Nearly three hours before famed folk singer Eliza Gilkyson walks a weedy path to a tent in Judy Henry’s backyard, the host is happily directing traffic in the dirt driveway leading to her Rowe home.

The first of scores of cars appears around a narrow bend. Judy, wearing a purple body dress sprinkled with hues of blue, green, yellow and red with matching pants, motions for the driver to back up onto a furry ridge overlooking one side of the road.

“I’m in super-hyper mode,” she says, meandering along the dirt, her quick movements sending her dress in a wind-tossed flurry.

A silver Hyundai comes up next. She recognizes the driver, an older man with hair to match his chariot, and leads him until his tires pop over the edge and stop.

Judy walks over to her red Subaru and gets ready to head back down the road. There are more friends to find and plenty of places to put them.

“People have come all the way from California,” she yells out, as she moves down the road. “Just for the occasion.”

This occasion at Henry’s home Saturday afternoon brings together more than 100 parents and grandparents, children and teenagers, residents and expatriates. A sunny, cloudless day pushes them toward the mountains to the north, onto an open field that flutters with the increasing wind.

A few chairs, wooden deck pieces and the types found in elementary school classrooms, form weakly structured rows. A blue tent hoisted by white metal poles sits in front, with a larger, green-tinted one directly behind it.

The first tent will see all the action. Three microphone stands accompany a set of chairs, with the PA system stationed on top of another seat toward the back. The second tent, buckling in the wind with only a single white lawn chair inside, is Eliza’s lounge room, Judy says. She promises to furnish it later.

About 10 people are spread out across the field. Some sit in fold-out chairs with smiley faces. Others trudge through a bed of fading green weeds and grasses, interrupted occasionally by small bouquets of purple flowers.

“Whenever Judy has a party here, I like to come out,” says Mark Dixon, who, coming from Huntington Beach, Calif., has been a friend of Judy’s for 22 years. He sits in one of two deep blue chairs in the front row. “I like the people. Unpretentious people.”

Sherry Nelson approaches, wearing sunglasses and a rose-red shirt. She moved to New Mexico in the fall of 1972 as a 20-year-old and spent her first day there in downtown Santa Fe.

While at the Candyman music store, a Hollywood producer approached Sherry and her then-husband , Steve, about performing in a movie called Catch My Soul, to be filmed the next morning around Galisteo.

“He wanted us because we looked like hippies,” she says, laughing.

Steve and Sherry agreed to go and spent much of their time conversing with fellow extras, some of whom were from Rowe. Sherry fell in love with the area and has kept a connection there since, alternating stays with stints in Oregon and Philadelphia.

“It’s too bad the movie didn’t do anything ,” she says. “The movie tanked.”

Sherry walks over to a cloth-covered table beneath a canopy at the far end of the field. She takes a place next to DeAyn Jackson-Curtis , Judy’s nextdoor neighbor.

DeAyn presides over a swath of sandwiches, cookies and pasta salad. She is selling food to help pay for the tuitions of seven Santa Fe dancers who were accepted recently into the State Street Ballet, a professional ballet company in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Tuition for each student is $2,700 a year, and DeAyn hopes to raise $500 by the end of the day. As she says this, a man passes by and slips her a folded check. She opens it and grins.

“It’s 2:30, 3:00, and we have $95 in donations,” she says.

More people stream onto the field, toting chairs and Styrofoam coolers, and a solid front row emerges. It is a mostly older crowd, some dressed in flannel, almost everyone in jeans. No head goes uncovered.

Gilkyson, wearing short, lightblond hair, enters shortly after 3 with a guitar case and a portable amplifier, her brown tank top complimented by baggy dark pants that end just below the knees. Judy walks ahead of Gilkyson, welcoming her with trumpet sounds.

The space between the front and back rows fills in. Two women in matching straw hats lay out a blanket and open a bottle of red wine. A man ties a poster to a pair of wooden poles behind the chairs that reads, “The Happy Hippie Welcomes The Rainbow Warrior to Rowe 2005.”

Gilkyson shoulders a sunburst acoustic guitar and taps the dented microphone in her stand: “Check, check, check, yeah, yeah …”

Everyone talks as the wind begins to pick up, as the crowd has wrapped around both tents. Two men share a bag of tortilla chips and a salsa container . Another man puts a chair down nearby, holding a dog on an adjustable leash.

More people pepper the food table. DeAyn welcomes everyone with an enthusiastic “How are you?” between trips to check a charcoal grill.

By the show’s start, cars completely fill one side of Judy’s driveway, stretching hundreds of feet back. Judy runs up to a white SUV.

“I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it!” she sings.

Gilkyson moves quickly through her sound checks, stopping to buy a bag of cookies.

Most of the crowd is wearing sandals, while others have long gone barefoot. A man rests a hand on his wife’s leg. The man holding the leash sees another dog and pushes the animals together.

“Go ahead and socialize,” he says, smiling.

The first children arrive only 15 minutes before Gilkyson begins, accompanied by a battery of adults. They sit and stay with their parents, as a man in a pink shirt makes his rounds through the crowd, giving hugs all around.

“Just tell me when,” Gilkyson says to a woman in the front row, who suggests they wait to start until Henry arrives. The host saunters in moments later and gives Gilkyson a few warm words before sitting down a few feet away.

A man grabs the microphone and officially starts the show, earning the first applause of the afternoon. He addresses the former hippies in the audience — the “long hairs and short hairs” — sitting cross-legged on the red dirt. Few people carry cameras. No one uses a flash.

“It reminds me of a little mini-Woodstock ,” he says to some laughs.

The wind picks up even more as Gilkyson begins her set. The playing tent shudders and the second collapses altogether. The crowd sits still, nodding and tapping in unison.

Gilkyson introduces her third song, and Judy suddenly laughs. Gilkyson leans into the microphone.

“This one’s for you, Judy,” she says, and the crowd whistles and applauds.

Judy starts to dance as the song begins. She takes the hand of her daughter, Amanda, and does a few steps before breaking off to visit Sherry and DeAyn at the food table.

Amanda, wearing a cowboy hat and a tight orange dress, finds two other women and grabs their hands. They continue dancing.

Comments are not allowed on this story at this time. Please check the open for comments page for details. I want to read comments posted on this story

(22 comments; last comment posted June 17, 2005 04:31 pm)