LIMESTONE — For a few days, it was the largest city in Maine, but the Phish concert at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone didn’t really resemble a city in anything but population.

Everyone recycled. Vegetarians were the majority. Lots of people got naked, in full view, out-of-doors. And most uncitylike of all — almost everybody looked relaxed and happy.

The Phish community that swelled to 70,000 Saturday and Sunday wasn’t immune to the world’s problems — there was drug abuse, sanitation troubles, overpriced food. But even when rain early Saturday turned the grassy campgrounds to mud, the joy of the phans was still enough to cause spontaneous cheering eruptions.

The waves of sound swept by every few hours, beginning in the worst campsites two miles away from the concert stage down the runway. Like the waves of fans in football stadiums, the roar of the crowd carried down the tarmac section by section, by unspoken understanding among the masses, prompted by nothing more than sheer excitement and a craving for entertainment.

Phish follower or impartial observer, it was difficult to avoid getting chills, the sense of witnessing something rare and powerful, when the cheering arrived and engulfed the area where you were.

“The people in front won’t do it,” joked Pat Rager of Bangor, surrounded by his family in respectable but less-than-ideal Section 8A. “They’re snobs. Right here, we’re like the upper-middle class.”

Rager, his wife, Floren, and their two college-age daughters left Elm Street at 7 a.m. Friday, horns honking, in a 15-car caravan of 50 friends and friends of friends. All arrived safely at Loring, and within a few hours the group had located other Phish friends from New Jersey, Canada, Bangor and Virginia.

When not relying on good karma and coincidence, Phish phans who frequent the band’s shows gravitate to a central message board that was wallpapered several times over with notes to Daddy-O, the “M” Girls, Goovin, Sleeper, and a group including Lufah, Beefy and Gavin.

“We don’t try to find them,” said Floren Rager, watching the lunchtime crowd swirl past Saturday from the front seat of “Esther,” the family’s red 1972 Volkswagen bus. “It just happens.”

Not everyone looked to rekindle long-lost friendships.

“It’s not important to me,” said Franny, a college student from New Jersey. “I guess it would be important if you didn’t like who you were with. For me, it would be just the same if no one else was here.”

Her friend’s Chevy Cavalier made it to Limestone Friday and broke down outside the base. Franny helped push it inside to their campsite. No one seemed too worried about how to get back to Jersey as the group sat in a circle passing a pipe full of marijuana.

“Right now we don’t know why we’re here, but once we get in there and hear them, we’ll know,” Franny said. “There’s a zillion people all around you, but it’s like you’re by yourself.”

Dreadlocked entrepreneurs with blankets over their shoulders squatted on the pavement between campgrounds, selling blueberry pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches for $1 apiece under the blank gray skies. Some groups waited for the 4 p.m. concert in their cars, sharing joints and listening to the all-Phish radio station set up for the weekend. Others cooked over propane stoves: canned ravioli, soup, boxed potatoes.

Bob Smith, another college student from New Jersey, said the early morning rainstorm outside his tent left him high and dry atop his air mattress, “with a moat all around me.”

The weather came as little surprise to his friend, Kim Smith. She’s been to four Phish shows this summer, and it’s rained every time. Ever optimistic, she packed shorts for her first trip to Maine.

“All these clothes are borrowed,” she said, pulling at the sleeve of her thick, multicolored sweater.

The sun would finally show itself at 5 p.m., as Phish kicked into their third song. Some in the forest of bodies closed their eyes, some danced in the mud. A young man collapsed and lay on the ground unconscious as a girl crouched over him screaming, “Help him!”, her voice swallowed by the crowd. He came to and stood up weakly before the roving medics could be summoned.

The music would go on for hours, while outside the gates scattered phans took breaks sitting on the pavement. Some played in a house full of soap suds, part of the town square on the concert grounds. An official Phish post office stamped a special Great Went postmark on more than 700 post cards.

On the midway, at Mr. Goodbar’s piercing trailer, saleswoman Jessica Gibson woke up from a nap and stood outside putting on makeup, using a giant hand-held mirror to see what she was doing.

She traveled 7,000 miles in the past month with piercing artist Sid Bishop, setting up at large concerts in states from Washington to Iowa. At Phish, she said, cash-poor fans offered to trade drugs and sex for rings through their noses, lips and eyebrows.

She planned to convince Bishop on Monday to drive to Bangor to see where her favorite author, Stephen King, lives. “He loves me; he just doesn’t know it yet,” the pretty, green-eyed blonde said of King in a mild Atlanta accent.

“Honey, can we please go see his house?” she begged of Bishop.

Farther down the promenade, seated on top of a white van, 11-year-old Krista McKearnan of New York told jokes to passers-by and promoted her Uncle Pete’s band. “My foot’s asleep,” she complained cheerfully between public announcements.

“Conehead Buddha, right here, after the show,” she called. “If you like Bob Marley and the Grateful Dead, you’ll like them.”

McKearnan said she sometimes plays tambourine for the band, in which her uncle is the drummer. The weekend was her first trip to Maine since she was a baby, when her parents used to take her “to lakes and stuff.”

Between sets of music, Mark Vail and three high school friends from Franklin, Mass., returned to their camp for a beer and a brief rest. They said they don’t consider themselves typical Phish phans.

“I don’t even know half the songs they play,” confessed Vail, 23. “I’m surprised I’m even up here, this far away.”

They said Saturday’s show was good, but the band was just getting warmed up for Sunday.

“This is just the beginning,” promised Mark Brunelli.