Things that comfort me when I get home from Winter Witch Camp and I am missing the embrace of myth and my beloveds and the wild white winter and the trees that poured out purple hag light at dusk and the singing together in sacred space and the laughing together at the Hootenanny and the indulging of our murderous impulses together in the playing of Werewolf, late late in the dining hall, with a scheme and a bald-faced lie and a laugh that goes so long that it hurts and hurts and you still don’t want it to stop.
Things that comfort me when I get home from that:
· The hyacinths that I was forcing on my mantle, in full fragrant magenta bloom when I walk into my house.
· The way Sunshine the dog woo-woo-woos! that I am back and wiggles all over me and smells me and is so happy and the walk we take into the night, remembering what Seattle smells like after rain and the big burly fucking raccoon that we see humping his way through my neighbor’s hedge and remembering that here, as in Wisconsin, is it also Hunger Moon, as my friend Joseph calls it, because it is the time when raccoons are so hungry that they will do anything to get at the chickens on his farm.
· The spontaneous stop at my friend Jamie’s house, which turns into two glasses of wine and two hours of watching the dogs romp and talking about camp and kids and love and then walking back to my house together because the talking is so good and it helps me come down from the sweetness of four days with 80 people who value integrity and vulnerability and are willing to sing and to be seen just as they are.
· A long, sweet phone call with this man, remembering his voice, how our humor weaves together, and the ache of not seeing him yet.
· The Mabinogian Tetralogy and the Legend of Rhiannon, which is open beside me now, more marked up every day.
· The change to the land, when morning comes: down at the creek, the Indian Plum, harbinger of spring, has begun to bloom. The birds sing everywhere.
· And most of all: MY coffee. MY bed. My laptop, on this couch, looking out the window at my garden, which holds my eyes while my words find their way onto this page.