MORAN, Wyo. — Neutralize your mental slate of what a festival can be. Three days of heavy music combined with a holistic experience that promotes environmental stewardship, Fire in the Mountains (FITM) is an anomaly in the realm of music-leaning festivals. It’s likely you heard about “that metal festival at Heart Six Ranch,” though the level of thoughtful curation may surprise you, extending well beyond head banging and moshing.
There’s a carbon-offset program, a farm-to-festival BBQ, workshops ranging from blacksmithing to climate change to animism, and a portion of ticket sales will help purchase bear boxes for primitive camping areas in grizzly-dense Buffalo Valley. The future is now.
Local founders Jeremy Walker, Alex Feher, and Ollie Tripp have a clear mission for FITM: “connecting to nature and oneself through music, art, adventure, and education, all in a remote wilderness setting with the intention to cultivate our intrinsic nature through the act of rewilding; that is, to reconnect and immerse oneself with the natural world, thus strengthening our ancestral roots. This experience is about reconnecting with our basic human desires.”
Fire in the Mountains began as an off the radar, word-of-mouth party in the forest on Shadow Mountain. Now it’s an immersion-based experience with two stages, twenty-five bands over three days, and on-site camping. The third year at Heart Six Ranch brings a crescendo of energies to a devoted fan base of this subgenre of metal music.
“A light bulb went off during the first one on Shadow Mountain, experiencing powerful music in front of a powerful mountain range,” expressed Walker, who remembered his mom turning him onto Metallica’s thrash metal record, Kill ‘Em All, at a young age. “I thought, ‘we stumbled upon something that inspires people and this is something we need to run with, create an experience that you can’t get anywhere else.’”
The music lineup for 2022 brings veteran heavyweights alongside modern up-and-coming acts. This includes old-school Norwegian black metal/Viking metal band Enslaved, formed in 1991. Other bands considered to be world class include stark and ambient folk artist Steve Von Till, Oregon doom metal outfit Yob, Wolves in the Throne Room, Dreadnought, and Eternal Champion.
While stereotypes may lead you to believe that the festival is all hard-hitting, punch-your-mom-in-the-face metal, there is also folk, native themes, and gothic Americana acts that expand the range of heavy music. Cathartic, metal inspired cellist Helen Money is a part of the Friday lineup, which kicks-off the festival with acoustic acts. The dynamics between harsh and beautiful, mellow and primal, the audible experience at FITM is largely combined with nature and landscape-based lyricism.
“This is an evolution of festivals and where they are headed. Sure, you can go to a venue and see music, but to change your life and leave a better person, that’s what we aim for,” added Walker, who was an environmental science major in college. “Come here to this beautiful habitat and learn values through workshops—like how to be safe in bear country, holistic health, or restore a riparian zone—then take those values home and put into daily practice. Environmental education is a huge tool to help better our world. People that don’t get into nature as often sometimes have a harder time respecting it. Having a deeper experience is an incentive to come. These are big-picture lofty goals, but we really want it to be as much an environmental educational experience as much as music and arts.”
One of those signature environmental experiences includes a program that offers twenty-five underprivileged individuals the opportunity to attend the festival in trade for riparian work on the Buffalo Fork River.
“We really want to get locals here,” Walker added. “Tickets are selling, but slower due to gas and airline prices being prohibitive. Locals can drive to Moran. I really think that someone that might be indifferent to the music will be pleasantly surprised by the festival grounds, and will find connection to the music.”
Fire in the Mountains Festival, July 22-24 at Heart Six Ranch in Moran, Wyoming. Tickets are $50-$111 per day. FITMfest.com. A complete list of workshops is below.
FITM Workshops
- Dr. Mathias Nordvid, will be speaking about Viking tattoos based on the 10th-century world traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s account of meeting the Rus Vikings.
- Dr. Siv Watkins will be sharing her knowledge of animism to help us connect more intentionally to our surroundings.
- Christinia Eala is a Lakota elder and activist for the environment. She will be sharing her wisdom and providing a deeper sense of place to where we are in the west.
- Jason Tarpey, the frontman of Eternal Champion, will be showing us how to blacksmith a sword, which will then be raffled off to a lucky winner to take home with them.
- Elena Radford, a Peruvian Incan Shaman, will be doing a workshop on climate change and the teachings of ancient human values. I’m really excited about a panel discussion that will occur with some of our workshop leaders and band members together.
- Dr. Natalie Metz, ND, is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor, herbalist, and faculty member and mentor at the California Institute of Integral Studies where she teaches courses on holistic health and psychedelic medicines.
- Heather Olson, is an Herbalist, Farmer and Apothecary, and has been studying, growing, and wild-crafting medicinal plants of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains for 14 years.
