Spruce Knob Kite Festival

Introduction

There were so many beautiful kites in the air.

I had dragged my 81-year-old father out of his comfort zone to the top of a mountain and I don’t know why. Well, I knew why he wanted to be there.He has loved kites since he was a kid, but there was no real reason for me to be there. There was no reason, and yet I had rescheduled and missed out on many key summer events to make sure I was there for it.

While my father sat glued to his chair gazing through binoculars at the kites overhead, I was wandering around talking to people and tasting different West Virginia beers, always aware of the persistent but gentle wind holding all those beautiful kites up in the air. The afternoon carried on in this manner for a while… and as it did… a dream-like feeling settled in. 

It was significant.

It was palpable. 

You could hear it in people’s voices. 

Passing winds wrapped it around our bodies.

Just when I was going to say something about it, my father brought it up,

“Everybody here is of like mind. Everyone is happy just to be outside flying kites.

What a perfect day.”

The reason I couldn’t comprehend as to why I wanted to be there was just that, something I couldn’t comprehend. It had to be felt to be understood. I had to travel to that mountain, to be with those people and those winds to know why I was there, why I needed to be there.

It was the 5th annual Spruce Knob Kite festival, but it was much more than that.

Dad scoping out kites

Main Story

The Spruce Knob Kite Festival was created by the Experience Learning Center, in Centerville, WV, as a way to connect with locals and travelers alike. Tucked into the hills near Spruce Knob since the early 1970’s, the ELC has hosted a myriad of events and summer camps for nearly fifty years. Those camps, however, have been aimed at individuals who sign up for them or are part of a group. Executive Director, Dave Martin wanted to set up an event to demystify what they are doing on the mountain and let people wander around and check it out for themselves.

“This is kind of an open house to show people who we are and what we are about, no big ulterior motive here. We wanted to create something that was free and open to the public that had little to no commitment and just fun for anyone that showed up.”

Dave Martin and his son Henry preparing a kite

Former communications director, Katie Wolpert remembers being at the morning meeting when Dave asked for suggestions about what assets they had that could be used to entice outside guests to the mountain. She replied to Dave,

“Well, it’s always windy up here, how about we do something with that?”

Laughing, she recalled further, “We slowly looked around at each other and well… that’s how it started.”

The first year they had no idea what was going to happen, or if anyone would show up. They created wind scavenger hunts where you took a pinwheel and counted its revolutions at different points in the meadow, and wind races that measured how far a cup with a string fed through the center would move when you blew on it, and of course making and flying kites. The response to their humble idea was overwhelming. Hundreds of people made the long journey that first year. Trying to figure out where they went right, Katie said the journey and the festival itself might be fulfilling a sense of lost adventure that many people face nowadays.

“It’s easy to get lost driving here. There is no cell service. They think they are going to the top of Spruce Knob, but they are not, and then they get confused, and they make it here eventually, and they are finally like, oh we made it! … And what’s greeting you is the most spectacular view, with friendly people and no gimmicks or tricks. Just kites and sky. For those of us living in the woods, adventure is a little more commonplace, but others may be stuck in their neighborhoods or in their routine and something like a controlled adventure where you are welcomed when you get there might hold some type of human appeal to us.”

Max Bark flies a parafoil style kite which takes it’s shape not from a sturdy frame, rather it’s formed by air pressure as wind passes through the kite.

Since the first year the kite festival was held, Max Barker, a member of New Era Air and Space Adventures of Parkersburg, WV, has been there.

“My favorite part is seeing the kids get involved. For many of them it’s hard to get the opportunity, and most kids are doing [video] games and have issues with power lines and trees. We hope that this will inspire more kids to get outside.”

New Era, who sponsors many other kiting events in the region, sets up an area for kids to make their own kites and shows off many of their own including a parafoil style guitar kite, a thirty-foot shark kite and a cobra kite measuring over three hundred feet in length. Max said the festival has grown over the years and now goes into the evening where they can fly some of their night kites (specially made kites with lights along the tail) as onlookers star gaze at some of the east coast’s most coveted and darkest skies.

Jerimiah and Chelsea Asbury

Festival attendees Jerimiah and Chelsea Asbury had driven over three hours from Charleston, WV, to be there. They were tucked off into the far back corner soaking up the afternoon as if they were the only two people on the mountain. They did notice, from a safe distance, when a friend’s kite had found its way into the one and only tree in the meadow. As part of a group with six adults and two children Jerimiah chuckled,

“I think the adults are having more fun than the kids today for sure.”

“You think you’re just heading up the hills to fly a kite and you find yourself on the top of West Virginia re-energized and re-connected to a part of life you had lost.” - Katie Wolpert

The Spruce Knob Kite Festival makes sense on paper. You would expect that people who like kites want an open windswept meadow to fly them from. What you don’t expect about it is the spiritual electricity present in the air and soil. You don’t expect to find a sense of calm sweeping over you as the day goes from a journey to the mountain top to a place where time slows to a trickle and flying a kite as it meanders aimlessly in the sky winds up being all you’ve ever really needed.

See you at the next one.