GEORGE, Wash. -- There were certainly familiar sights at last weekend's Dead concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre.

There were graying hippies happy to have perhaps one last chance to see the remaining members of the Grateful Dead get on stage and jam. There was the smell of pot and patchouli, a sea of tie-dye and glitter and T-shirts featuring the band's iconic Steal Your Face design -- one even had a Seattle Seahawks logo in the center -- while other solid-color shirts simply proclaimed, "Still Better Than Phish."

There were my 20- and 30-something friends, drinking beer in the parking lot, which sadly didn't have the festival feel the Dead had when Jerry was alive and the group was constantly on tour.

And then there was me, updating my Facebook status from my BlackBerry while waiting for the boys in the band to go on for what would be the final night of their first tour in four years.

How very 2009, if not terribly tacky, I know.

But under my post of how excited I was to
be there, my friend Sue replied -- via a Facebook comment -- "A long, long time to
be gone but a short time to be there," a lyric from the song "Box of Rain."

How very true, if not a little corny.

It has been a long time to be gone, something bass player Phil Lesh commented on before the band performed its last song of the night -- "Box of Rain."

He said, "Thanks for bringing our community back together."

That community, already more than 20 years in the making, was something I desperately wanted to be a part of in the summer of 1994. At just 15, I begged my parents, pleaded, promised to be good, if they'd let me and two older -- and, of course, very responsible -- friends drive from Vancouver, Wash., to Eugene, Ore., to see the Grateful Dead at Autzen Stadium.

They agreed, and off we went in a beat-up Saab to headtrips unknown.

It was the beginning of -- sorry, I have to say it -- a long, strange trip in search of certain ideals I thought I could find in that first sea of tie-dye and hemp necklaces.

What I actually found were some very lost souls, a lot of drugs and a bunch of empty, sometimes hypocritical, philosophies that weren't going to change the world. I met well-meaning folks, sure, but I never found solutions in soy food stands at the Oregon Country Fair, or much ambition beyond driving around in an old school bus my friends aptly, and a little sadly, named "Good Intentions."

Eventually, even after growing my own dreadlocks, I left that scene behind in search of something ... well, more.

Still, my love for the Grateful Dead did not fade away, and the band's music punctuated a majority of my life from 1994 through 1999, those über neo-hippy years spent wearing patchwork pants and twirling around in circles.

I cried and saved every newspaper clipping I could find the day after Jerry died in August 1995. I have fliers from the memorials I went to in Portland's Waterfront Park and at the Roseland Theatre.

Years after his death, I made my first trip to San Francisco for a college spring break service trip to hand out meals to homebound people with HIV and AIDS and blankets to the homeless.

And I couldn't help myself -- I stood at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I wandered Golden Gate Park. I had my picture taken in front of the band's old house. (And was mocked by a San Franciscan passing by.)

Sure, it was silly, but I was finally in the city of the Summer of Love.

These days, my hair is straight and my tie-dye shirts (and tie-dyed prom dress, no kidding) have long been put away. I seldom dance at concerts, let alone twirl.

But on a sunny Saturday morning when I wake up in an unusually good mood, it never fails that I'll put on "Shakedown Street" -- my favorite Dead album -- and twirl around my living room.

* Kim Nowacki can be reached at 509-577-7680 or knowacki@yakimaherald.com.