We arrived in Asheville on Thursday the 25th. Gurudeva had also been planning to come there on Saturday, but there had been some urgent circumstance in Hillsborough, so we weren’t sure what was going to happen… We called Gurudeva from a phone booth, and he happily stated that he would be in Asheville on Saturday morning. We then headed for the little preaching center in the center of Asheville to go and make sure all the arrangements for Gurudeva’s visit were taken care of. Well… the devotee running the preaching center was very very nice, but as is everything in Asheville, the center was quite “relaxed” as well. We spent hours cleaning up Gurudeva’s room and went to the store to buy new sheets and gave him one of our pillows… I was very nervous about how Gurudeva would like it there…

Friday was full of preaching and then Gurudeva arrived on Saturday and came to the festival site to talk to people at around 1pm. The crowd was an interesting mix of real Southeners, young kids on drugs, old hippies and yoga people. The atmosphere reminded us of the early days of the movement. We had made friends with some kids on Friday and some of them came to talk to Gurudeva on Saturday. One boy in particular, bhakta John, got to spend a lot of time with him. Gurudeva even invited him for lunch at the preaching center. In the evening Gurudeva came back, but the atmosphere wasn’t as nice anymore. A lot of people were drunk and not so many kids came by the booth. Gurudeva decided to head towards the preaching center at 8pm, but on the way there someone came and threatened him with a knife. Krishna protected Gurudeva, but he came back after that to tell us to be super careful and he had us call Bhakta Rafael and bhaktin Natalie to come and help pack things up for us that night.

On Sunday Gurudeva didn’t come to the festival until just before the Sunday feast program. He stopped by the booth and then headed for the hall the devotees had rented for a special program. About 50 people came to attend Gurudeva’s class and chanting. Everyone was totally enlivened by the chanting, and it went on for a couple of hours. Some of the hippies had their own instruments with them, there was a bass guitar, violin, drums, mrdangas, karatalas and Gurudeva was playing the guitar. Adikarta prabhu was there from the Sandy Ridge farm community, and he got all the kids jumping wildly in the kirtan. It was such an amazing scene… Middle-age yoga ladies and men jumping in the midst of hippies and punks and all kinds of eccentric people… Everyone had fun. And Gurudeva gave a really nice class explaining the basics of Krishna-consiousness and the importance of chanting. Then everyone enjoyed the feast and Gurudeva headed back home to New Goloka on Monday morning.

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