Pennsic War in Grimm - Warrior, Poet and more...

The Pennsic War is a huge annual event (2001 was Pennsic XXX) held by the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in August, in Pennsylvania, at Coopers Lake Campground north of Pittsburgh. By "huge" I mean on the order of ten thousand participants. (Fifteen Thousand on the 30th Anniversary) Imagine, if you will, ten thousand people, dressed in medieval clothing, in a huge tent city (some modern tents, some medieval designs) around a lake, in the woods, up on a large flat cleared area, perched on hillsides, etc. Many, many vendors selling an incredible array of goods: clothes, books, souvenirs, weapons, oils, candles, fabric, spices, toys, leather, jewelry, tools, furniture, musical instruments, armour, food, nearly everything someone interested in medieval re-enactment could want. Classes on various arts and crafts, history, costume, and music. Dancing in the barn with a live band. Storytelling and singing around campfires. The drums of the Dark Horde. Parties. Battles, duels, tournaments, and archery competitions. Kings and queens holding court.

This is an event nearly the size of the nearest city, far larger than the largest renaissance festival. And there's no quot;audience", no "public". Ten thousand participants doing it for ourselves.

While I see most of Pennsic during the day, a lot of what makes Pennsic feel like Pennsic for me is what happens at night. Cooking a late dinner over a fire; wandering paths lit by tiki-torches on my way someplace ... or just to wander; watching the Pleiades meteor shower when it happens during Pennsic (which is often the case);

It's magical. Arriving at your first Pennsic is a magical experience. Arriving at your second Pennsic will probably feel like coming home. In many ways I feel like it's my real home town -- but that leaves me with a home town that only exists for a week each year. The past couple of years attendance has hovered around 10,000 people. The nearest city, New Castle, has a population of about 30,000.

And Pennsic really is like a real town in many ways. There's the marketplace, various "neighbourhoods", streets with names, a post office (a trailer that serves as a genuine USPS temporary outpost with limited hours, and a Pennsic postmark), a bank, restaurants and a food court, live theatre and musical performances, blacksmiths and other craftspeople making things on site as well as selling, social dancing in the barn each evening, various events held in various camps as well as in the quot;official" areas, a newspaper (one year we had two competing newspapers), and, oh yeah, a few folks who fight in the battles, and enough Royal Court (with all those kings and queens in one place, oh yeah) for anyone's tastes.

I don't know what the fighters/other ratio is nowadays, but back when Pennsic was around 6,000 people I was told there were about 1,500 fighters participating.)

It has the rumors and gossip and petty feuds and weddings and wakes and birthdays of a real town too. Okay, so it's a town that's stuck in a perpetual festival-time mode, but what do you expect from a town that only exists one week out of every year, where old friends are greeting each other, and most people are taking this time as their vacation?

As you walk down Great Eastern Highway, coming down the hill from the barn, you hit a point where the trees cut off the electric lights on the structures at the top of the hill. There are tiki torches and maybe a campfire about there, usually. A little farther along you are in complete darkness. And without seeing it I know when I've reached the turn-off for Howard's Fenway. For a place that I've spent maybe a total of twenty or thirty days in over the course of the last five years, and not all of those years camped on that side of the lake, that says something about how much at home I feel there. I don't know every part of Pennsic as well as I know the roads I've travelled most, and neither will you, but the roads you know you'll probably get to know well enough to find your way home in blackest night or in fog after a couple of years. Maybe after a few days.

A few years ago Entertainment Tonight did a segment on Pennsic. The voiceover near the end of that said it well (let's see how well I can remember the quote):

"There comes a time, as the sun is starting to set, and the campfires are being lit, when you hear the sounds of people walking to dinner and musicians playing and the sounds and smells of food being cooked over campfires and stoves, and even a modern tent becomes just another tent in the dusk. And then, you might not be in the middle ages, but you're no longer in the twentieth century either." Oh, I've botched the quote, but the sense of it is in there.

It's not the middle ages, but it ain't the XXth century either.

It truly is magical.