Four hours from Detroit, Electric Forest was worth the drive, storm and all

Four hours up the road from Detroit, a pine forest outside Rothbury turns into Electric Forest every June. This year it sold out. Tens of thousands came for the festival's 14th edition, and a couple of the artists came from home.

Plenty in the crowd had come a long way. "We came from Petaluma, which is honestly kind of ridiculous when you say it out loud," said Lena. "But my friend went last year and wouldn't shut up about it, so we finally did it. I get it now."

People come as much for the place as the music. After dark, Sherwood Forest lights up from the canopy down. Stages hide between the trees, and strangers say "Happy Forest" instead of hello. There was something new to find this year, too: the old Dream Emporium was gone, replaced by a maze called Wander Whirled. Most everything else held to tradition. Michigan's own Dixon's Violin, who has opened the festival for years, started it off again at the Observatory.

The forest itself was the show. Projections moved across giant shapes set among the trees. A psychedelic pattern ran the length of the main walkway, and symbols glowed from every direction. A giant painted caterpillar sat along the path, something to climb on and rest. People napped in hammocks strung between the trunks. At one station, you could write a wish on a paper bag, set an LED candle inside, and watch it glow after dark.

Multiple stages kept the music going, but the days filled with things that had nothing to do with the headliners. There was morning yoga and Zumba, intention-setting and breathwork, community panels, and an art gallery that ran auctions. Sunday afternoon brought a beatbox battle. At the psychedelic chapel, people got "married," to each other, to themselves, even to objects, with a dating game running alongside to pair strangers up. None of it was official. That was never the point.

Sam, who came from Cincinnati, spent as much time getting sidetracked as watching sets. "I missed three sets I wanted to see because I kept getting pulled into random stuff," he said. "One minute you're walking to a stage, the next minute you're in a maze. That's kind of the whole thing here."

The weekend's strangest set came Saturday. The String Cheese Incident, who have played the Forest since its early years, teamed up with the psychedelic act Shpongle for a one-time show they called the Shebongle Shebang. It nearly came apart when a technical problem cut "Osiris" short, but they got it back, brought out Simon Posford and a two-piece horn section, and finished under fireworks. Saturday didn't wind down from there. Chris Lake played deep into the morning, and on another stage Shaquille O'Neal, who DJs as DJ Diesel, went back to back with T-Pain (DJ Teddy Pain) until around 4 a.m.

Two of the artists came from the Detroit area. Claude VonStroke, the Detroit-raised founder of Dirtybird, closed out Tripolee in the small hours after Friday. And GRiZ, who grew up in Southfield and keeps coming back to the Forest, was the homecoming the Michigan crowd had circled.

For the Michigan fans, his set meant a little more. "I'm from Brush Park, so GRiZ feels like one of ours," said Nina. "When he walked out, it was like, yeah, Detroit gets to claim him."

GRiZ played twice. The Friday set ran clean. The Sunday one was a different story. He was about half an hour into "Chasing the Golden Hour," his sunset set at Sherwood Court, when a line of storms came off Lake Michigan and the festival ordered an evacuation. Tens of thousands headed back to their cars, and the lightning opened up around 9:30. In 2024, a final-night storm ended the weekend for good. This time the forest waited it out. At 1:43 a.m. the gates reopened. Illenium and Wooli went back to back, and Lane 8 and LSDREAM carried it the rest of the way, the music running until three. For everyone who waited out the storm, it was an unforgettable way to end the weekend.

Caleb, who drives in from Manitowoc via the SS Badger car ferry, has stopped trying to put it into words. "This is my sixth Forest, and I still don't really know how to explain it to people," he said. "The lineup matters, obviously, but that's not what gets me back in the car every year. It's the dumb little moments with strangers that somehow stick most with you. I can't wait to see my forest fam again next year."

They'll be back next year. They always are, and the Detroiters who made the drive will be among them.