Letter from ‘Glasto’: Kid packs, wilderness wipes, and ‘Rocket Man’

The scene and its exuberant vibe are unforgettable: A heaving sea of festivalgoers – sunburnt, tightly packed, and happy beyond measure – roar the words to the song “Rocket Man” with Elton John at the piano, as fireworks blast off from the Pyramid stage to cap a live-set finale.

Forgotten now are all the challenges of physically getting to this moment of communal joy at the Glastonbury music festival: the 150,000 public tickets that sold out months in advance, in just 11 minutes; the precision preparation for five days of tent camping, cooking, and keeping hydrated during a heatwave, after hauling everything by hand from distant car parks; and the sheer exhaustion from navigating a never-ending smorgasbord spectacle of music and culture that plays out across more than 100 stages.

I am in the crowd, hoping to find room to breathe, with my 2-year-old son in a backpack strung with fairy lights, and with my wife – who is six months pregnant – dancing with arms raised. Beside us, also reveling in the rapture of music, is my son Finn – at 21, a university student and serious DJ-in-the-making.

Sequined Elton John costumes abound, along with faux-diamond-encrusted square glasses.

“There is nowhere else on this Earth where I want to be!” one woman shouts toward me, clearly echoing the sentiments of many who made it this far. We try to keep our footing on the trampled, browned pasture grass among a growing pile of empty cans and ketchup-stained trays with a few rejected fries.

“Glasto” – formally the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts – is controlled chaos, on an overwhelming scale; the place where survivalism meets rock’n’roll. For the festival, which ended Sunday, we fitted our son with a wristband printed with our phone numbers and the words: “If lost, please call ...”

Most years for more than half a century, this farmland in rural southwest England is converted into a thriving city licensed to employ 63,000 workers and volunteers – for a grand total of 210,000 individuals on site – that caters to every musical taste, has a decidedly green, sustainable outlook, and a left-leaning and inclusive political bent.

Organizers take seriously the event motto: “Respect one another. Always,” and calculate that their ban on selling single-use plastic bottles has so far saved 2 million bottles from waste.

Glastonbury is also officially “family friendly,” so we prepared weeks in advance as if for a military operation, to improve our chances of getting through it with 1 1/2 children. Our packing list included a four-person “blackout” tent, which is designed for festivals and provides a dark and cool sleeping space, even when the sun rises at 4:45 a.m. and turns most tents into ovens.

We brought the most comfortable self-inflating mattress we could find, lightweight fold-up chairs, a large water bladder, camp stoves and a cook kit to make coffee and food, rubber boots in case of rain (historically justified, it’s England), a solar panel to charge cell phones (first purchased for the 2003 invasion of Iraq), and a battery-powered fan to keep the heat wave at bay.

There are virtually no showers (bless those packs of wilderness wipes). And outdoor facilities are rudimentary: 1,300 compost loos and 700 yards of urinals, along with 2,000 “long-drop” toilets – bring your own paper, please – deployed in roofless clusters. Forbidden are knives, and glass of any kind, even perfume bottles.

The Boy, who added the phrase “a lot of people” to his vocabulary, shook off his harlequin-colored ear defenders at one venue after another, despite powerful, body-grabbing sound systems guaranteed to leave ears ringing for hours.

We used a small foldable buggy during the day. But the baby backpack was critical at night to minimize the tripping hazard to others, as we navigated shuffling rivers of humanity moving in all directions between stages.

But we found that Glastonbury had prepared as meticulously as we had – even for families determined to share this unique experience with their young children. The family camping area included a 24-hour baby R&R, for example, which provided calm space, bath tubs to keep tots clean, and even a bottle warming and sterilizing service.

Children can lose themselves in the vast Kidzfield, which included hands-on magic performances, juggling, samba drumming, climbing and bouncy castles, puppeteering and crafts, and of course, face painting and glitter.

And what treasures await the survivors of Glastonbury? Aside from headline acts like Guns N’ Roses, the Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, The Chicks, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Lizzo, and Blondie, we enjoyed a host of other performances, including Max Richter, the Bristol Reggae Orchestra joined by the Windrush Choir, The Hives, Fred Again, and the Star Feminine Band – an all-women group from the small West African nation of Benin, who danced and sang with an infectious beat.

After midnight, every night, older son Finn explores a whole other side of the Glasto scene, where the music and dancing never stops at more intimate clubs and stages.

Besides music, the event also includes a multitude of other features such as theater, the circus, and politics. At the Left Field stage – which encourages festivalgoers with its panel discussion and gig lineup to “reenergize your activism” – we listened to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran for six years, until March 2022.

“Be their voice, share their story,” said Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe of political detainees still held in Iran, and around the world, to an overflow crowd that gave her a 40-second standing ovation. She described how her spirits were lifted in 2019, when a photo was smuggled into prison of a Free Nazanin banner at Glastonbury.

There were Greenpeace and “Healing” fields, and a Greencrafts Village where workshops – covering everything from bushcraft to bicycle repairs, printmaking to pottery, and even soil and earth practices – focus on sustainable living and green energy.

The Boy loved the ice cream, as he sat under a roof of solar panels and watched a 25-foot-long inflatable octopus arm, complete with tentacles, wave in the breeze.

Doing such a festival with an infant means pacing the entire family. Where else could one find oneself scrubbing dishes in the afternoon, while The Boy and his mother took a nap, with the background sound of a live set from the band Texas, wending its way up to our camp from the Pyramid stage?

But The Boy’s presence also led to unexpected happenings. He is drawn by the scooter used by Drew Hallam, for instance, a former guitarist with a tattoo of an octopus and a smear of glitter on his cheek, who is one of the youngest in the U.K. to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

“Normally out on the street, I get laughed at every other day,” says Mr. Hallam, as The Boy climbs onto the parked scooter and plays with the Glastonbury veteran’s two kids.

“I am so impressed with how inclusive Glastonbury is,” he says. “It is like nowhere else.”

Amid wall-to-wall tents, we identify ours by two flags that have been hoisted nearby, one of Ukraine, and one with multicolored stripes and a peace sign – which is perhaps appropriate, considering my day job for the Monitor as a conflict reporter who now frequents Ukraine.

We keep The Boy up late, to marvel at “Carhenge,” an installation of 24 wrecked and painted vintage cars, set up standing on their ends, and featuring a soundtrack that plays the 1970s hit “Car Wash.”

He also appreciates the 50-foot-high metal Arcadia “Spider” that belches flames (this year, proudly run on bio-fuel) amid a laser light show, with a DJ inside the arachnid’s belly, high off the ground.

Glastonbury projects the message that “Music is Love!” And in five days, it is impossible to absorb it all.

But as attendees with children, we can attest to the uplifting power that comes from sharing so much, with so many other revelers, who for a time surely turned this place into one of happiest on Earth.