#Water lantern festival portland free

Because I am an adult of great competence, however, I did what I usually do when confronted with something I don’t understand: I became disoriented and frightened. A banner read “Water Lantern Festival,” but I had no memory of lantern festivals in Portland. I could think of no particular holidays in early June. No matter where or how I looked, though, I could not discern just what the Officially Sanctioned Community Event was. I knew it was officially sanctioned because evident in great quantity were tents and banners, wristbands and branded knapsacks, the sound of amplified music, and food trucks.

#Water lantern festival portland free

I assumed there would be the usual clutches of homeless people, a handful of folks smoking joints while watching their friends try to juggle exotic juggling implements the names of which I do not know, and of course people in the Dogs May Run Free and Terrorize Each Other Here area smiling in that determined, nervous way dog park folks smile, since they must be prepared for a dog- or human- or dogs-and-humans fight at any moment.īut that is not what I found at all! What I found instead was a park semi-full of people, all of them either already at, or walking rapidly toward, some kind of Officially Sanctioned Community Event. If anything else, the sight of hundreds of people casting lanterns onto the water was indeed a welcome beacon of light for busy old Portland.When I stepped into Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon, last Saturday evening, I expected to find the park as lovely and quiet as it usually is at the end of the day. Lanterns engulfed the dark pond in Deering Oaks Park with light, highlighting the uniquely strong community that Portland has come to host.

This year the festival went off without a hitch, marking its 6th anniversary in Portland. They also take measures to ensure that the electric candles that light the lanterns are collected and either reused or recycled. The lanterns are also made of sustainable materials, such as rice paper which dissolves in the water and bamboo which is buoyant and can be collected more easily. The event happens in a closed-off space, such as a pond, where the lanterns can be safely collected and disposed of. The festival also has taken lengths to be environmentally sustainable. The festival has agreed to donate a portion of its proceeds to. has claimed to have assisted more than 58 million people by providing 4.6 billion dollars in loans at this time with those numbers still growing. The Water Lantern Festival is partnered with, a humanitarian assistance organization that helps people in developing countries get access to safe water and sanitation. The festival certainly has become a popular event and so it is all the more surprising the lengths the organizers take to not only be community-driven, but also charitable and sustainable. The Water Lantern Festival has become a country-wide phenomenon, ranking as the number 1 cultural festival by USA Today. The sharing was a special moment that night that has been and will be repeated more than 120 times throughout the United States.

“ It’s really meaningful for people to hear these experiences, hear what people in their community are going through,” said Gallup. Attendees were also offered the opportunity to share the significance of their own lanterns in front of all the rest of the event’s participants. Lanterns were decorated and dedicated to anything from superheroes to lost loved ones, or even to pets who couldn’t attend the event. The Water Lantern Festival also encouraged each lantern to have some personal meaning to it. “We feel that when people are people with each other, that’s when we make our most meaningful connections with other people.” The event pushes for that ideal by providing discounts on merchandise for people who participate in their connection-building scavenger hunt, which has people connect with fellow participants of the event. “It’s to bring communities together,” said Dylan Gallup, the event organizer. It features an array of food vendors, live music, scavenger hunts, and lantern-building. Starting in Portland in 2018, the festival has become a popular event, selling close to 1,500 tickets this year in Portland alone.

Hundreds of lights filled Deering Oaks Park in Portland on September 2 for the annual Water Lantern Festival. A cozy little community festival comes to Portland again.