How I Spent My Summer Solstice

Some people just cannot handle the solstice. (The Telegraph, UK)

It wasn’t this bad. On Sunday M. and I went up to Salida, Colorado, to catch the last day of FIBArk, the whitewater boating festival, watching competitors come down the frothing Arkansas River as we drove upstream.

Our main interest was in the Crazy River Dogs event, which we have managed to attend for three of the last four years.

In this photo, the brown dog will be pursuing the aspen pole at upper left as it bobs through a rapid in the downtown Salida kayakers’ water park.

A "river dog" leaps into the Arkansas River after a flying aspen stick.

FIBArk, like the solsticial doings at Stonehenge—I found the first picture in this slide show—marks our beginning of high summer.

To me the quarter days of solstices and equinoxes are “outer” festivals. They should be celebrated with public festivities, whether those festivities are capital-P Pagan or not. Food booths in the park, paddle-flailing kayakers, swimming dogs, the Sun beating down—it’s all good.

The cross-quarter days are for magic.