The sun has set on another Julia Louis-Dreyfest weekend, and we are all left basking in the glow of what we have created. We are all a part of something so magical and important. Not just those of us who organize this festival, not just the artists who sacrifice their precious time for their craft. Every single person who showed up to support and be a part of this event has left their mark. I think back to my days of youth living in the Big Sky always longing for a movement to be a part of, hungry for some kind of creative community to be immersed in. Well, this is that movement, this is that community, and we should all take a moment to process the scope of what we have done. My memories of that magical weekend are filled with explosions of light and color, like supernovas illuminating the vast of expanse of the cosmos around them. That longing and hunger is in all of us, a collective desire to be a part of something bigger than just any one person. So, as we all sit here plugged into our devices looking back at the pictures of the weekend that was, let us not forget to put that energy into everything we want to accomplish. There is only so much time on this Earth that we get to spend before our bones wither away to dust, so let’s get weird with it.

-Eric Toennis

Photography by Mary Kate Teske, Dónal Cían Lakatua, and Liv Swant-Johnson