SIPA Mabon 2015

Yesterday was so cool!!! I really had a blast, and definitely hope to participate in more of their rituals in the future!

I left to meet my ride at the Gaia House around 3:00. I brought my food, of course, some extra plates and utensils, and my ritual robes, as I was unsure if other people would be wearing them or not. While I was there, one of my friends (who also needed a ride) offered me some fresh honeycomb.

I've seen it on occasion packed in jars of honey, but never fresh out of the hive, and I'd certainly never tried it. I thought it was really good! The beeswax has kind of a toffee-like texture and it is edible, although you can also press it against the top of your mouth to squeeze out the honey and then discard the comb if you like. I just went ahead and ate it.

That white box is the Gaia House beehive. I'd noticed in the past that they seem to have an awful lot of bees flying around the place, but I had no idea it was because they actually cultivate a swarm. They have to take honeycomb out every so often, and I guess I showed up on the right day!

We left for the state park circa 3:30, and it took another half hour to get there. We three were the first to arrive, although the others started getting there soon after. This open area in the trees was where we did our ritual. I didn't take any pictures of the actual ritual setup as I wasn't sure it was allowed, but they did have a photographer there, so theoretically there will be pictures on the Facebook page eventually that I can share with you all. Apparently they're a little behind getting things uploaded.

This was the shelter they reserved for dinner (that's my stuff sitting on the table).

A tree across the road covered in ivy.

We set up a lot of tiki torches. One got planted at each of the Quarters and Cross-Quarters around our circle, and then we had a bunch more canisters but no posts for them, so we just set a bunch of canisters on the tables to keep the bugs away from the food.

One of the girls found this tiny peeper tree frog!

Dinner, or "what I took my first time at the buffet to leave food for everyone else before I got seconds and stuffed my face".

Their banner, which they hung on the side of the shelter.

I got talking with some really incredible people over dinner. There were people of all different paths present: Wiccan, shamanic, Norse, Celtic, eclectic, etc. I decided not to wear my robes, although I probably should have, as it got really cold once the sun went down, but I did wear my blue cape, which got a lot of compliments. 

Ritual started at 7:00. The produce items we brought all went into a big basket in the middle of the Circle, which we empowered to attract even more abundance, as we were donating the food to a food pantry, and wanted to encourage it to draw additional food to feed the hungry. I wish I would have known we were donating the food - I thought it was just for decorative purposes, so I only bought one pepper, but I would happily have bought more to donate. 

We also did some banishing, writing down things we wanted to be rid of in our lives and then dropping the papers in a small bonfire. Though the Samhain ritual next month will likely be intense, and will presumably involve getting rid of a lot of negativity, the idea was to take a first step here at Mabon to lighten that load. 

I helped out with the Cakes and Ale segment, distributing cups of cider while another girl passed out mini cornbread muffins. 

As we were standing there in the dark, we could hear a drumming group performing at a local festival, which as far as background noises go was not a bad one to have during ritual. We could also hear the insects, of course, some frogs, and at one point an owl hooted.

After the ritual was concluded, I stood just looking at the stars for a while. I don't know if the view was quite as incredible as it is in the Boundary Waters, but it was still really something. One gentleman there pointed out some constellations to me, and I actually looked up in time to see a shooting star go through Cassiopeia. A Mabon wish was really the perfect way to tie up the evening. 

Camp Log: 6/19/15

(From Hummingbird’s logs, edited and transcribed 7/2/15)

This entry actually begins with a bit of an addition to last night. I woke up in the middle of the night, probably around 11:00 or 12:00 by my amateur estimation, and since I wasn't completely exhausted, I decided to get up and look at the stars. The boys had said previously that they would like to do the same, so I woke them up and crawled out of the tent.

It was a great night for it. The only clouds were very low over the horizon, so the sky was clear, and I could see hundreds of little pinpricks of light. I thought I saw a tiny shooting star, but it was hard to tell for sure with all the tree branches. I turned around and walked down to sit on a rock overlooking the lake, and right as I did so, a huge purplish shooting star blazed across the sky. I was so in awe that it took me a minute to remember to make a wish.

Over the lake, many of the stars were very bright, including the Big Dipper, which was the clearest I'd ever seen it. It was so bright, in fact, that I could see the reflection of it and some of the other stars in the water. It was chilly, so the boys and I didn't stay up real late, but it was gorgeous.

I slept in a little this morning (all the way to 6:45), so the others were mostly already awake. There was some fog rolling across the lake, but the sun was already high enough to have burned a lot of it off. I sat out on a rock watching the water foam up (along with watching pollen collect in the water), and then headed back to camp for breakfast. Grandpa toasted hot dog buns on his skillet, and then scrambled us two eggs apiece. We had it with hot chocolate (and SPAM, for the boys) - it was really excellent.

After breakfast, the adults prepped some things for a day trip, and the boys took me around to see some more things on the island. We saw the "fish graveyard", where someone/thing had left a bunch of Northern Pike skeletons. Those guys have a lot of teeth. I also found a black feather about the length of my forearm (eagle?), and stumbled across a pink ladyslipper orchid with three flowers on it. The boys had seen another one like it the other day, so they showed me that one as well. There were also some white pine seedlings, which Nick wanted to show grandpa.

Once everything was in order, we set out for our day trip. Nick and I were out on the water first, so we decided to investigate a big rock across the lake where the seagulls always sit. They got a bit agitated as we approached, but I was unsure if they were trying to dive-bomb us or some other nearby gulls. One settled on the water and floated around for a while. Ben and dad had to turn around to grab another pack, because they didn't have enough weight balancing the front of the canoe, but eventually they got it worked out.

We canoed out onto Hog Creek, but of course as we did so, the wind came up and was a pain, even though the creek was pretty sheltered. Ben tried fishing for a while but didn't catch anything. I was hoping to see some wildlife, but except for a few birds, there wasn't much out. We did try testing the ease with which one could paddle over the beaver dams going upstream, and it seemed pretty straightforward.

Eventually, people were tired and hungry, so we paddled back out on the lake to where we had eaten lunch on Wednesday. As a campsite, it was still nothing special, but it was out of the wind and sunny, so it was fine for a picnic. There were more butterflies, including Tiger Swallowtails, and some black ones I couldn't name. The chipmunk was back, this time with a friend (or rival); I named them Flotsam and Jetsam.

For lunch, I had my Tang, and then we passed around peanuts, bagels with peanut butter, carrot chips, granola bars, fruit strips, string cheese, dried apricots, cherries, and apples, and peanut butter granola. While we were eating, two locals paddled by who said our lunch site is actually one of the oldest campsites in the BWCAW, and that a log cabin used to be there.

By the time we finished eating, the wind had died down. dad decided to hang out at that campsite for a while longer, but I let myself get talked into canoeing some more. First we explored a little bay next to our lunch site, which had some reeds and lily pads. Then we went around the peninsula to another little creek beyond. This one had lots of lily pads at the beginning, and Nick thought he saw a turtle bobbing in the water. As we got farther in, there were more water weeds and grasses. We passed a beaver lodge, but no one seemed to be home. The creek dwindled out in a bunch of rocks we couldn't navigate in the canoes, so we turned around and went back to pick up dad. The others played musical canoes, but Nick and I just sat in our offshore and watched a chipmunk clambering over the rocks.

As we set out for the campsite, the wind - of course - decided to pick back up again. Nick and I were able to fight it, but it got to be a real struggle back near our island. We landed finally, and mom and dad did as well, but Ben and grandpa really had to work to get their canoe back to shore. Still, it was probably the least traumatic day trip I've ever been on.

I crawled into the tent pretty much right away to lay down and warm up a little. Mom joined me to read, and Ben also came in to mess around. I caught a bit of a nap, and when I woke up, it was just starting to sprinkle. I added some more layers and went out to help grandpa, dad, and Nick rig a fly over the fire pit to keep it dry. It only sprinkled on and off, and we were able to make dinner without any problems. We had shell pasta with a soupy cheese sauce, potato chips, and chocolate pudding. The water filter was working really slowly for some reason, so we tried rigging some pots to catch rainwater, but it was picking up so much pollen from the trees that it was undrinkable.

As we set up to do dishes, it started raining again, but the sun was out, so I ran over to one of the lookout rocks and could see a big rainbow stretching over the lake, its top hidden in the clouds. I went to go dry dishes, but went back over again later when it became a double rainbow, and then to see a pair of loons bobbing on the water.

Dad got a nice fire going in the grate, so we all sat around it and snuggled, swapping stories. Several hours later, the fire has burned down, and I'm ready now for bed. I wanted to get up to see the stars again, but it looks like it's going to be overcast, so that's a bust. Oh well. G'night!

May 2nd, 2013

I'd like to take a moment to commemorate all those who fell at the May 2nd, 1998 Battle of Hogwarts... Oh wait, this isn't that kind of blog, is it? Nuts.

All joking aside, I discovered more fully yesterday the extent to which childhood (and even teenage) fantasies and my love of magical books correlated to my connection with Paganism.
In youth, I had an imaginary friend. Actually, that's an understatement: I had many imaginary friends. Part of this was likely as not due to my lack of actual friends, but the individual of which I will specifically write today went quite a bit beyond a simple psychological need for company.
Envision, if you will, a blonde-haired girl wearing all blue - a blue dress, cape, gloves, mask, etc. She also happens to wear boots emblazoned with a lightning bolt. This is Polaris, named for the North Star, and she was, in many ways, more real to me in childhood than my family or classmates. I recall a six-year-old me describing her as "a superhero who can do anything", though she has a certain affinity for lightning, and she flew around the universe in a small red spaceship rescuing the innocent from less wholesome alien creatures. Now hold that thought.
Flash forward about ten years, and take a look at my sketchbooks - Polaris is
gone, but not gone, just morphed: now she is an older girl, still blonde, and still in a blue dress, only she's lost the mask, the gloves, and the boots. Her name is Aurora, and her powers are somewhat more limited than Polaris', dealing solely with the elements, lightning still being her favorite. Was this intentional on my part? Not in the slightest. Only yesterday, in the middle of the meditation I was doing for my Beltane ritual, did this occur to me.
This was, by itself, an intriguing personal insight into my psychology, but perhaps more significant was the realization that came immediately after this: Polaris was the manifestation of Goddess in my life as a little one. Think about it - an all-powerful Maiden who uses her magical powers for the benefit of others. I know for a fact that I connected more with my imaginary friend than I did with the vague, unknowable god that was discussed at church. It's hard to describe the emotional impact of this insight in words, but as I was meditating and realized this, I was physically stunned. To think that even as a tiny little girl, the Lady was reaching out to me? I mean, that's just incredible.
As for Aurora, I created her after my introduction to Paganism, so perhaps it's less surprising that her character is elementally inclined and whatnot, but still it was interesting to examine because I found she was sort of the personification of the way that I see Goddess in myself. After all, I see all people as having some piece of the Divine in them, and Aurora, I suppose, is how I might draw that energy appearing.
Has anyone else had an experience like that? I'd love to hear about it!