A storytelling festival in Botetourt County is marking a quarter century.
Sounds of the Mountains at Camp Bethel has expanded its schedule this weekend to six performers, the most it’s ever had. Two of them are also musicians.
Organizer Alan Hoal expects about 600 people this year. He adds word of mouth has brought in fans from about a dozen states, as well as new storytellers.
"“I’ll contact a storyteller that we haven’t had before, and I’ve had a couple of them say ‘what took you long, I’ve been wanting to come there," he said. "Or we have tellers reach out to us as well, and say, I’ve heard about your festival, I’d really like to come perform.”
Hoal grew up spending time at Camp Bethel. His parents managed camps at the site in the early 60's.
After attending the national storytelling festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Hoal pitched the idea for Sounds of the Mountains in 1990, and has been organizing it ever since.
One of the performers said reading the audience goes a long way toward what she's going to say. Kim Weitkamp has become a regular at the two-day event in Fincastle. She said often, committing a story to paper is her last concern.
"I wrote an award-winning folk operetta that lived in my head for two years before I wrote it down on paper," she explained. "I mean, I could tell you what the characters smelled like after those two years."
After fifteen years of touring, Weitkamp said the size of the group, age range, and male-female ratio all determine what she'll say once she gets on stage.
“I tell the story that I wrote," she explained. "And then the audience becomes my editor. I think of things on the fly in that moment. So, the story I wrote is really the road markers, and then it just evolves. And after a year of telling it, it’s even better than it was – because of all that give and take between the listener and the teller.”
Weitkamp has now been doing this 21 years.
The annual Sounds of the Mountains Festival is Friday and Saturday.
