Back to the Garden: Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock

"We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden"

— Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”

Joni Mitchell never set foot in Woodstock during the famous summer of ’69. She was in New York City, bound by television contracts and the machinery of the music business. But she caught the vibe at a distance, secondhand through Graham Nash and the others who made the pilgrimage, and from that distance she wrote the song that placed Woodstock into the American dreamscape.

Her song “Woodstock” and her vision of the festival—“back to the garden”—took our small Catskills town and turned it into a state of mind. Suddenly Woodstock wasn’t just geography; it was myth, a place where innocence might be recovered, where music and community could be the salve for a fractured age. In four minutes of melody, Mitchell did more than memorialize an event. She reframed it, lifted it into the air, and gave it wings. The town’s name became eternal shorthand for the counterculture’s highest, most hopeful note.

And that’s the strange magic of her influence. Dylan hid out in the hills, The Band hammered out roots rock in the town’s basements, but it was Mitchell—watching from a distance—who caught the essence of the place and turned it into song. The musicians in town were living it, but she mythologized it. Without her, Woodstock might have remained just another upstate hamlet with a festival that got away. With her, it became a symbol, as vivid in spirit as it had been in real life.

About Joni’s Room

Joni’s Room is is a bright, multi-room unit on the first floor in The Main House, just across from the iconic and recently-restored Tinker Street Cinema. The suite has its own entrance on the side of The Main House with a small deck ideal for an evening cocktail or morning coffee. Large French doors allow a steady stream of light in all day long making it perfect for capturing the golden glow that shifts from morning to evening.

This suite features a cozy living area with windows overlooking the neon steeple of the cinema, a full-sized bed in a quiet alcove, a kitchenette with everything you need to fix a hearty meal, and a generous full bath with a tub to lower yourself into at the end of a day of hiking the hills or exploring the village on foot. Great for couples or single travelers, and always dog-friendly.