Listen, I had a Grateful Dead phase just like every other dude who went to college. I even saw them twice. I never mastered the hackeysack, never owned a tie-dye, and those devil sticks looked like a nifty trick but I never touched a set. What I’m saying is, I didn’t go full hippie.

What is it about “hippies” – whatever that term means in 2014 – that seems to rub North Americans the wrong way? The cliche of a stoned, lazy, unemployed, scraggly-bearded, patchouli-spritzed Phish fan rankles some of us. We see one Phil Lesh poster and bam, we unfurl the entire cliche and turn up our noses.

I’m being liberal with the term “we” here – I don’t do this, maybe you don’t, but many do. It would take a while for such people to get used to the atmosphere at Fuji, then, which can turn decidedly in that groovy direction. The Field of Heaven and Gypsy Avalon stages are especially groovy, featuring hemp tents and anti-nuke information (and even the aforementioned Mr. Lesh).

The thing is…FujiRock itself preaches environment, community, and brotherly/sisterly love to everyone, from hippie girls with flowers in their hair to young, serious salarymen on their one weekend off. It’s not a pose. It’s absolutely 100% sincere. The full-blown hippies often don’t look like you’d expect; the ones that do are digging on experimental guitar music and heavy metal just as much as reggae and jamrock. In fact, it’s so sincere, it’s endearing (dare I say uplifting) to see how much honest appreciation of the culture – the great parts of the culture, like love and peace, as smarmy as it sounds – there is at Fuji.

And I haven’t seen a single hackeysack all weekend.