A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
Kaisa
The lake steamed at dusk, the way north-woods lakes do in July when the water is warmer than the air. Mist lifted off the black water in slow threads. A loon called from the far shore, that long rising wail, and across the bay the main stage answered with a rolling psytrance bassline that walked over the water on long legs.
Our theme camp sat on the point among white pines: twelve tents, a kitchen under a blue tarp, one camper trailer, and the reason thirty of us drive nine hours every summer. A cedar sauna on a flatbed, woodstove inside, with a dock running from its door straight into the lake. Camp Löyly, named for the steam that leaps off the stones when you throw the water.
Bronwyn sat on the dock in a splint from toes to knee, crutches across her lap. She'd stepped off a pallet hanging the tarp that morning. Ankle and fibula, ambulance to town and back by four.
"I can't run a camp from a camp chair," she said. "So I've named co-leads." She held up two keys on loops of red yarn. "Lead trailer. One bed, one bench, the radio and the cash box. Kaisa."
I took a key.
"And Ruben."
A truck door shut up the hill.
Nobody had said that name at this lake in three summers. He came down the path between the pines with a duffel on his shoulder, and he was wearing my cloak. Lime and violet, mustard gold and cobalt, marbled down his back in long swirls with a streak of pink at the hem, black fleece at the hood. The cloak I'd left on the sauna hook the night everything ended.
And I was wearing his: the same print, white fleece at the hood, because the summer we bought them we'd agreed that was the only way to tell them apart.
Thirty campers went quiet and looked from his back to mine.
✦
Ruben
Bronwyn had told me on the phone, "Kaisa won't make it this year." Bronwyn has never once told the truth about a seating chart.
We split the camp down the middle without discussing it, the way we used to split a pizza. She took the kitchen, the dish rota and the ice runs. I took the sauna: the stove, the woodpile, the water barrels, and the shift from one in the morning to sunrise, when the festival walks over in towels and wet hair to sweat out the night and leap off our dock. Two people who used to finish each other's packing lists now talked in Sharpie on the camp whiteboard.
ICE BY 4. K.
STOVE CHECKED. R.
The first night I slept on the trailer bench with my knees against the fridge and listened to her breathe four feet away. She still sleeps with one arm flung over her head, as if she's hailing a cab.
At three on the second morning, Otto, nineteen, our newest stove keeper, came sprinting up the dock.
"Ruben. The chimney's roaring."
I knew the sound before I reached it: a freight-train rush up the stovepipe, the metal ticking as it heated. Above the sauna roof a fountain of orange sparks climbed into the white pines.
Twelve people were inside.
✦
Kaisa
He didn't call for me. I was already running.
Ruben went in through the steam with the extinguisher off its hook, and I went in behind him with the words I've said a hundred times: "Everybody out, towels on, walk to the kitchen, nobody runs on the dock." Twelve people in towels filed past me into the fifty-five-degree dark, steaming like teakettles.
Inside, the stovepipe glowed a dull cherry red from stove to ceiling.
Ruben shut the stove door and spun the air intake closed. "No water on the pipe," he said, and I was already saying, "It'll crack." Starve it. Shut off its air and the fire in the chimney has nothing to breathe.
He radioed festival fire. I filled buckets from the barrels and soaked a ring around the sauna, the pine needles under the eaves, where sparks were landing in little orange stars and winking out one by one in the wet.
At the kitchen I counted towels. Twelve. Counted again. Twelve.
The roar in the pipe dropped to a growl, then a whisper. The cherry red faded to black. When the fire crew's side-by-side bumped down the path, the captain put her light up the pipe, then on the closed intake, then on the wet ring in the needles.
"Who shut this down?"
"He did," I said.
"She taught me," said Ruben, at the same moment.
The captain looked from one of us to the other, and then at our cloaks, and the corner of her mouth went up. "Get that chimney swept and inspected before you light it again. Good work."
✦
Ruben
By five the sky over the lake had gone the pale pink of a brook trout's belly, and across the bay the sunrise set had begun, a slow progressive build, the kick soft on the water. Thirty people's plates waited on the kitchen table.
We set up three tubs without a word: hot and soapy, hot rinse, cool with a capful of sanitizer. I washed. She rinsed. Plates passed hand to hand under the warm water, and every time our knuckles touched, neither of us moved away.
"You never answered me," I said.
The plate stopped in her hands.
Three summers ago I asked her on the sauna's top bench at two in the morning, in front of eleven people in towels, because I wanted the people who loved us to see it. She looked at me for one long second. Then she stood, walked out the door, ran the length of the dock and went into the lake.
Everyone cheered. They thought she was plunging.
I sat on that bench until the stove went cold. At dawn I drove home.
"You asked me in front of eleven people, Ruben." She looked at the plate, not at me. "I cry like a four-year-old. I needed somewhere wet." She set it in the rack. "I came out, grabbed the first cloak on the dock rail, and wrote my answer on the back of the ice receipt. I put it under your windshield wiper. Then I sat in the trailer and waited for you to knock."
"It rained that night."
"It did."
"There was a slip of paper on my windshield. Blank. All the ink had run off it." I dried my hands on my jeans. "It's in my glovebox. I've driven three years trying to read it."
A loon called, close, from just past the dock.
"It said Yes. Ask me where it's only us."
✦
Kaisa
The sun cleared the far pines and lit the mist gold, and the sunrise set rolled over the water, each bar lifting a little higher than the one before.
Ruben looked at the dock, at the sleeping tents, at the sauna with its cold black pipe. Then back at me.
"It's only us and one loon," he said. "So I'm asking where it's only us. May I kiss you, Kaisa?"
"Yes," I said. "Spoken this time. Let the rain try."
My hands were still wet. I put them on his face anyway, warm dishwater running down his wrists into the sleeves of my cloak, and he kissed me like a man who had been reading a blank page for three years and had finally found the words on it. He tasted of cedar smoke and lake. His fingers found my waist under his own cloak, and the fleece and the dawn chill and the heat of him all arrived at once.
The radio on the table crackled.
"Co-leads." Bronwyn, from her tent. "The leg is real. The rest was me." A click. "Carry on."
Ruben laughed against my mouth and switched it off.
On the trailer step he reached for the zipper at my throat, his cloak on my shoulders, and stopped, one eyebrow asking.
"Leave it," I said. "It's been mine longer than it was ever yours."
He smiled, in my cloak, and opened the door.
We only needed one of Bronwyn's keys.
The cloaks that changed hands at the lake
Our Psytrance design has led a pilgrimage to a jungle waterfall in The Waterfall at 145 BPM and played a lost tape on a Goa beach in Stars Are Up. This time it came home to a north-woods lake in two hooded cloaks that share one print: violet, lime, mustard gold and cobalt marbling with streaks of pink. Kaisa keeps the Psy Trance men's festival cloak ($250), and Ruben arrives in the Psy Trance women's festival cloak ($250). Both are cut to the same unisex fit, so trading back is optional.
- Both cloaks: micro-mink poly outer · ultra-soft fluffy microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur · 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL. For layers underneath, size up.
More for cold lake nights: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · crushed velvet
What do you wear to a psytrance festival in the Midwest?
Pack for two seasons in one day. Midwest summer afternoons run warm and humid, so dance in light, quick-drying pieces, then add a fleece-lined hooded layer after dark, when lake and forest sites fall into the 50s °F. Bring rain gear, boots that handle mud, and something bold enough to find your camp by.
- Psytrance dress code: mandalas, fractals, liquid marbling and flowing layers that move at a full-on tempo. Visionary art clothing fits right in.
- Lake sites: mist rises off warm water at night, so damp hems and wet hair cool you fast. A swimsuit under a cloak takes you from the dock to the dance floor.
- Sauna and swim camps: keep a dry, warm layer by the door for the walk back from the water.
- Sunrise sets: the coldest hour comes just before the sun clears the trees. Keep your hood within reach.
For a big Midwest camping festival, Electric Forest fills pine and hardwood forest at the Double JJ Resort in Rothbury, Michigan, in late June, with humid nights of 55–65°F and frequent thunderstorms; for psytrance by a lake, Boom returns July 18–25, 2027, to the Marechal Carmona reservoir near Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, with lake swimming and nights in the 60s°F.
Frequently asked questions
What is a theme camp at a music festival?
A theme camp is a group of festivalgoers who camp together around a shared idea and offer something to everyone: a sauna, a chill-out dome, a dance floor, a breakfast or a workshop space. Camps usually apply for a placement, share a kitchen and chores, and pick leads who handle the festival's rules, safety and cleanup.
How do you wash dishes when camping?
Scrape food scraps into the trash first, then use three tubs: hot water with a few drops of biodegradable soap, a clean rinse, and a sanitizing rinse. Air dry everything on a rack. Strain the greywater, pack out the bits, and scatter the water about 200 feet from lakes and streams, unless the festival provides a greywater station.
Does northern Wisconsin get cold at night in July?
It can feel that way. July lows in the north woods often settle in the 50s °F, and clear, still nights beside lakes and in low spots can dip into the 40s. Afternoons may reach the 80s, so pack a warm hooded layer, a hat and dry socks for after dark and the walk to the sunrise set.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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