My crew and I celebrated Beltane at the end of April. I’ve been struggling to find something to say about it ever since.
It was a great weekend, overall. The air was cool and the sky was overcast. I took several cameras and made some fun photos. Good times were hand, despite the rain that came Saturday night, and the failure of my sleeping mat. But only half of us made it out, and it was not a particularly dramatic year, ritually speaking.
With the first of May landing in the middle of the week, we did a bit of divination to determine whether the weekend before or after would be better for us. Some weeks later, too late to change folks PTO, we learned that our usual spot was booked for an event we wanted no part of, leading us to try an alternate location: Oak Spirit Sanctuary, in central Missouri. Most of us had heard of OSS before, some time over the years, but we’d never gotten around to checking it out, so we were excited for the excuse/opportunity to try someplace new.
OSS is about twice as far from KC as Gaea Retreat Center, and my partner and I hit the road at just the wrong time, so the drive out was a bit of a slog (the way folks drive on I-70 is … questionable, sometimes). But we arrived safely and in plenty of time to set up and chill out before the sun set. The site is a bit smaller and less developed than Gaea, but that made it easier to find each other without already knowing where we were going. We did a bit of exploring, Saurday morning, and got to meet a couple members of the Board of Directors while they were working to get the site ready for their official Beltane festivities the following weekend. They were super hospitable, which was really nice, telling us about a handful of groups that use the land and explicitly inviting us to use the main ritual circle if we wanted. Then, that evening, they made a point of letting us know when they left, and that we had the land to ourselves.
We had our traditional Fuck You Fire on Friday night, burning off the ends of old spells then purging ourselves of winter and our frustrations as we threw expired herbs and other materia into the fire. For whatever reason, we didn’t quite muster the catharsis of some other years, but that’s not unprecedented: we’ve found other ways to vent our spleens, this spring.
Saturday night, we accepted our hosts’ invitation to use the main ritual circle and renewed our vows as Black Goat Brides. It was my turn, again, to lead the ritual, which I haven’t done in … several years. My companions assure me that I did well, but I still feel that I struggled to rise to the occasion. Still, it was good to renew our vows: we weren’t able to do so at either Beltane or Samhain, last year, due to weather and scheduling conflicts and other drama.
Saturday night’s rain ran into Sunday morning, but cleared in time for us to pack up our camp (however sopping) and get back on the road in time for lunch.
It was good to get out into the woods, again. It was good to celebrate Beltane again, especially after missing last year. And it was essential to make sure that all of our equipment was in working order for next month’s big road trip. But, as with so many of our adventures, lately, I feel like I had more fun than my companions, which always leaves me feeling a little weird.
Because I was ritual leader, and because an incoming storm led us to tear down the altar earlier than I would have liked, I didn’t take any photos of the altar. Fortunately, Kraken was kind enough to get some pictures of the altar while I was winding myself up. The images below are from Friday and Saturday afternoon, and from Friday night’s fire, shot with my d5600 using a Nikon 18-300mm zoom lens and my Tamron 150-600mm telephoto lens, and with my Z6 and my Nikon 24-300mm zoom.
The overcast was perfect for photography. I wish that any of my companions had brought fun clothes, or that any of us (myself included) had felt photogenic enough to do portraiture or something more elaborate.
I still haven’t gotten geotagging to work. Hopefully I’ll figure that out before the road trip. I’d really like to be able to plot this adventure’s photos