Bethel (United States) (AFP)

"It's a family reunion, not the commercial thing": Reunited in the woods near the historic site of the festival, hippies of all ages seek to maintain, 50 years later, the original spirit of Woodstock.

Children flounder happily in the mud in the middle of the makeshift stands offering jumble pipes, tapestries, colorful t-shirts and minerals with unsuspected virtues.

"It's a little different from all the other Woodstock celebrations," says Christopher Peter Vanderessen, whose long hair, baton and half-black fluorescent cape almost make him a wizard of the Lord. Rings under ecstasy.

This militant artist was not born in 1969 when hundreds of thousands of people celebrated peace, love and music here in northwestern New York. But every year he goes to the forest next to the field lent at the time by a farmer to perpetuate the ideals of the festival.

"For most of us, coming here is a pilgrimage," says the forty-year-old. "We do not care about who's on the show + we just need to be together".

- "Discreet simplicity" -

Around him, people dance, paint and relax in hammocks hung on coniferous trunks. Many are younger than the hippies gathered on the official 50th Anniversary website, the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, where beer is pulled under a sponsored tent rather than the neighbor's cooler.

From Pennsylvania, Mick and Amanda Jenkins, respectively 37 and 34, recognize themselves in the inherited hippy values ​​of their parents, this "discreet simplicity" that it is important for them to preserve.

"If no one is here to tell this story, it disappears," says Amanda Jenkins, her blond hair surrounded by a wreath of flowers.

A little further, a 42-year-old mother, Shronnie Jean Miller, says she grew up on the road at the rhythm of the tours of the group Grateful Dead, she followed everywhere with other "deadheads".

So, improvised camping in the woods "well worth the Ritz" for this Californian. "It's only peace and love, we are all at home in the forest."

- "A holiday" -

The New York "wizard" Christopher Peter Vanderessen, who puts his talents as an artist to paint the clothes of his comrades, will return next year in this hippie enclave, as he has done for thirty years years.

He ensures that he does not make this pilgrimage by nostalgia for a bygone era, but in the hope of a society in his image, relaxed and tolerant.

"Being hippie means being aware of the evolution of society and contributing to that change rather than complaining about what others are doing," he says, recalling that the festival was originally intended to be paid before the organizers, overwhelmed by the crowd, do a free gathering.

"It's about respecting the past, but also showing that we're moving forward," says the trance music fan. "That's what Woodstock is, it should not be a concert, but a holiday around the world."

© 2019 AFP