Aradia and I skidded back into the mundane world almost two weeks ago, now. Between her end-of-semester madness and my retail work schedule, we’d left something of a disaster behind as we dipped out to spend a week in the woods, and it’s taken quite an effort to calm down and clean up. There is, in fact, still quite a bit of mop-up left to do, one way or another.
The festival, as a whole, was a success and to date we’ve heard hardly a peep of criticism for our rituals or workshops. The HSA forum has not had much chatter on the subject, but all public conversations have been highly positive regarding the festival as a whole — “best festival in years” has been bandied about quite regularly — and I cannot but hope that our rituals were a contributing factor to that. A few technical critiques have found their way to us, one way or another — some very poorly timed — but the responces have been overwhelmingly positive … especially from the people at festival that we respect most.
The process was a strain on all of the ritual crew, and our support communities. Some bruised feelings remain on several sides. Many lessons were learned about how to do things differently next time around.
But there will be a next time around.