Heart Nectar is a small-scale music festival that only recently started, either in 2022 or 2023, in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley. While I've been to other events of a similar size before, this was staged in the most austere and challenging environment where I've ever found such a gathering.

I first found out about Heart Nectar the year before, when I was seeing quite a lot of Facebook notifications for small-scale festivals I didn't know about, mostly in western and southwestern states. This was also how I found out about June Jam that year. It looked interesting enough that I bought a ticket for it. But as anyone who read the blogs from back then will remember, I did so much traveling and three festivals in a row at that time of year, that I felt so burnt out I didn't want to go anywhere for a long time after that. With that year's Heart Nectar lined up for two weeks after June Jam, even though I had already paid to get in, I just let it go by and stayed at home. But I still remembered it for this year.

And this year, not only did I go to it, but I actually volunteered to work two shifts watching the entrance and checking in people arriving, in exchange for free admission.

Thursday, July 4, 2024

Because I didn't want to drag myself out of bed super early on Thursday morning, I actually left my home in Clovis, New Mexico, on Wednesday afternoon, and spent that night in a hotel in Starkville, Colorado, just over the state line on Interstate 25.

Thursday morning I left the hotel in Starkville and began the relatively short drive from there to the festival. All I had to do was drive north on I-25 to Walsenburg, cut through the mountains and into the valley going west on US-160, and then at Alamosa turn north on State Route 17. Somewhere along this path I stopped at a small-town liquor store and bought some beer, New Belgium Trippel, to bring to the festival since I correctly guessed there wouldn't be a whole lot of drinks on sale.

This event was happening on some empty land owned by AREA420, a big and sprawling cannabis-growing operation near Moffat, an extremely tiny town in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Finding where the festival was being set up was a bit of a challenge, even after asking people working at the weed farm where to go. While driving around between all the fields and greenhouses I encountered someone else driving around, looking for the same event, similarly confused. But we eventually found it and parked there.

The San Luis Valley, a flat expanse between two mountain ranges, is a type of environment known as high desert. The elevation was over 7,000 feet above sea level, which is an even higher elevation than the "Mile High City" Denver. Being desert, the air was extremely dry and thin, the weather scorching hot during the day and near-freezing at night, the terrain rough and barren. I'd brought a water bottle to carry around and drink from regularly, which was a real necessity here, and some jugs of spring water to keep it refilled. The next day I found that I hadn't brought nearly enough.

The festival's one stage, noon on Thursday, before nearly anything had been set up.

At this point almost none of the vendors or festival goers had arrived yet, it was just a few of us volunteers and the organizers. This was such a small event that the organizers who staged it were right there in it, interacting with the workers and volunteers, while spending the nights in their vehicles which included a converted old school bus.

The next six hours were quite boring. When I signed up for two volunteer shifts directing traffic at the entrance, I had made the mistake of signing up for the least interesting time slots, Thursday afternoon when almost no one was showing up yet, and Sunday morning long after everyone had arrived. So on Thursday afternoon there wasn't much to do while sitting by the entrance except welcome the handful of vendors and such that were arriving, like the people setting up the sweat lodge. Near the end, some more volunteers showed up, and I helped them set up the table, and a pavilion over it, for the other volunteers who would be working the entrance over the weekend.

The sun was hot and bright, there in the high desert. That day I had been wearing a hat on my head, a Buff over most of my face, and a shirt, only using sunscreen for my exposed arms. But the Buff didn't completely cover everything above the shirt's collar. This resulted in me having a dark red, painful ring of sunburn around the base of my neck for the next week or so.

During the rest of Thursday, there was hardly anything going on. As the sun set, I got to know the other volunteer who I had met while trying to find the place, while we drank some of the beer we brought. The only "dinner" I had consisted of dates and cashews that I had brought with me. Then around 10pm a drum 'n bass DJ--I think it was Budge--started playing on the stage, the first music of this event. Off in the distance I could see fireworks going off, since it was the Fourth of July.

I had brought my tent, but didn't even bother setting it up, since I could just recline my car's passenger seat and sleep there, just like at the Texas Eclipse. The weather at night was really cold, not quite freezing, but close.

Friday, July 5, 2024

During this second day, the fest slowly got itself together a little more, but still not a whole lot happened compared to the next two days. The morning was really uneventful. My breakfast was the same as the last day's dinner, more cashews and dates.

The morning steadily whiled away. After sitting in the car for some time charging my phone up, I passed away some more time getting to know the check-in volunteers at the front gate. By then, far more people were entering the festival than the day before when I was working the gate.

Mid-morning on Friday. It's slowly coming together...

I used up some more of this huge load of free time getting some more provisions from a nearby Dollar General. So far, this austere, remote festival seemed like the closest thing to Burning Man I had yet experienced. I'd already run out of water, which was a real necessity in such a hot, dry place. Even though I'd mostly converted my car into a tiny living space, I pulled up the driver's seat, started up the engine, and drove off the grounds to the Dollar General where I bought some more jugs of water and, since vegetables had been pretty scarce thus far, two cans of asparagus.

After one or two more DJ sets we had our opening ceremony, where some elders from certain Native American tribes from around this region who did a solemn ritual with prayers that officially opened our event.

With the ceremony over, the music really got going, mostly with DJs spinning exactly the kind of dreamy, trippy music you'd expect at a backwoods festival in the southwest. It's called "future bass." First up was Parasox followed by Dova Sutra.

Dova Sutra's set

This festival was mostly "BYOB" which I mostly did, but there was one place selling their own concoctions, the Lux Elixir Bar. They made "alchemical" cocktails with herbs like ginseng and turmeric, and if you wanted liquor in one, they had two unusual kinds of spirits. Pure Honey Spirit was something they made out of distilled mead, Saffron Honey Spirit was the Pure one plus a bunch of herbs, and Absinthe Alchemia I presume was real absinthe.

So first, I had a shot of Pure Honey Spirit with some agave nectar and lime juice. Then, I had another one straight, without the additives. Overall I liked it, but being distilled, it didn't have much of the sweet honey taste of mead. Later, I had a cocktail called Aphrodite's Love (cacao, blue lotus, schizandra, cayenne, cinnamon) with the Absinthe Alchemia. It sure tasted like absinthe.

By then we also had a pretty good food stand that set up there near the bus that the organizers were using as their office. This stand was making a great variety of dishes that took some time to make but were worth the wait time and the sometimes high prices. For dinner I got vegan quesadillas with walnuts and mushrooms standing in for meat, some kind of "vegan queso," mango salsa, and rice.

Bloomurian took the stage at 9:30. Unlike all the other artists that were there, this wasn't just a DJ but a duo consisting of a DJ and a singer. Their music was dreamy and hypnotic like much of what we had all heard earlier, but not as bass heavy. The set started with a looping sample that I actually recognized, from Sigur Rós' "Sæglópur," which I hadn't heard in quite a few years.

Bloomurian

Drrtywulvz continued the vibe after Bloomurian. By now the sky was completely dark and the weather had become bitterly cold and windy, just like the night before, and so I had to bundle up again. But there was one place where anyone could warm up...

This fiery owl had been installed earlier that day, and at night the gas-powered fire jets provided a welcome zone of warmth where I got to meet some more interesting people.

Saturday, July 6, 2024

By now Heart Nectar was finally in full swing. The stage was fully functional, all the vendors were set up and operational, and all the food and drink stands that were going to be there were open. So I could get a "cowboy coffee" from Living Fields and wake up with that.

Warren Ji kicked off the music at 11. Then at noon, Bloomurian returned for their acoustic set.

Bloomurian's acoustic set, in which the usual DJ only played an acoustic guitar to accompany the singer.

Through Saturday afternoon there were DJs, none of whom I'd ever heard of, mostly playing slow, trippy future bass. Flowerbeam started at 1:30, and I listened to almost all of that set while getting a massage at a nearby vendor tent. That's another experience I'll recommend, it was totally worth it.

Around here I heard from someone in one of these vendor tents that the people who put on Texas Eclipse are already planning a Barcelona Eclipse festival for 2026. Hopefully they'll have worked out their issues from last time by then!

So much of the music was being spun by artists who aren't even on YouTube which is why I've been linking to their Soundcloud pages here. Most of them were based in Denver, though there were some exceptions like Yawei from Austin, who was on late Saturday afternoon.

By now all the food trucks that were going to be here had already set up. One of them was serving up barbecue and I got an OK hot dog from them.

Orenda was on the stage next, who I thought was even more hypnotic than the last few DJs. Then as the sun set was Illoh who started out funky like GRiZ, and later diverged into both future bass and DnB territory.

Illoh providing the soundtrack to the sunset.

After Illoh was Moondrop. Now this was quite a show with fire-waving dancers, and Moondrop adding her own vocals to the tracks she was spinning.

Then at 11, Megan Hamilton took the stage to begin a great pumping house set. She was one of the few artists at this event I had actually heard of, and the only one I'd seen before.

During Megan Hamilton's set I went to a nearby tent where one could experience "DMT Lights." I think it may have been something like this which is supposed to use lights, seen on a headset worn over your eyes, to stimulate DMT production in your brain. Unfortunately, I fell asleep in the middle of this, which I don't think was an intended effect.

Because I had to do my second volunteer shift the next morning, I couldn't stay awake for the whole night. This was really too bad because the closest thing to a headlining set was happening after midnight. I'd heard of Random Rab before and listened to a few of his songs on YouTube. So many of the people I met there had told me about how they were big fans and had been listening to him for so many years. All I could do was listen to the first couple songs and then retire to my car so I wouldn't oversleep the next morning.

Sunday, July 7, 2024

I had my second six-hour shift watching the entrance on Sunday morning. I really didn't pick the best times to do this, because, much like Thursday afternoon, there was hardly anyone entering the fest during this time. This was the last day and so almost everyone who wanted to be here was already here. But there was one unhappy arrival who made this just a little more interesting.

It seems that while I and everyone else camping here had been really enjoying Heart Nectar during the last three days, there were some other people who certainly weren't: those actually living in the town of Moffat. This is why, while I was watching the gate, we were visited by a rather angry but cordial man who pulled up in his truck. He wanted to tell us about everyone in Moffat who was outraged about the amount of noise emanating from our location that was disrupting their usually-quiet town. There was, he said, a Facebook group that had been blowing up with complaints all night.

I could tell this man was trying to expose us as a bunch of outsiders who had dropped in uninvited from places very far away. When he asked me where I was from and I just said "New Mexico," I could see the disappointment in his eyes because he clearly wanted me to be from somewhere much more far-off. Then the lead organizer walked over to have a long and serious discussion with him. This organizer, as he explained over the ensuing discussion, had just recently moved to the area and he was seriously making an effort to be a part of the Moffat community. The man in the truck kept asking so many obviously leading questions, again trying to make us look like unwanted interlopers, but the organizer just wouldn't take the bait. Eventually after at least an hour, he drove away, probably seeing that he wasn't getting anywhere with us.

With my volunteer shift now mostly over, someone brought me a delicious rice bowl from our best food stand. Then at 12:30, the music started with Cyberattack playing some great psytrance. This made me wish I could stay longer, since this was the first time all weekend I got to hear any psytrance and I really wanted to experience some more.

But, I had to go back to work the next day and I had a long drive ahead of me, so after my six hours at the gate were over, all I could do was get back in my car and start the long haul south through Alamosa, where I got a much-needed car wash and vacuum, and eventually Santa Fe on the way back to Clovis.

Overall that was a worthwhile experience. It had a bit of a rocky start but turned out great, especially considering how small and ramshackle it was. And, as a volunteer, I was actually a part of it. It should be on again next year and if I can make time for it, I may very well be back.