Leaving Lammas

What was the “moment” of Lammas this year? Not a formal ritual, but walking down an overgrown logging road in the Wet Mountains, looking for mushrooms in the grey-green firs. A soft, misty rain started to fall, enough that I had to dig my GI poncho out of my pack and put it on. The poncho always makes me feel a little sacerdotal–after all, the Christian priest’s chasuble originated as a traveler’s poncho or mantle, whatever you want to call it. I could break the mushroom and hold out a fragment: “Take and and eat this in remembrance . . .”

(The old liturgy. I’m dating myself. A past life, so to speak.)

School of the Seasons is a web site with information on “on spiritual practices and creative pursuits that match the energy of each season” and an email newsletter. (Thanks to Gaian Tarot Artist for the link.)

If you want to know the peak of the energy of each cross-quarter day, check this archaeoastronomy site. Many people, including Waverly Fitzgerald at the site linked above, seem to prefer the calendrical day–the 1st of August, whereas the actual midpoint is usually about six days later. The solution is to simply make it a “season” rather than a day!

By the time that the day itself came, M. and I had loaded the Jeep and driven down to Taos for a long weekend with friends. If you’re in Taos and need a wireless connection that comes with a view of a blooming xeriscape flower garden, try the Wired cafe, tucked in behind Raley’s supermarket on Paseo del Pueblo Sur.

And at home the wild Liatris is blooming, the signal of summer’s end.