Lughnasa

Last Sunday, friends and neighbors gathered for a celebration of the beginning of the harvest season. Everyone brought food from their gardens or something else that represented a harvest. SG and I constructed a small raft out of bamboo out by the creek. The day was beautiful. People arrived at 6:00, and we ate potluck snacks from people's gardens. We drank a mystery mead that I made but didn't label back in the days of the garage apartment. As it got closer to dark, everyone placed their garden offerings on the raft, and we commenced a walking pilgrimage to the French Broad River. SM chanted in her mysterious dialect, and tossed a rainbow of brightly colored flowers on the bearers of the raft and in the road. At dusk, 5 of us waded out to the middle of the river and set off the raft, with the garden offerings and lit candles, in a gesture of gratitude for food and water. We floated down with it a ways, soaking in the glory of the feel of the warm current, the sound of the late summer crickets, and the sight of the tiniest cresent of a moon on the horizon. It was a most beautiful occurence, one to be repeated many times again if I have anything to do with it...