Happy Mabon!
This year, it rained. That's funny, in all the years I've been celebrating Mabon--that's the fall equinox--here, it hasn't rained once, until this year, when I believe it rained enough for all six of the Mabon celebrations I've seen.
It was a cold, long, misty rain that began in the night and continued right on into the morning of the next day. The cloud lowered until you could not see the mountain ridge behind the campus and a fitful wind stirred the trees toward the afternoon. Sometimes the rain came hard, at other times it was a mere, drippy mist, but wet and gray either way. When the air was still and the mist thick, crows cawed once, twice, three times and nothing else made a sound. When crows caw like that, I've noticed, they'll respond to a human imitation, matching the number of caws you care to give, at least until they lose count. But I don't imitate wild animals anymore. It seems rude.
We continued our festivities as best as we could, though a lot of events had to be moved inside. The Gratitude Circle was in the Chapel, the Thank You Doll Build was in the Main Greenhouse, and so on. Some things had to be outside, such as waking the Doll, and the harvest festival was outside under the event tent, meaning we all had to get rather wet coming and going.
"No sense pretending to honor the Earth if you can't stand a little rain," said Charlie, but I noticed he pulled the hood of his rain poncho up, just life everyone else.
We all have rain ponchos as an optional part of our uniforms, and the wool cloaks we wear are excellent in any kind of cool weather, but as the day wore on the damp leaked in, and as we all spent more time outside that we normally do in such weather, by dinner time we were all rather chilled.
Joy noticed.
"If humans really are animals," she declared, in a loud voice, "I can diagnose you all with incipient hypothermia. GET TO BED."
But we didn't go to bed. We all repaired to our dorms, yes, but only to change clothes and, for some of us, to shower. Then most of us gathered in the Great Hall and built a fire (though we didn't light the wood stove) and set the hot cocoa and the spiced cider on to brew in the cauldrons on swinging arms over the fireplace. And there, led, encouraged, and abetted by Kit, we sat around telling stories half the night.
It's Fall, now.
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