Bluegrass, green grass, blue sky

I can explain in a word why I’m here, jammed tight with 5,000 people in a mountainside campground better suited for 200.

Music.

Explaining the satisfaction of the experience, why it is so welcome, pleasurable and even meaningful, well, that takes longer.

I am, after all, an old wilderness hand who has spent years trying to get as far away from others as I can. So, why do I drive eight hours on a holiday weekend with a carsick-prone 5-year-old and elbow my way into a noisy, dusty government campground?

For that answer, I’ll lean on the original wilderness purist, Henry David Thoreau, who said, “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”

We bought our tickets to the venerable Strawberry Music Festival months ago because events like this one tend to sell out. We drive out of the Los Angeles Basin at 4 a.m. Thursday, and at lunchtime we are in the tall trees on the western flank of Yosemite National Park.

Cars are lined up to get into Camp Mather, San Francisco’s municipal campground bordering Yosemite National Park.

Early birds have snapped up the desirable spots. We count ourselves lucky to find a place to park -- and we are quickly blocked in by a virtual sea of vehicles and trailers.

We are also lucky to find a level spot under a tree for our tents and camp kitchen. Other tents are mere feet away. Not far beyond are rows of portable toilets. And down the road, caravans of still more people are headed our way.

Yes, but there is the music -- bluegrass, down-home, sanctuary music from an era when people had to make their own, when life’s sharp edges were smoothed off with a guitar pick. Across the road, two guitarists and a bassist start up a quiet jam. Through the trees, we hear the echoes of musicians doing their sound check from the meadow stage. From somewhere else in the campground, two banjo players are having a go.

My daughter, Gracie, is making herself a mud milkshake. I pour myself two fingers of sipping rum. My wife, Liisa, shows her most fetching smile and mixes a gin-and-tonic.

We toast our good fortune. Beyond this camp, life is defined by toil and challenge, but music is as easy as twirling the dial on an iPod. Bluegrass festivals have taught us the value of upending that paradigm a few times a year.

“Bluegrass is booming now in the Western U.S.,” Michael Hall tells me. Hall, a resident of Redwood City and past president of the Northern California Bluegrass Assn., is hanging out at the festival’s information tent.

“I’d say it’s growing faster in the West than anywhere. There are about 200 festivals in California alone -- bluegrass festivals, or bluegrass mixed with folk or something else.”

A few years ago, Liisa asked me to put aside my dread of crowds and car camping. We arrived late and wound up with our tent on the shoulder of a road in Lyons, Colo., for the RockyGrass Festival, held each July. It was a “pinch-me” experience, awakening some primal yearning for things bygone.

As often as we can, we’ve made an annual pilgrimage elsewhere: to the pint-sized San Diego Summergrass festival or the colossal Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco.

Choosing a festival is not quite as straightforward as, say, picking a baseball park to visit.

Bluegrass is an expanding genre of music, differing widely from one festival to the next, with some emphasizing old-time styles and others more “progressive” sounds.

Some are known for their lawn-party camping. Others, like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass -- which opens Saturday with Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton and other big names in bluegrass-related music -- offer free admission.

This year, we picked Strawberry -- a festival held in the Sierra each Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend.

Begun in 1982 as a bluegrass get-together, it has evolved into a festival of broader musical range and now includes genres as diverse as throwback rock, country and timeless swing. Among die-hards, it is considered one of the premier camp-out, jam-through-the-night, leave-the-world-behind festivals in the West.

Some zealots camp in line all night to claim front-row positions; the rest of us stake out spaces for low-back chairs later in the morning.

Breakfast at the camp dining hall includes quick, 10-minute sets all morning long by musicians who are playing for board. Security guards walk the grounds with tie-dyed vests labeled “Festival Safety.”

Some of the more-dedicated Strawberry fans build castle-like campsites, including one with rugs, a chandelier, a sofa, two wet bars and an apartment-sized kitchen on a flat-bed trailer.

Other camps, like ours, offer only a layer of nylon and a foam pad to separate its inhabitants from the dirt. We eat the Afro-Caribbean, Greek, Mexican, pizza-and-hot-dog cuisine from vendors, topped off with a sack of organic popcorn.

Music of some sort continues all day long and until nearly dawn somewhere on the grounds. There are classes on chord playing and didgeridoo workshops. Kids take one-on-one fiddle lessons. Smaller stages feature storytellers, a Sunday morning “revival” concert and a songwriters’ circle.

The campground’s Birch Lake is an old-fashioned swimming hole, full of frogs, squealing kids and achingly nostalgic parents.

At a time when family events are often contrivances that really mean children’s events, festivals like this stand out as genuine. Music in the mountains knows no age. Children belong but do not dominate.

On the main stage, 21 acts are spread out over the 3 1/2 days. It is no use trying to convey the power of songwriter Greg Brown singing “I want my country back” in his deep, resonant balladeer’s voice just as the summer sun drops into the treetops. At that moment, idealism doesn’t seem quite so far out of reach.

Singer David Olney’s haunting “Women Across the River” is the kind of song that leaves you momentarily stunned, as if having glimpsed something mysterious and beautiful. My daughter kept me on my feet for an hour in the sun dancing to the swing of Whit Smith’s Hot Jazz Caravan.

Perhaps one-quarter of the people here are serious musicians, which gives the rest of us the feeling of living backstage. Some jams are authentically spontaneous -- guitar- and banjo-picking sessions or even flute solos; others are almost stage shows, complete with a brass section.

I have flown thousands of miles and walked hundreds more to sleep in the woods far from the sounds of a crowd, and I probably will again. But I also have found myself sprawled on a sleeping bag watching shooting stars, determined to stay awake to hear the last lullaby notes of a string duet.

Hour by hour, day by day, Strawberry proved Nietzsche right: “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

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Toe-tapping festivals year-round

WHERE TO GO:

Here is a chronological list of select bluegrass festivals in the West. Except where noted, prices have not been set for 2006.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Golden Gate Park’s Speedway Meadow, San Francisco; www.strictlybluegrass.com. You will have a hard time choosing from among the four stages in the city’s regal park. The talent is unbeatable, and the crowds are growing by the year. No camping on site. Free. Oct. 1-2.

Blythe Bluegrass Festival, Colorado River Fairgrounds, Blythe, Calif.; (760) 922-8166, www.blytheareachamberofcommerce.com. Bluegrass and more bluegrass. RV and limited tent camping. Adult four-day camping package, $40. Jan. 20-22.

Wintergrass, Sheraton Tacoma Hotel, Tacoma, Wash.; (253) 428-8056, www.acousticsound.org. The festival experience brought indoors to accommodate the Northwest winter. Four-day pass, $105; families (two adults and up to four children), $270. No camping. Feb. 23-26.

Strawberry Music Festival, Camp Mather, Calif.; (209) 984-8630, www.strawberrymusic.com. Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.

Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Telluride, Colo.; (800) 624-2422, www.bluegrass.com. None is more famous. Top-level performers expanding the traditional definition of bluegrass. Camping adjacent and nearby. June 15-18.

Father’s Day Festival, Nevada County Fairgrounds, Grass Valley, Calif.; www.cbaontheweb.org. Next year marks the 31st staging of the California Bluegrass Assn.’s premier event, a festival known coast to coast. Camping for RVs and tents. June 15-18.

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville, Calif.; (800) 695-2060, www.katewolf.com. Sentimental favorite among die-hard bluegrass performers and fans. Camping. Late June.

RockyGrass, Lyons, Colo.; (800) 624-2422, www.bluegrass.com. Telluride’s brother festival features well-known names in bluegrass and others who deserve to be. Another lovely setting. Camping on-site and nearby. July 28-30.

TO LEARN MORE

The California Bluegrass Assn. maintains one of the more comprehensive sites for bluegrass events at www.cbaontheweb.org. Similar sites are maintained by bluegrass associations in Washington, Oregon, Arizona and northern Nevada. Also, see the Bluegrass Festival Guide (www.bluegrassfestivalguide.com) for events listed by date and state.

-- John Balzar