One of my happiest musical memories - not just of Phish, but of any music I've ever heard in my life - is walking across the Harvard Bridge, newly in love and therefore about to start failing lots of classes at MIT, and arriving on the Boston side with my DAUD1 11/30/97 Guyute opener playing in my Walkman. I was jumping up and down and humming/singing loudly, embarrassingly, unembarrassed. As the climactic post-thrash chords started raining down, I leaped up as high as I could in the air and let out a yell. I was crying with joy. I didn't have a care in the world. I've felt deeper joy (at the birth of my son, say), but may never have been lighter in my life.

That summer I went to Lemonwheel and - during the 'Ring of Fire' jam, of course - experienced something like the meditative twin to that ecstatic experience. Time's passage is so much a part of such perfect moments that it's no surprise that I fell out of Phish fandom not long after. But a mountain isn't a mountain that doesn't rise to a peak and then fall. It has to rejoin the ground and that's OK too. That's joyful too.