The kid was probably 11 years old, red hair and even redder skin scorched by a lack of sunscreen, as he floated on his rented yellow kayak.
“You having fun?” I asked in dad mode, as I saw no parent or guardian in any direction.
“I lost my group. They wanted to stop for drinks and I got stuck on a rock and couldn’t move for 20 minutes,” he said.
“You can use my phone and call your parents or whoever,” I offered.
“My mom don’t got her cell and I don’t know her boyfriend’s number.”
Hard to tell whatever happened to that child, but we left him on a campground bank and had to proceed, as our mission was Goon Fest.
Located just north of Brinkhaven on the Mohican River, Goon Fest 2025 was a three-day, two-night music and camping festival centered around jam band, folk and psychedelic rock.
Sure, that sounds like a hundred other festivals, but Goon Fest was different in that there was more community, relaxation and room to separate from the masses but still be connected, all while refreshing your mind through the chords and drums humming through the tree canopies.
Too much hippie nonsense for some of you readers? OK, let’s switch to freedom and bald eagles and Ohio State football along the river.
South of Loudonville, across from the Mohican State Park main entrance and sharing the parking lot with the mountain bike trail access point, is the Paddling River Access boat ramp. The plan was to make way in my 17-foot aluminum canoe and travel south along the always-oxbowing mighty Mohican 11 to 13 miles to the festival.
Geographically, the journey began at the lower sharks fin of Ashland County, then halfway through the expedition we’d dip into Knox County around where they have the Great Mohican Pow Wow.
Northeastern Knox County is absolutely gorgeous, with Old World farms nestled against dramatically steep hills, roads oscillating between paved and No. 57 stone, hilly no-sight-line roads with endless tree arches canopying your travels.
Logistically, I dropped the canoe at Paddling River Access, then my friend followed my car and trailer south 11 miles to Greer Landing. We left my car and trailer there, hoped in his car and drove back north to Paddling. Then proceeded to leave his car in the lot and set sail in the craft.
Canoes require balance and 30 seconds into the voyage we almost tipped ‘er when we hit a boulder protruding from the middle, and, as the English say, we did not mind it.
Foldable bleacher seats with backs were strapped to the gray shiny existing flat metal seast that came standard on the hull, along with: snacks (half a Jersey Mike’s veggie sub, Cliff Bars, granola bars, some gross looking sandwich my friend made, tangerines), four liters of water, water purification system (you don’t want to drink the river water – we saw a floating deer carcass and a lot of dudes “ca-brewing” and most likely peeing endlessly), two towels in a garbage bag, a dry bag with vessel registration card, life vests, bug spray and oh so many dad jokes.
Being captain of the S.S. Titanic II, I was positioned in the back to serve as both splitting-the-rocks navigator and using my paddle as a rudder, which I kept saying mistakenly saying “udder” for instead.
Most locals have done either the three-mile or seven-mile canoe trip from Loudonville down the Mohican in a rented kayak or canoe, and are familiar with the endless camper madness along Wally Road. Trailers stacked together with overhangs, river-theme decorations, porches, and every other one with outdoor TV setups. And on a Saturday in rural Ohio, that meant the voice of the Buckeyes, Paul Keels, was echoing down the waterway.
You could even bar hop along the Mohican, as they had canoe valets wading out into the brown water to pull you into the taverns.
Maps were downloaded on AllTrails but we didn’t really have a sense of distance or pace and eventually we stopped at a little island for snacks and a lung check. (A wise man once told me you never want your lungs too pink.)
A distraught looking middle-aged woman in a rented sun-faded kayak yelled to us on the bank, “Do you know how close we are to the end?”
“There is no end on the river; it’s a voyage, not a destination,” I said.
Her friend in the neighboring kayak was not amused, frowning at me and pointing her double-ended paddle aggressively at me.
“I really have to pee,” the lady said.
“Sorry, I don’t really know. I’d say you have about another 3 to 4 miles until you get to Frye’s Landing.”
“What!?” A third kayak appeared from around the river’s bend and a woman was not having my lack of knowledge. “The 7-mile stop is right here – I can see the sign,” she said.
The campgrounds and signs of humanity began to trickle out for the last four miles, trees and impossible-to-configure root systems bolted to the banks.
Wildlife was apparent but usually not visible. The rustle over just-starting-to-fall leaves from chipmunks and amber squirrels, the splash of bass breaking the oxygen barrier for flies floating just above the liquid’s meniscus, different chirps and squeaks of the birds. Saw a couple different ospreys, scavengers, duck and assorted waterfowl, and the prize was a bald eagle that soared over our heads not caring about the world that was metaphorically and physically so far beneath it.
The river monster? You wouldn’t believe me, but something was swimming up stream, towards our metallic tank, making a V ripple in the waterline. It passed the canoe, a maron hue, flat and wide, three-to-four feet long, a wake of stirred up muck trailing behind it.
With every mile, tales of that fish grew, and by this time this is published the fish will be close to 20 feet long.
Four and a half hours after making way, through the “Heart of Darkness,” we hit Greer landing, loaded the canoe up and traveled five minutes to Goon Fest, deep in the forested hills.
“Fest was started because me and the landowner, Damyan, go way back, we’re close friends,” Jack McCarthy, head of Goon Fest, said.
“I’ve been coming out here since I was 16, doing crazy hillbilly ****, you know? Damyan, he’s an old punk rocker, you know, a Dead guy, too. So he, you know, is really familiar with festivals. And I play in a band; I know a bunch of bands. And so one year for Halloween, he was like, ‘Dude, why don’t we put a little thing together?’ I’m like, all right.
We had a real fun time doing a Halloween show here, and then after that we were like, alright, let’s put a real fest”
Goon Fest had over 20 bands spanning the three-day, two-night event. Half the acts were Columbus-based, accompanied by Red Meat Conspiracy (Philly), Industrial Milk (Chicago), Skeeball Pro (South Carolina), Glen (Michigan), EATT (Cincinnati), Lady Lychee (NYC) and Odd Squad (Nashville), to name a few.
The band Industrial Milk was on the flatbed semi trailer stage playing their song, “Lettuce Crab,” with the trees as an awning and the river as a backdrop. Milk was a funk rock somewhat parody band as they just kept singing the words, “lettuce crab” over and over and doing impressions of Jerry Seinfeld.
Community help-yourself beer cases of Leinenkugels were placed on picnic tables throughout the forest, along with free relaxation-inducing snacks and lots of individual fires and small collectives jamming out to the music next to their tents.
A big basket of chocolate chip cookies on a picnic table by the firepit looked inviting to my munchied-out mind and took a bite.
“That tastes like weed,” I said out loud.
“It definitely is,” a lady by the fire said. “Wasn’t sure how strong they were, so I only ate half of one, be careful.”
Looking down at my empty hand filled only with crumbs – too late for good advice.
Although kids were I’m sure welcomed, this was mostly an adults-only affair.
A converted school bus painted blue had transitioned into a mobile camp unit.
Cult fears flashed before us when a group of people in what Mennonites wear as their Sunday best, ankle-length dresses of homemade fabric and men in pants without wrinkles, went down to the flat small stony beach by the river to maybe pray? Baptize someone? Family pictures as it was dusk and the perfect lighting?
“The atmosphere, what you have is you have two communities coming together,” McCarthy said. “The locals out here and friends of Damyan, that all help put this together, right? Out here for a week setting up, they’re doing all sorts of stuff, working on the land, the farmer, John, that farms a lot of this land out here, he helps the whole week leading up with his machines.
“You’ve got like the Columbus Music scene, or our little pocket of it, and then you have the locals out here. It just works really well. It’s kind of two worlds coming together to make one event, and it’s a good atmosphere. This definitely is the kind of place you can leave something on the ground and it’s most likely gonna get picked up and taken to the stage or turned in, you know, it’s a very safe space.”
Overhead soft light string bulbs were illuminated as the laser display coated the ground and the night visuals came out as Shop the Pig began to play. The crowd gyrated within their costumes of an 1800s miner, a cow and new age hippie at a fest.
Goon Fest was presented by Gunk, McCarthy’s band, and darkness poured in with only campfire flames flickering out past the stage, and it was a perfect blend of post-Midwestern emo, a more hippie version of Modest Mouse mixed with Jimmy Eat World. Songs about Ohio how some people consider our rural counties to be wastelands, but they are in fact gorgeous and glorious not only nature spots, but of culture.
We like to be outside in all the seasons, and sweatshirts, fires, football, grilling, and deep, deep breaths in nature, even side by side at a campground, keep our souls thirsty and put off the decaying nature of our bodies and minds.
“It’s on the Mohican River, dude, you know, dude, it’s so gorgeous,” McCarthy said. “Like, if you just study this piece of land – it’s magical. I feel like most people haven’t gotten a chance to see a piece of land this beautiful in Ohio. You know, like it’s really special. This is what sets us apart, I think, from a lot of other places, you know? I think this land is a big part of what makes Goon Fest so special.”
