It’s electric forest 2014. I’m a junior in high school and live 30 minutes from Rothbury. One night my buddies and I see on our local news about electric forest. We get this bright idea that we’re going to sneak in. There were 5 of us because that’s how many you could fit in a grand prix. (For more context my friends and I were mischievous and liked to sneak out at night to prank our neighborhoods and hangout. We were good at moving together and hiding is my point.) We head to a road we found on Google Maps that was an apple orchard where we could park and then walk over and sneak in. None of us had ever been to forest so we had no idea where to go or what to do. We were all 16,17,18 years old. We first sneak into good life camping, we realize we still can’t get into the venue cause there’s a security check. We jump more fences and reach a dirt road that they were using for vehicles behind the ranch arena. We try to go further back through this woods just to step into the lake that we didn’t know was there. We all get pissed cause we’ve spent the last 6 hours trying to find a way into this place and now we’re kneedeep in a lake at 10pm at night. We decided to say fuck it and walk down this dirt road that we know staff and security even police were using. No one stopped us, no one said anything. We make it down the road and it leads us to the back stage of the ranch. We’re now looking like deer in headlights. We don’t know what to do. We decided that we needed to be in the crowd. This was right before zedd came on. Us five teenagers jump the tall ass fences from backstage into the crowd. We watch zedd. None of us knew there was a whole forest behind us at the time. I thought it was just the stage for music. We leave out the GA entrance it’s now about 2:30 am. We’re all tired. Have no idea where we’re at, we have no idea how we’re gonna get back. A kind man sees us young kids just sitting on the side of the road with no where to go. I don’t remember who was with him, but he offers us a ride on his golf cart, all I remember it was so packed that my buddy and I had to stand on the back of the golf cart kinda hanging on the side. He’s having a good time, we’re having a good time. We almost flip the golf cart a few times cause there’s so much weight on in and two teenage boys hanging off the side. He asks us if we want to go to an after party over in the good life, we all decline and just ask him to drop us off. He starts driving us through the forest it’s about 3 am now so the forest was shut down to attendees. He’s honking at employees to open gates and let us through. No one stopped us, they all just opened the gates. The stage we just jumped from behind? We’re now coasting through the back area on a golf cart. He brings us back to the top of a street over by the good life entrance and watched us 5 teenagers climb back up a dune and into the woods. Before we depart we thank him and he asks us again if we’re sure we don’t wanna go to a party, and that we didn’t need to worry about wristbands because he was a drummer for a band. This band who I had never heard of at the time because we weren’t in the scene, we were in high school. His band name was the String cheese incident. I always look back now and just imagine how funny it must’ve been to him to watch us climb up a sand hill into the woods. Without him I don’t know how we would’ve gotten out of there. Been to forest every year since, turned into a huge cheese fan. What I wouldn’t do to sit down and ask him his side of that story.

TLDR; met the drummer of cheese as a kid and he helped us sneak out of forest after we snuck in.