Good morning, SuperForest!
As we’ve already written several times before, this past Sunday was SuperForest’s first time participating in a large scale public event. We hosted a booth at the San Diego EarthFair!
Each year, on the Sunday closest to Earth Day, San Diego EarthWorks puts on an event that takes place in the beautiful gem that is Balboa Park. And each year, thousands of exhibitors put up displays on products, organizations, or even ideas designed to promote environmental consciousness and global peace. I visited this event for the first time two years ago and had mixed feelings about the event. Despite the intentions of the event being noble, I still felt like most of the booths out there wanted nothing more than to sell me something. The year after that, SuperForesters Iman and Nika joined me after we decided to “sabotage” EarthFair with some SuperForest love. We put up posters, we talked to booths about SuperForest and the Humanifesto, and we started what we called a “booth coalition”. Booths across the fair would put up a SuperForest sign at their table saying they’ve read and support the humanifesto and they showed me that contrary to my previous assertions, most exhibitors really did participate in EarthFair to learn and share rather than being strictly motivated by profit. I got home that day and almost immediately told SuperForester Jackson that we had to get involved with this event in 2010 and that I wanted to kick things up a notch, I wanted SuperForest to have its own booth.
SuperForest was still considerably small at that time, Jackson was living in New York, and I knew it’d be a bit of a stretch but I firmly set my intention and in hindsight, the ways in which the cogs of the universe spun to build this beautiful opportunity for us is jaw dropping. The event coordinator, Carolyn Chase, was kind enough to give us a space for $50 (instead of the minimum cost of $160), SuperForesters across the globe contributed ideas as to what we could do at this event, the kind and lovely souls that are the Pezzolis lent us their beautiful canopy for us to use on the day of the event, and both SuperForesters Jackson and Chris took the train down to San Diego to help turn all of our ideas into a reality.
I must admit, a few days before the event I was beginning to get nervous (of course I did, I wouldn’t be SuperForester Carla if I didn’t). I would occassionaly feel myself become overwhelmed with doubt. “What if something goes wrong?”, “What if it rains?”, “What if SuperForest isn’t ready for a large event such as this?”, “What if nobody comes to our booth?” The list of questions went on and on, and as if by magic, I came across an image that read “Let’s begin by letting go“. Brilliant. When I saw this, that’s exactly what I did. I sucked in a deep breath and with a heavy exhale, I realeased all of that fear into the ether. The momentum of all the energy and events that have led up to that very moment were what propelled me forward and before I knew it, Iman and I picked up Chris and Jackson and we were catapulted into a whirlwind of nonstop preparations, sunlight, and laughter.
Here is SuperForester Iman and Susan with some of the details of how the day went:
They did wake up, we continued to rock the booth, and after a couple hours of cleaning, Balboa Park was left as pristine and sparkly as it was before we got there (with the help of some rain clouds). Though we were exhausted, I can wholeheartedly say that this event (to me) was a phenomenal success. We were swimming in a sea of big fish (including an awesome Zeitgeist booth to our right…kismet!), but hundreds of people came and met us, and left with a smile on their face. I was filled with awe as I saw heads nodding while reading the humanifesto, faces turn to shock as they saw a reflection of themselves behind a curtain that was supposed to reveal “what’s going to save the planet”, and endless hugs and handshakes from wonderful strangers. Or perhaps it would be more fitting to say they entered our booth a stranger and left as an empowered SuperForester. Yes, that’s exactly what happened. :)
Hopefully this is just the start of SuperForest participating in public events and I’m guessing we’ll probably continue to explore different ideas on how to approach these sort of things. We had no idea as to how this event was going to turn out, and though it’s debatable as to whether our presence is going to make a huge difference in our analytics, there is no doubt as to whether our presence made a difference in people’s days. I, for one, am going to keep this memory with me for a very long time.
SuperForest, I feel like I’ve known you for centuries, yet you constantly continue to surprise and inspire me.
Thank You.
Love,
Carla
Recent Comments