him washed up along the little beach next to Main Stage, he then was blessed with the name of Edgar Frederick Lancelot before tucking him in the bushes. We had planned a later return with friends to make a vote on whether he would become our new camp mascot, only to forget about Edgar altogether. Upon returning home from Serenity Gathering while scrolling through Facebook we saw that Edgar had been found by a fellow festival goer. On the popular FB page Colorado Big Game Wook Hunters there was a video of someone dancing with Edgar and wearing him around his neck!! Who needs a pashmina scarf when you have an Edgar. We were so happy to find out that Edgar got to enjoy Serenity Gathering and party as hard as we did.
As we wrapped up the weekend, Ida Resi Alit, Bali’s youngest High priestess of Hindu Dharma blessed us with a beautiful closing prayer that felt like it came straight from the heavens. A sense of calm and community came over the crowd and people were filled with joy. Everyone hugged and made sure to make friends with at least one or two more strangers before the night was over. We couldn’t have asked for a better ending to such an amazing Serenity Gathering! We look forward to enjoying it next year!