Part 1: Post 4: A Day in the Life

My first morning on campus I woke up far too early. It wasn't my idea. The senior students (that is, those who aren't yearlings, like me) knew we might forget we were supposed to go to meditation at six, or might not be able to get up to get up, since most of us got to bed around two and weren't sober then. So, as a courtesy to us, at five-thirty in the morning they all started to sing and shout and turned all the lights on.

For all my sarcasm, it actually was generous of them, since they didn't have to go to meditation, and could have slept another hour or two. And they stayed up just as late as us. It's been a few days and I can recognize that now. I can also see the helpfulness in the fact that the door to the meditation room is locked in the morning. The dorms are all in the Mansion, and usually you can walk down the grand stairway to the main room or Great Hall, turn right, and you're in the meditation room. In the morning that door is locked so you have to go outside and walk around in the snow to the other door. There is no hint of dawn that early in the morning and it is really, really cold. Ridiculously cold, and the dark makes it worse, a sort of alien, isolated feeling, lonely, though I was with a group of people. Your nose-hairs freeze, but you wake up and fast, and I believe that is the point.

That first morning, we all trouped in, all thirty of us, knocking snow off our boots and the bottoms of our pants and capes. We were all talking at once about it being too cold and too early and there wasn't any coffee, and there were maybe ten people who had gotten there ahead of us, senior students, there because they wanted to be, all sitting cross-legged or kneeling on the floor facing away from us and none of them turned to look at us but...it was like suddenly we all heard their silence and we all shut up. We must have sounded like a pile of children. The one person facing our way, the tall, severe-looking man who had been Master of Ceremonies at the Brigid assembly the night before, looked at us and calmly said "if you want coffee before you meditate, you can make it yourself, starting tomorrow."

He put the emphasis on "can." He was simply informing is of our options. I, for one,was feeling so overwhelmed I hadn't thought of taking any initiative about anything. I think we all felt like that. Then he taught us zazen meditation. It's pretty simple, but a lot harder than it sounded. My mind felt clean and clear for a few minutes afterwards, like how I used to feel after a hard workout, but then I went back to normal. I'm going to have to do this six days a week for a year.

At eight we went into the Dining Hall, which smelled of food and also, just a little, of apple cider vinegar. I think they clean with it. We all went in together, at the same time, and there was a moment of silence for prayer. Then, waiters brought around these big cauldrons of food. You passed your bowls over and they served you. I couldn't see what they were serving at first and had to ask; it turned out to be a choice between vegetarian miso soup and oatmeal. I picked oatmeal, and there were bowls of dried fruit and nuts and jars of honey and jam to put in it. There was a jug of sheep's milk, too, but Ollie warned me not to take more than a cup's worth until everyone else at the table had had a chance. There was a buffet bar, too, but there were rules about that--everything is rationed the same way the milk is. I've never been rationed before, and it's very strange, but except for the miso and the sheep's milk, all the food itself seems like normal American breakfast food. What's really unusual is the quality--everything is excellent--and the things that are missing. There is no grapefruit. There is no orange juice. There is no black tea, though there are herbal teas (all served loose; you need your own tea ball) and there is coffee.  Nothing is instant or prepackaged, not even the ketchup. I think everything except the coffee is grown here on campus--it's the exact opposite of the way Harry Potter eats. At Hogwarts, the food just appears, magically. Nobody makes it and it comes from nowhere. Here, the work and the natural resources that make up the food is obvious.

Breakfast is the only meal everybody on campus eats together, and it is mandatory (unless you're sick or something). Ollie says if you are looking for someone, the best way to find them is to go to breakfast. They also have announcements after breakfast, so if you want to know what's going on, you have to be there.

Lunch is serve yourself, and it's available from noon to four. Dinner is served in the dorms, though the food comes from the Dining Hall kitchen, and it's optional. You can go into town to eat, if you want to, order a pizza delivered, whatever you want to do. Though, already pizza seems a bit...out of step? Classes haven't started yet, so we've been going to presentations between meals. It's a bit like an orientation after all.

I've been here a few days now, and I don't want to make it sound like we're hemmed in by weird rules. Except for the rationing (water and electricity are also rationed), there really aren't any rules. I mean, you can't smoke indoors, that sort of thing, but I don't smoke anyway. Life is strange here, but not because of rules. The differences are more structural. For example, there is no rule against throwing things out, there just aren't any trash cans. I'm serious! There are compost buckets, and you can put scrap paper in the tinder buckets by the wood stoves if you don't want to recycle it, but for anything else you have to take it down to the "re-use room" in the basement. I guess they sort it out from there every so often, but it makes wasting anything a giant pain in the neck. I guess that's part of the point.

Last night I had to go to group therapy. That's required for all "yearlings," too. Eventually, group therapy will be on Wednesdays for everybody, but the first few weeks the groups meet on different days so that the therapist can join us. Later, each group will only get him every fourth week. We've been divided into four groups, with as few people from the same dorm in each group as possible. Some of the senior students are in the groups, too, I guess it's optional for them.

The therapist is Allen, another of the professors here. I remember him from the assembly, too; he did a magic trick with one of the graduating students. He is a stage magician and a psychologist, and he has a habit of answering questions with more questions. It would be really annoying, except that I get the feeling that there are no wrong answers with him. He seems formal and reserved, even stiff, and his voice is dry and somewhat nasal. The school uniform doesn't look quite right on him; he looks like he should be wearing a collared shirt and tie. You'd think somebody like that would be uptight, afraid of their dignity getting ruffled, but I don't think Allen is like that. I think if anybody tried to ruffle him he'd be in on the joke.

So, yesterday was my therapy group's first meeting. Allen taught us group-bonding exercises, ice-breaking games, and the strict format we're supposed to use when he isn't there--and he cautioned us against trying to play therapist with each other. Someone asked, why not?

"Because you're crazy," he deadpanned.

"Am I crazy, too?" asked a girl called Raven. I think she just wanted attention. Alan gratified her by pronouncing her crazy, too.

"I'm crazy, you're crazy..." he added, and a hint of a smile played about one corner of his mouth, like he was waiting to see if someone would deliver the next line. I can recognize a Lewis Carrol paraphrase when I hear it, so did the honors and set him up.

"How do you know we're crazy?" I asked him.

"You must be, or you wouldn't have come here!" Alan replied, grinning like the Cheshire Cat himself. But then he sobered, and gave a real answer to the question about why we shouldn't practice therapy on each other.

"I'm your psychologist, an expert on the human mind--which is bull, of course, because I'm nuts. I have issues, hangups...but it works because my craziness isn't connected to yours. We're not really in each others' lives yet, so I can see things in you I could never have seen in myself, things I couldn't see in a friend. But implicit in our therapeutic relationship is the assumption that I know more about your minds than you do--which I don't. You know that, and I know it. But you'll make that assumption anyway if you come to trust me as your therapist. And for anyone who is actually in your lives, as you are in each others', with all the investments and conflicts of interest that implies, for anyone in your lives to encourage you to believe that they know more about your life and mind than you do is abusive. And I won't have you do that to each other."

See? I appear to be in good hands.

[Next post: Friday, February 8th: weekly schedule, getting to know dorm-mates, getting a job on campus]

Part 1: Post 3: Brigid

So, obviously I've decided to enroll.

 I talked to my parents, and the conversation went better than I'd expected. They think I'm making a huge mistake, but that I'm an adult now and should be allowed to make mistakes while I'm young...which is not the sort of thing you want to hear from your parents, but at least they're not angry. I don't think I'm making a mistake, but I suppose if I am there are worse mistakes I could make.

 I arrived yesterday, with only a single bag, as suggested. Sharon told me to stash my bag in a side office (there were something like ten other bags in there already) and gave  me a uniform and a "buddy" to look after me until the assembly that night.

 When I say "uniform," don't picture blue blazers and ties. They look more like martial arts uniforms than anything else, and then there's the black cape to go over it. Faculty and staff, except for Sharon, wear the same outfits except all in brown, brown uniform and brown cape.

I don't remember most of the tour or where anything is, but the campus isn't very large, just three main buildings, plus some barns and sheds and so on. There's a working farm here, with fields and greenhouses and fruit trees, though there's not much to see now, because of the snow. There are farm animals, too, goats and chicken and horses nosing hay in the snow. Ollie, my "buddy," says one of the masters boards horses here, in addition to the school's horses.

I asked him why they call the faculty "masters," not professors, like in a normal school.  I've noticed he uses a lot of odd names for things.

"If you wanted a normal school you wouldn't be here," he began. He has a point. "We call things what they are, but a lot of things just don't fit the normal words. So we need new words. They are professors, but they're something else, too. You'll see. And we could call you an incoming freshman, but a lot of people start out here with at least some college credit already, so people move through the school at different rates. So it doesn't really make sense to have distinct classes, freshman, sophomore, and so on. But everybody has to meet certain requirements in their first year, and you're all new together, so we call you 'yearlings.' Make sense?"

Ollie asked me if I'm Christian, and I was really taken aback. That question, asked like that, usually makes me feel a bit defensive because I don't go to church very often. Sometimes people object to my being Methodist, too, and attempt to convert me to some other denomination. But here I assume it's different and I wondered if Ollie was going to give me a hard time for being Christian at all. But he didn't give me a hard time about anything. He just wanted to make sure I knew there are a couple of Christians, Jews, and Buddhists on campus, though most people are pagan in one way or another. There are bicycles I can borrow if I want to go into town to church or for anything else. Ollie himself is Baptist.

I remember my Wiccan friends in high school talking about their holidays, and I vaguely remembered there was one in February. I was right, and today (or, by now, yesterday) is the day; they call it Brigid here, though my friends used to call it Imbolc or Candlemas. Ollie says the campus does not celebrate the pagan holidays (sabbats) in a precisely Wiccan way, but they do celebrate them. The assembly is evidently a Brigid celebration, among other things. I asked if the assembly was part of Orientation, but Ollie said nobody except Sharon calls anything Orientation. There is no formal Orientation, Sharon just tells new people to show up for Orientation because that's easier than explaining the assembly. I don't think I like that, but Ollie says the assembly is how they--we--welcome new students, so the analogy is sound.

When it started getting dark, we went to the Chapel Hall, where the assembly was. It was cold in there, not much warmer than the outside air. I was comfortable enough in my uniform (the cape is made of heavy black wool and I had on long johns), but I'm not used to being able to see my breath indoors by candlelight.

The candles--the whole room was lit only by candles, large tapers set in holders on the walls, torch style, every few feet, plus tapers set in a four-foot tall holder at the end of each of the eight rows of chairs. There were only two candles on the stage, one on either side, but I could dimly see stands for a lot more candles, plus a two rows of folding chairs and a lectern. There was enough light for us to see each other and to move around by gleam and shadow, but the high ceiling of the room was entirely lost in the gloom; it could have been a million miles up.

 A bell struck, once, high and clear.

Then a line of people processed in, cloaked in brown, and carrying unlit candles. The bell struck again and again as they walked, until I began to feel slightly odd, between the dim light and the repeating bell, like my mind was stretching somehow. The procession divided into two groups of eight each that moved up on either side of the audience until one person stood at the ends of each of the eight rows of seats. The bell silenced, abruptly. I had an end seat, and I looked up to see a woman, her expression neutral and shadowed weirdly, but beautiful. She was a small woman, with fine bones, maybe forty years old. She didn't look at me, not any more than a statue would have. I saw the students on the other row ends use their tapers to light the candles held by the brown-cloaked people, so I copied them and lit the woman's candle. She nodded to me, gravely, and she and the others processed up to the stage and took their seats; ten in the back row, six in front--three seats remained empty. They lowered their hoods, but in the candlelight I could barely see their faces.

The ceremony that followed not only introduced us to the school (we had to stand and say our names, plus the name of one of four animals: hawk, elk, snake, and turtle. I picked "turtle"), it was also the school's commencement exercise. There were some fifteen people from the undergraduate program I'd just joined, plus three master's level students who all finished together.

The graduating bachelor students emerged one by one from the wings of the stage, and knelt before the tall man who seemed to be acting as officiant. Then each stood and the man removed the student's black cape--there were some words repeated, a kind of small rite, and the graduate said something to us, like "thanks," or "I love you all", or made some small speech. What was under the black cloak varied--a white suit, an academic robe, a work uniform of some kind, doctor's scrubs. My favorite was the naked guy--he got a laugh, but nobody seemed to mind. After degree conferral, they all processed down the center aisle and out the door. There were only three master's students. They were dressed in brown, like the faculty, and they did not get diplomas. Instead, they received rings, each from a different faculty member--the student's adviser, I assume. After getting the ring, each graduate sat down in one of the empty seats on stage, with the faculty.

I tried to picture myself crossing the stage, but I could only imagine it in the third person. I couldn't imagine being the person graduating.

Afterward there was food and hot drinks, both at the back of the chapel room, like a mini reception, and again in my new dorm. Moving in took about five seconds, since I have so few things. There were no disposable plates or cups at the little reception. Instead, everyone drank from tin cups they kept clipped to their belts. They ate from handkerchiefs held in their hands. I didn't know what to do, at first, but there was a big box of cups under the table and Ollie helped me find the one with my name on it. There's a handkerchief for me, too. I couldn't believe it. Two days ago, none of these people knew I existed, and now they've given me my own cup! It's a little thing, and really prosaic, but it's perfect, the perfect little welcome. I didn't know what to say. I still don't.

We stayed up half the night, talking and drinking (all home-made; making alcohol seems to be every other person's hobby around here). Two days ago, I was quitting college so I wouldn't fail. I didn't know what to do with my life. Now...I don't really know what this place is yet, but I've got my own room (and my own cup), my uniform that feels like a costume from some magical fantasy turned real, and I've got fourteen new friends (even though, except for Ollie, who is is my dorm, too, I can't remember any of their names). I think this is going to work.

[Next post; February 4th: First full day on campus, Zen meditation, a therapist paraphrasing Lewis Carroll]

Part 1: Post 2: Arrival

I found something today, and I don't know what it is or what it means.

 I was driving around in the mountains, trying to think of how to tell my folks I'd quit school, when I passed a long driveway with a small, blue sign. 

Curiosity tugged at me. Then I passed a second driveway and sign, evidently a second entrance to whatever it was. Curiosity tugged harder. I didn't have anything else to do, so I turned my car around and drove in. I didn't read the sign.

The grounds of the campus I drove onto looked very vaguely collegiate, and I saw several groups of people walking through the snow. Mostly, they looked to be about my age, some older, both men and women. The thing is, a lot of them wore hooded, black capes. They looked...like Hogwarts students, something from Harry Potter. They all ignored me, except to step out of the way of the car. One of the buildings had a car port in front and a formal-looking entryway, so that is where I went. I can't begin to explain what I was doing or why I was doing it. I'm kind of in between things right now and, well, why not. The slate steps were icy but well sanded and the door had weight when I opened it. It seemed real.

The office inside was warm and smelled like wet wool and melted snow. There was a large desk, and a woman behind it looking at me, and all sorts of knickknacks around, little statues and hangings and what-not. The woman--she was slim and kind of ageless-looking, like you'd want to call her ma'am but you couldn't be sure she wouldn't take offense. She was wearing an electric blue top, I don't know why I remember that. When she asked can I help you? I simply opened my mouth and said the first thing that came to my head;

"What is this place? Some kind of pagan seminary?"

I'm not usually that abrupt with strangers, but her eyes twinkled and she smiled at me.

"That's exactly what it is," she told me. I was stunned. What does "pagan seminary" even mean? I had some Wiccan friends in high school, so I know a little, but it's not really my thing. On a whim, I asked how to apply. The woman asked if I wanted to attend the school. I said I did, which was suddenly quite true. I want to have something to tell my parents besides that I quit school so I wouldn't fail it. I want some sort of plan B. And I want to belong to this strange place where people wear Harry Potter robes to class.

The woman smiled and said I'd just been accepted and that new student orientation begins in two days.

"Hold on," I told her, "two days? What am I going to tell my parents? How am I going to pay for this? What is this place?" I mean, I normally do things on a whim, but I like to research the whim some before I jump into it. I like to know where I'm going. She smiled and handed me a pamphlet and told me to sit on a couch and read it and come back with any more questions.


And while I was sitting there, the oddest thing happened. Other people started coming in, just like I had. I think four of them at least, all having some version of the same conversation I'd had. Mostly I was reading my pamphlet when the others came it, but one girl caught my attention because she looked so young. Her hair was half purple and badly cut and she was in the middle of some argument with her mother, who called her Nora.  I didn't mean to evesdrop, but I listened anyway. I do that a lot.

"But she's sixteen!"the mother said to the woman in electric blue, "she has to finish high school!"

"Oh, and does Nora like school?" the receptionist asked, brightly. "Does she get good grades?"

And the mother just drooped. Her words fell out like pillows from an overstuffed closet. It was like she was making a confession. She told the receptionist all about Nora's failing grades ("and she's such a bright girl!"), her late nights, her sleazy boyfriends...Nora saw me looking at her and we locked eyes for a moment. I smiled sympathetically and she half-smiled back and rolled her eyes.  In the end they worked out some kind of deal. I think Nora is starting school here, too, but she's going to have to complete some sort of adapted curriculum and go home every weekend.

The next one caught my attention because he was old. Old-er, anyway. His hair is all grey. He came in, looked around carefully, and said "this is a pagan seminary, right? Non-denominational?"

The receptionist seemed a little surprised and asked him how he knew. At that moment, I am not even kidding, two people wearing black robes walked out from a door behind the desk, talking to each other about whether it was better to take magic with Allen or with Kit. The latter, apparently, gives more homework. When they saw us in the office, the two people excused themselves and walked out through the front door.

 "You mean aside from that?" asked the grey-haired man.

"Yes, aside from that," said the receptionist, trying very hard not to laugh.

"It takes one to know one," the man said. "I've been a Wiccan priest for forty-five years. My wife and I were in a coven for twenty. You've got signs up all over the place for anyone with eyes to see. I'll get to the point; how do I apply?"

"You just did--as a student,"the receptionist said. "We don't hire outside faculty." When the man assured her that was alright, she asked him why he wanted to be a student.

"Beginner's mind?"he suggested, then grew quieter and explained that his wife had died less than a year ago and he didn't want to be alone. "And I'm not ready for one of those damn nursing homes."

He got a pamphlet, too, and some sympathetic words, and joined me on the couch. I asked him what signs he was talking about and he pointed out the symbolism of some of the knickknacks. His name is Arther.

I gather that all students come this way, they just walk in, and if they guess what the school is and say they want to enroll, they are admitted. From what the woman in blue--her name is Sharon--told me, they trickle in over the year, but most show up in the last couple of weeks before orientation. They start the school year in February, not September here. I guess it's an entrance test--you have to be intuitive enough to find the school--and I passed!

 Look, I'm not as flighty as all of this makes me sound. This is really fast, but I've read the pamphlet and asked questions, and I actually know almost as much about this place as I did about my old school when I started. No matter what else it is, this place is a fully accredited liberal arts college.  I don't have to take on any more debt to go here, and I can pay as I go so if I decide I don't like it I can leave without really losing anything. I'll think about it for a few more days so I can be sure.

But I've got a good feeling about this.

Part 1: Post 1: Beginning Again

Of course, the school had a name, but none of us ever used it.

We didn't talk about the school much to outsiders, and among ourselves we could always just call it "the school," and we'd know what was meant. My degree does say something at the top, where names usually go, but to be honest that was the first place I ever saw that name. How did I not ever ask for a name of my school? You have to understand that there was always something mysterious about the place, and that was by design. There was a lot we never knew, strange secrets and useful secrets as well as a genuine respect for privacy. Direct questions always received honest answers, and we got good at asking the important questions, but we also learned to let the rest be.

The school is gone now, but we keep the secrets still, keep them for practical reasons and also we keep the secrets the way you might bank a fire against the winter chill. I have been asked to share certain things with you, to make public certain aspects of our way. I will keep silent on anything that would allow you to track down the exact location of our campus or the true identity of any of our staff and students. I will not tell you the name, though as I said, we never used it, anyway, and I will change certain identifying details. But all the important things I am about to tell you are true.


I attempted this blog last year, but it never came out quite the way I wanted. I am trying again. This time, with the exception of this first post and certain notes I will set off in brackets, I will write as though I am blogging about my current life. I will try to recapture the viewpoint I had thirteen years ago, when all this was new to me. I'll let you find out about the school and its people as I did, a little at a time. I hope that you will come to feel it is your school as well, at least in some small way.

My name is Daniel.


I joined the school in February of 2000, the New Year and the shame of having flunked out of my freshman year of college both still fresh in my mind. I was nineteen years old, and I was a young nineteen in some ways. I never thought I would fail college; I'd always been bright, gotten good grades, but somehow when I got to college I couldn't apply myself. It didn't feel like what I was supposed to be doing. In retrospect, my refusal to participate sounds bravely intuitive, but at the time it felt like my life was being hijacked by...something I couldn't understand.

I had not quite been expelled, but I knew I would be if things continued, and I knew of no way to keep things from continuing. Looking back on it, I was profoundly, existentially bored. I'd lived my whole life just going through the motions. Most things came easily to me, but I felt like I was waiting for my life to start. My life still had not started, not even at college, and I think I knew that if I kept living as I had been, getting good grades and doing what I was supposed to do, I would die like that. But I didn't know what else to do. I'd made the decision to quit school, though I hadn't yet finalized my withdrawal and I had not told my parents.

And so the end of January found me driving around in the mountains pretending to get ready for the next semester. Classes were supposed to have started already, but I had not registered for any. I had no idea whatever of what I was going to do. The bare trees looked quiet and restful out my car windows and the trees and hills and little clumps of houses soothed me somehow. The slight effort of paying attention to the road and the beautiful countryside kept me from having to think. The snow looked like lemon sugar in the bright sunshine.

And beneath a clump of tall trees I saw a sign and a driveway that piqued my curiosity and changed my life.

Completed Cycle

Hello, all,

This is the last update I will post until the story restarts in about two weeks. I want to talk some about why I'm restarting and what you will find here once I do restart. And then I will tell you about New Years twelve years ago.

When I started this blog, I wanted it to seem like I was blogging about my current life--of course, these events happened over a decade ago, and I intended to be honest about that, but I wanted readers to be able to get into the story as though it were happening right now. Unfortunately, I got caught up in a lot of exposition early on, so I ended up doing a lot of telling and very little showing.

This time, when I restart the story, you are not going to get a simple re-run. Some of the posts will include old material, but I'm going to post much more often (roughly twice a week), so there will be a lot of new materials. I will describe some of my fellow students as well as the faculty, so you'll get to know more characters. I'm hoping to include illustrations with every post (I can paint and draw), and I'll include links to supplemental material, so if you want to you can look up Charlie's entire recommended reading list or Kit's lecture notes or complete menus for our holiday meals.

Yes, it will be the same "story" that you have read before, but there will be a lot more of it. More detail, more characters, and a more immediate sense of being part of the day-to-day flow of the story.

So, for New Years' itself, a few of us on campus toasted the new year in and watched the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." We couldn't watch the ball drop, because we didn't have TV on campus, but we did have a video player. I remember standing out on one of the balconies looking out at the dark and suddenly I could hear distant cheering and fireworks bloom in the night around me as people in the nearby towns and along the roads began to celebrate. I wasn't wearing a watch; the New Year for me was auditory, in the beginning. Behind me in the room I heard voices, so I turned and joined my friends.

I don't know what the masters did. I didn't see any of them.

For the next few weeks my busy, semi-solitary, winter vacation continued. Sometime I saw strangers dressed in street clothes in campus, looking around, curious. I didn't speak to any of them, but I knew what they were doing. Sometimes I walked through the office and saw people talking to Sharon. I saw myself through the eyes of these prospective students and I looked strange and exotic in my black and white robes. I looked like what they wanted to be. At the same time, I felt normal, every day. My life had changed so much in just a year. I had changed.

Again, the masters processed into Chapel Hall and we gave them light so they could light the way for us. Graduates crossed the stage and a few more people received their green rings. The school year quickened into life again, and my time as a yearling was over.

A new cycle was beginning.

Christmas

I have described Yule on campus, and it is true that Yule, not Christmas, was the major winter holiday for the school as a whole. Many of us did celebrate Christmas, but most of us did so off campus with our families. Most of the people on campus over Christmas itself were there precisely because they did not celebrate the holiday. Yet, there were some exceptions, and that first year I was one of them. I celebrated Christmas at school.

I was curious, mostly, plus my brother, recently married, had decided to take his wife on a cruise, so it wasn't as though Christmas at home would be exactly as I remembered it, either. And I suppose that, at twenty, I was eager to prove I was really out on my own now. In later years I went home for the holiday, but at least I got my curiosity satisfied.

My parents had sent me a Christmas care package, though we planned to exchange gifts in person later. There were five or six of us who planned to celebrate together and they had care packages, too. Our plan was to have breakfast together and open our packages and exchange Christmas cards with each other. We'd also decided to give presents among ourselves, but limited to gifts that we'd made, already had, or that cost less than five dollars. We knew of nothing official scheduled, and I think we expected that by the end of the day we'd feel pretty lonely and sad. It didn't end up that way.

 On Christmas Eve I went to the midnight service in town. I was a little late--almost late for the service--because biking in the dark down the narrow road proved a little sketchy and I walked part of the way. I'd picked the UU church, and was not surprised to see Allen and his family there. He seemed a bit surprised to see me, but then I was not a regular attendee and I knew he was. He invited me to sit with them and was friendly with me, but it was the slightly distracted friendliness teachers often have when they see students out of context. I took my place on the pew next to Alexis, the littlest of Allen's kids. I don't know if she recognized me, but she obviously knew I was friends with her father and therefor an ok adult.

"I'm staying up till MIDNIGHT!" she told me, with no preamble.

"You're staying up later than that," her father corrected her, gently, "it's almost midnight now. The service goes until at least one. See my watch?" He was still explaining the mysteries of clock time when the service started. Over his bent head I made eye contact with Lo, Allen's wife, and she smiled her fondness of him.

The service was a bit different than the Methodist Christmas service I grew up with, but familiar enough, and the sermon was interesting. I forget now what it was about, but I remember that I thought about it for a few days. I felt a bit strange attending a ceremony in street clothes, like I should have been wearing my school uniform. And I felt a second strangeness after noticing the first. Increasingly I was feeling as though things on campus were normal and everything else was unreal. I glanced over at Allen; he wore a jacket and tie and seemed comfortable in them, but then he never looked right in school uniforms anyway. We were standing to sing while I thought these things and Alexis stood on the pew and sang along. She knew all the words, I noticed, except some words she clearly did not understand and mangled cutely. Oh, come all lee faithful, joyful and tri-umpant. Here father held her hand.

It must have been almost three in the morning before I got to bed, but I was up again at eight, ready to open presents...and to my surprise, there were some. I went down stares to the Great Hall and found that someone--I never found out who--had hung candy-canes and red and green Hershey's kisses on the tree; the kisses were speared through with loops of wire so they could hang. Someone had set out trays of doughnuts and bowls of oranges. The oranges were as rare a treat as the doughnuts, since usually all our fruit was local. There was coffee and hot cocoa waiting. And there were presents. Besides the ones we got for each other, I mean. Each of us who celebrated Christmas had a little bag with our name on it and inside was some small but perfect thing, all of them either inexpensive or probably used. I got a nice pair of binoculars. They were a little beat-up looking, but worked perfectly. Andy got a booklet on local scenic bicycling routes. Ollie got a deck of playing cards and an odd little set of magnetized marbles. And so on. It was more than just getting stuff; it was knowing that someone obviously really knew each of us, knew and cared, that warmed the heart. But who? None of us had done it, and a few of us got presents that were perfect in ways none of the other students could have known. Had Santa been here? Had one or another of the Masters--or, perhaps all of them--organized this? It is true that they often seemed to know more about us than we had ever told them.

Either way, it was fun--and accurate--to consider the presents the result of magic.

Yule

Happy Yule!

Yule is not the same as Christmas. Instead, it is a European pagan holiday on or around the winter solstice that merged with Christmas when Northern Europe was Christianized. Modern Wiccans and some others celebrate it on the winter solstice as a distinct holiday. It is basically all those parts of Christmas that don't really have anything to do with Jesus. I had known pagans celebrated Solstice before I got to the school, because I'd had some Wiccan friends in high school, but we never talked about religion much, and they always called it Solstice, at least when they talked with me. So I didn't know Yule meant something specific besides Christmas until I got to campus and I celebrated it for the first time. I've always celebrated it afterwards, and I still celebrate Christmas, too. With the baby coming, my wife and I are going to have to figure out how to have family traditions that make some kind of cohesive sense.

Anyway, there were only maybe twenty of us on campus the day before Yule, since a lot of the people who had stayed on campus after Samhain had gone home for the holidays. I was a little surprised, because we'd been encouraged to be there for Yule, but I was also kind of glad. We had a little Yule dinner around the beautiful old table in the Great Hall dining room and we all fit around it. Kit and Greg both joined us for dinner and helped cook, and they sat at the head and foot of the table like parents--which was strange, as I was not used to thinking of Kit in maternal terms and I had never really connected with Greg. But I liked it. Yule night, I should say, is the night before the sunrise of Yule, not the night after.

After dinner, more people started to arrive. Kit's husband came in, along with a lot of students and a couple graduates. I think we'd swelled to at least forty people before ten o'clock and a full party got going. There were trays of candies and cakes, a lot of alcohol, and dancing. Kit and her musician-friends formed a kind of band whose composition kept changing as one or more members got up to dance and someone else sat down. I was a bit surprised that none of the other Masters appeared, but this party seemed to be mostly a student-thing. It got pretty raucous and it just didn't stop. Around three in the morning I realized we were going to dance the sun up, but I turned out to be wrong.

By five I noticed that Kit was no longer part of the party. I didn't know when she had left. Things were starting to calm down, and I thought maybe she'd gone to bed. I was getting tired myself, and I had to remember that Kit was past forty. One of the older students called us all together and suggested we all climb the mountain to watch the sun come up. Greg would stay behind and watch over the oak logs and bayberry candles that still burned. The only thing was, we had to be utterly silent, not say anything until the sun actually came up. I knew a ritual activity when I heard one, I think we all did, so nearly all of us put on a couple of extra layers, pulled on our boots, grabbed foam pads to sit on, and walked out into the crusty, early-season snow.

We had flashlights, and it is hard to get lost in such a bit group, so hiking in the dark wasn't bad. It was strange not talking, though, moving with such a large crowd in the dark and hearing their breathing, their footfalls in the leaves and the snow, and nobody talking. We climbed to the top of the ridge behind the school to a lookout area where the trees had been cleared to give us a view almost straight down the valley to the east. By that time there was a definite glimmer of dawn; the eastern half of the sky was a luminous blue, with the ghosts of grey clouds just visible here and there. We all settled down to wait.

And heard music.

Someone, somewhere behind us, was playing "Here Comes the Sun" on a tin whistle.

Charlie! I looked around, but could not see him in the gloom under the trees. He finished the song and immediately began it again and this time, after the first few bars, was joined by a guitar. That had to be Allen. I hadn't seen him in weeks. I still couldn't see him, though the air was growing brighter all the time. The song cycled through, over and over, gaining instruments as it went: a violin, a tambourine, and a drum. The masters had all come. It was light enough now that I could probably have seen them if I'd looked, but the dawn was so close I was watching the horizon for the sun. One spot as growing brighter and brighter so that I kept thinking is that the sun? Is that it? Like when you're on an airplane taking off and you wonder if you've left the ground yet until suddenly it's obvious that you have. The sun came up and split the weird pale light of dawn and at that moment the song that had been repeating itself over and over again reached its beginning and it was obvious that we should all sing. Most of us knew the words--I did, I knew all of them.

Sun, sun sun, here it comes! we sang as the sun indeed came. I'd never paid any attention to sunrise before, but now it felt like a victory over darkness, like some sort of achievement. We did it! And when we were done singing we all jumped up and hooted and hollered and hugged like our team had won the Superbowl or something.

And we were completely freezing, having sat in the cold for the better part of an hour. Fortunately, the Masters had not just brought their instruments, they had also brought vast quantities of hot chocolate, cider, and coffee. Kit passed out ginger candies, golden as the sun, and caramels made with cayenne pepper. By the time we all got back down to the Great Hall, breakfast had appeared and so had dozens of other people, including the "sprouts," the children and nieces and nephews of the masters, all playing with new toys and eating cookies and candy. The almost monastic quiet of campus in winter was gone. I'd been up for over twenty-four hours at that point and was pretty fried, but I was also twenty, so I just kept going.  Not everyone did. Greg had gone to bed just after breakfast. I think the noise bothered him some, he wasn't a very outgoing person, and he was by no means young. Most of the masters fell asleep on the couches for at least a few minutes, and some took naps. Around noon, we found Kit curled up asleep under the Yule tree and her husband picked her up and carried her off to bed like a child. It was very sweet. I don't think she was exactly sober at that point, and she didn't wake up except to wrap her arms around her husband's neck, smiling. I wished I could have offered to help carry her, but of course I could not. It was years before I even admitted to her I'd seen her looking so cute and vulnerable. She would have been mortified.

Happy Yule, everyone.