Thirty-two years ago I walked a long and winding road, not far from where I now live, to a place that forever changed the world. It’s a place that’s on a lot of minds these days, as the Gerry Foundation seeks to pave a road to the future.

I don’t know the truth about that place, but I know what I saw. I promised myself then that I would never sentimentalize my experience; that I would remember the truth of my time there. Perspective and age have made that vow a challenge to uphold. When August rolls around, I can get caught up in the nostalgia as much as the next aging hippie. (I disdained the title “hippie” then, but use it as a kind of shorthand now, to describe the person I was, walking down the muddy roads I now know as 17B and Happy Avenue.)

I cannot show you artifacts of my time at Woodstock, but I can let you into my memory. Though I had tickets once, three days worth, I have them no longer. I had a t-shirt that, in addition to the familiar logo, had “Security” inscribed on the back. (Our brethren referred to us as “pigs” when we tried to keep them from breaking their legs on a slippery slope of mud backstage.)

Though the poster proclaimed it the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, my memories have less to do with music and art, and more to do with life and death. When I read the accounts in newspapers, or see the documentaries, I recognize aspects of my experience, but nothing comes close to evoking what I remember about that weekend, and how it echoed and shaped our time.

I was 17, gainfully employed and drug-free. After work on Friday afternoon, I changed into my Landlubbers and sandals and boarded a bus at the Port Authority bus terminal. With no time to eat, I grabbed some snacks at the Horn & Hardart Automat Shop, including my favorite, big-lump tapioca pudding. Though I was traveling alone, I had plans to meet up with my big brother, Chris, who was already at the site, working backstage security. We had no idea how impossible it would seem to find anyone specific in Bethel that weekend.

It would soon become clear. The highways were jammed. Arriving in Monticello, I still had miles to go. After a harrowing hitchhike, I found myself by the side of the road in White Lake, happy to be free and alive. I dipped into my backpack to find the tapioca. Taking a big spoonful, I swallowed once before realizing it had turned sour. I retched it out, onto the lawn in front of me. I looked up to see the White Lake Motel, which I recognized as the place my mother’s friend, Elliott Tiber, owned, and where I had visited him with my family. Surely I was safe, now.

Within minutes I was back on the road, in the driving rain. Years later I was told he had informed my mother that I came to the door drugged and crazed, and he offered me sanctuary. The truth is I had neither drugs nor alcohol in my system, only the remnants of the tapioca pudding, which now decorated his neighbor’s yard. I think it was clear to him that I was not a paying guest, and he had plenty of those.

People talk about the performances; I remember struggling to sleep on the sloping floor of a backstage trailer, while Janis Joplin hopped over me, getting ready to go onstage. I was only aware of her freaky energy, until I heard her rasping voice laughing to the crowd moments later.

I hear about the Hog Farm, a famous commune, serving meals; I remember the single Dixie cup of beef stew, doled out to the security crew on Saturday night, and nothing more to eat until Sunday, in Monticello, when I wolfed bagels and orange juice and anything I could find. I had not been really hungry, ever before.

We are told of babies being born at the site; I can’t forget the image of a man dying before my eyes as I tried to clear the dirt road of people so the ambulance could get to the hovering helicopter. We begged people to walk on the side of the road, to clear the way for emergency vehicles, and they told us to “cool out, man.”

Recalling the story of that weekend in August, 1969, I can’t help feeling it’s an epic tale with biblical aspects: the long, arduous journey, no room at the inn, a sea of followers in flowing garb and leather sandals, tribulation, birth, death, flood, famine, and finally, exodus. Though we’ve all traveled a long and winding road to get back to this place, it’s better now than it was then.