Two women, Beverly Grant and Ellen Shelburne, return to Woodstock after 55 years

Beverly “Cookie” Grant hitchhiked to the Woodstock music festival in 1969 without a ticket and slept on straw. Ellen Shelburne came in a VW van and set up a small tent.

55 years later, the two long-time friends finally returned to the garden, but this time in great style.

The women, now 76 years old, were recently provided with a two-bedroom glamping tent on the site in upstate New York, equipped with comfortable beds, a shower, a coffee maker and Wi-Fi.

This time there was no mud from the pouring rain. They sat in gazebos and watched shows by Woodstock veterans John Fogerty and Roger Daltrey.

“We’re like hippie queens!” Grant joked over breakfast during the trip earlier this month.

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the nonprofit that operates the site, rolled out the tie-dye carpet for Grant and Shelburne to promote the new glamping facilities and delve deeper into Shelburne’s trove of photos from the generation-defining festival, which took place August 15-18, 1969.

The once trampled slope near the main stage is now a well-kept green space near a Woodstock and ’60s-themed museum and the concert pavilion.

But the return visit brought back a flood of memories. Shelburne was able to retrace her steps as a 21-year-old college student through the photos taken by her then-boyfriend and later husband, David Shelburne.

“I see that person in the photo, that’s me, but a person who is just starting out in life at that age. And now I’m looking back at sort of the bookends of my life,” said Ellen Shelburne. “After all these decades, I’m back in Woodstock and it brings everything back in such a positive way.”

Grant and Shelburne did not know each other in August 1969 and attended the concert separately.

Shelburne came with David Shelburne, his best friend, and another woman from Columbus, Ohio. They bought tickets, arrived early, and bought ponchos at a local store after rain was forecast. She slept in a small tent.

“I was never cold, wet, hungry, muddy, dirty, uncomfortable or miserable,” she said. “In fact, it was the exact opposite.”

Grant went to Woodstock on a whim.

A long-haired surfer she knew named Ray approached her and a friend on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and said, “There’s this music festival going on in New York. Do you want to hitchhike there with me?”

Grant’s girlfriend dropped out along the way, but she and the surfer made it to the town of Bethel. The last driver dropped them off at the edge of the huge traffic jam outside the festival and gave them a blanket.

Grant walked the last few miles to Woodstock barefoot.

Both women were enthusiastic about Jimi Hendrix, The Who and other musical groups, but also about the good mood of the more than 400,000 people who had gathered at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm about 80 miles northwest of New York City.

“When we needed food, someone gave us food. Someone gave us water. We didn’t need anything,” Grant said.

The two women met months later in Columbus, where they were running businesses next to Ohio State University with the men they went to Woodstock with.

And they both married their concert companions, although Grant divorced a few years later.

David and Ellen Shelburne ran a film and video production company together until his death four years ago.

Grant moved to Florida and eventually became a chef on mega yachts before starting her own company providing crew for these large boats.

Each of the women retained a spark of the Woodstock spirit. Shelburne said she was “caught up in the ’60s and proud of it.”

They became interested and wanted to return to the festival site last year after providing oral histories to the curators of the Museum at Bethel Woods in Columbus.

Just like in 1969, the women were provided with everything they needed for their last long weekend of peace, love and nostalgia – this time, however, a “two-bedroom luxury safari tent” with a front patio and shower in the bathroom. And when it rained this time, they were able to stay dry in the museum.

On a sunny Saturday, Bethel Woods’ senior curator, Neal Hitch, drove the women around in a golf cart to explore the locations where David Shelburne had shot his festival photographs.

Unlike others who pointed their cameras at the stage, he documented festival-goers camping, swimming, selling, relaxing and having fun.

Hitch noted that David Shelburne’s paintings were also valuable because they were arranged in sequence and thus told a story.

At one stop, Shelburne stood next to a line of trees, holding a photograph of a field full of campers.

She stood where her late husband had taken the photo, looking at the same field 55 years later, minus the campers.

Visibly moved, she said “oh” several times, exhaled deeply and then exclaimed, “Wow!”

It broke her heart that her husband was not in the photos, but she felt his presence that weekend.

The women spent several days traveling throughout the entire festival grounds, from the stage area to the forest where the traders had set up their stalls.

Despite the changes – the luxury tents, the fences, the museum – the women said they recognized the same gentle, friendly atmosphere they had experienced as 21-year-olds.

And they were excited to immerse themselves in it again decades later.

“It’s wonderful to see that it’s forever anchored in history,” Grant said, “and we’re a part of it.”