A hippie, happy day to frolic in the Eno

DURHAM -- Cristina Abrahao danced inside her hula hoop at the top of the meadow, swaying to a slow, bluesy number from the stage below.

"I love everything here, the music, the people, the families," the Brazilian native said, spreading her arms wide as if to greet the thousands of people spread out through the West Point on the Eno Park.

"But the best is the water, the possibility to swim."

It's all about the water, and the land that protects it, at the 31st Annual Festival for the Eno, a three-day event that continues today and Monday.

And it's a time for water drinkers in Raleigh to thank their upstream neighbors at the Eno River Association in Durham and Orange counties.

Over the past 40 years, the Eno River Association has raised money to buy almost 6,000 acres of land along the Eno, one of the biggest tributaries to Falls Lake. Most of the land now lies in state and city parks, where forests and wetlands help filter pollutants and trap sediment.

"It not only protects the land, but more importantly it protects the water ... [from] sediment from development, pesticides, oil and grease from runoff, nutrients from fertilizers and lawn chemicals," said Professor JoAnn Burkholder, director of the Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology at N.C. State University.

Falls Lake is on the state's list of degraded waters. Some estimates have put the cost of cleanup over the coming decades at $1.5 billion.

"The Eno would have been a major contributor to the problem," Burkholder said. "It's a great reason to celebrate the Eno."

And celebrate they did. Saturday was picture-perfect for a party in the park: a crystal blue sky, warm sun but none of the July heat and humidity that have bear-hugged festival-goers in recent years.

Blues and bluegrass wafted from four stages. Kids handled snakes and turtles, grown-ups took lessons in the Chinese exercises practiced by the Falun Gong, and Piedmont BioFuels gave lessons in turning used french-fry grease into diesel fuel.

All in all, the crowd had a vaguely hippie-ish air at times, but the hippies could not compete with the hips on display by The MoorishGypsy Tribe and Happy Hips. Women and girls, several dozen strong, kept a riverside crowd mesmerized with their undulations and ululations accompanied by Gypsy andMaghrebi music. Some of the belly dancers had the trim look of gym habitués, while others boasted midsections of a more generous and tumbling proportions.

"They are brave," smiled Karen Irvin of Raleigh. She and her husband, Doug, came for the clogging dancing and the food.

The prize for least hippie-ish appearance would have been awarded to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, who showed up in pumps, straight skirt and pressed white blouse, with a necklace of flat white pearls.

"The Eno is exceptional," Hagan said. "We're celebrating July Fourth, preserving this river and making nature available to everyone."

The sublime, the gross

The Eno's mill is a cool respite from the sun, four stories of air and exposed wood where long belts hum and click as they turn the granite grinding stones. Mike Shelby, a geneticist, has volunteered for 12 years to run and maintain the watermill, where he was grinding white corn grits Saturday afternoon.

"I love the way it smells when you first walk in," Shelby said. "Pine lumber, grease and corn meal."

Shelby is one of the hundreds of volunteers who fuel and lubricate the festival.

"This is fun," said Maureen Kurtz, a 10-year volunteer, as she reached into a recycling bin for metals and pulled out a crumpled wad of aluminum foil. She carefully unfolded it, dumped the greasy remnants of a gyro into a compost bin, and returned the foil to its proper place.

"Some people think this is gross, but people create and toss out a lot of gross stuff," Kurtz said. "We need to deal with it, and this is a good way to teach people."

The festival has made an art form out of dealing with gross stuff. Kurtz estimated that the festival composts or recycles more than 95 percent of its trash. Only the occasional diaper or Styrofoam cup brought from outside end up in the landfill.

Not all the instruction Saturday was environmental. High Strung Music of Durham held a running three-ring music lesson in banjo, ukulele and cello.

Alan Miller, a 15-year-old from Durham, put his arms around a cello for the first time as Shana Tucker of the Mallarme Players coached him.

"Be bold! Be bold!" Tucker urged.

When Miller coaxed a big sound from a C-scale, Tucker clapped: "That's it! Rip the string!"

Afterwards, Alan said he was going to branch out from guitar lessons.

"I'm going to take cello now," he said. "That was fun."