Cave Run Storytelling Festival

For the past ten years or so my family has traveled to Cave Run State Park for a storytelling festival that is held every year at the end of September. I am not certain how we first heard about this storytelling festival or what possessed my family to go down and check it out but I am very thankful they did.

It probably started with my Grandmother who is a very creative, whimsical person who finds the beauty in everything. (She is the perfect example of how a artist should be) My Grandmother was probably the one who started us towards our first experience of storytelling.

For this particular storytelling festival the state park loans out the grounds on one side of the lake where the people who run the festival set up tents and venders set up their carts. During this festival different storytellers from different parts of the country come and tell their stories to a receptive crowd who is hungry for their tales.

The storytellers will tell stories from their childhood or will tell fairytales or fables lighting up the stage and taking the audience on a journey through the imagination. Through their animated gestures and hilarious sound effects these storytellers entertain not only little children with their stories but the adults as well.

Whether they are from Africa or they live up in the mountains of Colorado, these storytellers entertain a wide audience from young children to adults who are graying and wrinkled. This experience is one that I will cherish for years and I hope to go again every year until they decide not to do it anymore. This is probably the reason I enjoy stories so much and why I want to be a part of making a story that touches lives through animation.

(my grandparents are actually in this film, guy in front row in a hat and blue shirt) ;)