By Emi Gruender
[INSTALLMENT 14]
“What I love about the festival the most is that it offers a rare moment to slow down and reflect in a busy world, allowing people to share personal and universal emotions through lantern messages. This shared experience of light, hope, and community resonates deeply, whether attendees come for remembrance, healing, goal setting, or connection with others.”
— Tess Rowser
The water is calm in Almaden Lake Park tonight. The eighty-degree day has cooled off into what feels like a comfortable summer night, despite taking place in early November. All along a sandy shoreline, floating paper lanterns emit a flickering ochre light upon the lake’s reflective face. Soft music plays in the background as, one-by-one, people add their own stars to the watery sky below them. On some, there’s written poetry: on others, the names of deceased loved ones. No matter the designs, the lanterns float away from the shore just the same, shrinking in the distance until they join the line of lanterns at the far-off barrier in the middle of the lake. For the 14th issue of The Daily Explorer, writers Mia Hanuska, Logan Mendelson, Gio Arteaga, Laura Lipcsei, and Logan Whiteson, and alumni writer Isa Hunter-Quintero join me to enjoy the unique, meditative, and highly romantic Water Lantern Festival in San Jose.
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Welcome back travelers, to The Daily Explorer. In this series, we travel to interesting places within the Bay Area, hoping to inspire the readers of The Shield to explore their hometown. Keep an eye out for some of your favorite writers from The Shield. If you have any favorite places, restaurants, parks, etc, please email me at emi.gruender@gmail.com to issue a recommendation. Your name and input about the place in question will be credited, of course.
Without further ado, buckle up and enjoy the blog-style ride of The Daily Explorer!
SUNDAY, November 8, 2025
3:41 pm, Fashionably Late, in Daily Explorer Fashion
Thanks to Laura’s discovery of the Water Lantern Festival on social media, and the generosity of the Water Lantern Festival staff, namely marketing manager Tess Rowser, the Daily Explorer secured tickets to this highly popular event. A comprehensive event guide sent out to guests beforehand allowed us to prepare for the festival by packing picnic blankets, bug spray, lawn chairs, and colored markers (if we so desired). Though the event officially began around 2:30 pm, we decided to show up around an hour later, in typical Daily Explorer fashion.
The Almaden Lake Park, like the Los Gatos Creek Trail, was full of charmingly overgrown Californian wildlife. Despite the clearly busy beach and presence of non-festival attendees, the area did not feel congested. Rather, we were able to find a spot near a main pathway quite easily. After setting up camp, we set off to explore what else the festival had to offer.
4:03 pm, Scavenger Hunt Race
After checking in—and placing our complimentary tote bags on our picnic blankets—we discovered a scavenger hunt challenge hidden in our lantern-making kits. “Give 2 people you don’t know a high-five or fist bump,” read one challenge. “Meet someone who shares your birthday month. What is their name?” read another. Though many of us were intimidated by the outgoing-ness the hunt seemed to necessitate, we decided to compete with each other anyway—who could complete the challenge the fastest? While standing in line for tacos, a friendly couple noticed the scavenger hunt in our hands, and we had a pleasant interaction with them, as well.
There were a plethora of food trucks and local vendors near the entrance. Despite our hunger, we were entranced by one shop in particular—a local artist and graphic designer’s shop hawking pins, stickers, lanyards, and more. Her generous rate for stickers and other products made us promise ourselves to come back later. Meanwhile, the others were making steady progress on their scavenger hunts. Clearly designed to foster interconnectedness among strangers, these scavenger hunts allowed us to connect with several adults and kids our own age while waiting in line to order food. After a good munch session, we sat down with our half-finished scavenger hunts and broke out the markers to start decorating our lanterns.
4:40 pm, Slow Down and Reflect in a Busy World
Like true students of Journalism, nearly all of us included some sort of poetry on our lanterns. This activity was comparatively low-key after the previous high-energy Daily Explorer adventures, as we passed much of our time sitting down and drawing. But with the local artists crooning through speakers on the far-end stage, and the festival’s provided conversation cards handy, the slower pace felt anything but boring.
While Gio transcribed a poem dedicated to his long-distance boyfriend, Mia copied down some of her favorite original poetry. Each of us wrote whatever symbolized what we each held closest to our hearts. As we shared our own personal stories with one another, a few brave souls came to the stage and shared what they wrote on their lanterns and what it meant to them. While Daily Explorers usually focus on high-energy, adventurous stuff, the Water Lantern festival felt like a grand change of pace to “slow down and reflect in a busy world,” in the words of marketing manager Tess Rowser.
6:15 pm, And At Last, I See the Light
After festival-wide guided meditation, the first water lanterns took to the water under an inky sky. Admittedly, our troupe spent quite a bit of time taking photos to commemorate the experience, but once we were finished, we launched our lanterns from the beach, one by one.
Though it was a simple concept—making art on lanterns, and afterwards releasing them forever—it was surprisingly bittersweet. As we stood there, watching our lanterns float farther into the lake, we huddled in one big circle, suddenly aware of the few Daily Explorer adventures we had left—14 behind us, 5 to go.
7:05 pm, The Afterparty
After stopping by the unique vendor market and purchasing quite a couple of stickers from a local artist, we walked back to our respective carpools and resolved to make a quick pit stop at Shake Shack. Though we were no longer at the festival, and Logan and Isa had already said goodbye, we still placed our conversation cards in the middle of the table, riding the conversational wave until the night drew to a close.
P.S. Mia kept talking about how there hadn’t been a distinctly Daily Explorer-esque mishap thus far, to which I yelled at her to stop jinxing us. Thus, we discovered our supremely different stances on superstition. Luckily, we got home without incident—no thanks to a certain someone!
And finally: a huge thank you to the generous Marketing Staff and Manager of the Water Lantern Festival. This was an incredible experience, and if we’re all here next year, we’ll make sure to visit once again.
PHOTO ALBUM:
THE VERDICT:
- Time passes quickly. We were there for approximately four hours (being an hour late), and even still we felt that there was so much left to see.
- Bring bug spray.
- Have the courage to approach people just to give a compliment, or share your lantern’s story onstage. Taking advantage of the festival’s ability to unite people will make your experience that much more enjoyable.
- If you want to decorate your lantern more colorfully, bring your own markers! The Water Lantern festival issues small permanent markers, but it’s always fun to add a splash of color.
Join me in the next issue for yet another adventure, hopefully without a Daily Explorer-esque mishap: just like this one.
Signing off until next issue,
The Daily Explorer