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The ranger who brought us firewood as evening fell over Hagan-Stone Park gave a wink.

"You picked the right weekend to camp," he said, but he wasn't talking about the cool, starry September night. "The High Lonesome Strings are camped out all weekend. I'll have to shut 'em down about 11."

Sure enough, by the time a half-moon rose through the trees Friday night south of Greensboro, a symphony in blue jeans began to gather at the stone hearth of the picnic shelter.

First, it was only the steely snap of a lone banjo here, the false start of a squeeze box there, somebody tuning a deep mahogany guitar. But by the time a beat-up minivan arrived, with a string bass instead of a baby on board, the sound began to swell, trailing over the treetops like smoke.

"Everyone?" dobro player and High Lonesome founder Pammy Davis called out, and they launched into "Old Joe Clark." The meaning of the old song wasn't entirely clear, but when you have 30 sets of hands playing, who needs words?

This was the annual fall "Camp n' Pick" for the regional bluegrass association - the next one is May 16 - and happy were the accidental campers who stumbled upon it.

The two-day campout has been going on for more than a decade, and still there's no program other than a simple rule, as Davis, a Pleasant Garden resident, explained it:

"Everybody does two."

In fact, everybody did more like two songs times one hundred, and either knew the most obscure titles, or could play along after a bar or two.

"As long as I can see a guitar player's hands," said Vance Archer, "I can figure out what they're doing."

It wasn't unusual to see members who played two and three instruments; and in the case of Archer, a classically-trained cellist, a few more: fiddle, autoharp, guitar, mandolin and bouzouki, a Turkish instrument he likens to a "mandolin on steroids."

With the musicians ranging from the gray-headed down to a 5-year-old fiddler and her 3-year-old brother on guitar, groups like the High Lonesome Strings preserve a small genre the way it's been preserved all along - a full 300 years for some of these fiddle melodies.

And that is, not stored in a dusty catalog, but handed down and played, for the sheer joy of playing a melody good enough to last 300 years.

"It's just family fun," High Lonesome President Ed Sullivan said. "And how many other musical traditions survive without alcohol?"

Alcohol or no, the ranger chased them back to their campsites about 11, after the last strains of "Fireball Mail" were played, and the last plates of barbecue and pecan pie put away.

Sunday morning, there was a service in the little chapel, but the preacher spoke briefly, then turned it over to the High Lonesome Strings.

After all, when you've got this many a fiddle, guitar, dobro, mandolin and big string bass gathered under one roof, who needs words?

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com