If I hadn't had a cold-weather sleeping bag I'd have woken up with frostbite.
The cold kept many away who had previously expressed interest in attending the Fest. You were missed, but I completely understand. Overnight temperatures in the mid twenties are no joke, and without the right gear sleeping in that is dangerous. Most of the crowd chose to come by during the day and evening to spend time around the fire, engage in conversation, drink homebrew, eat epic chili, and tell stories around the late fire. It wasn't too bad, next to the fire. We cleaned up a lot of the site's dead-fall for them. (Many thanks to those who helped drag and cut up dead-fall for the fire. You kept us warm clear through midnight with that fire.) At least the Fest was accurately and descriptively named. The frost formed thick and sparkling white under the waxing moon. The air smelled of ice. Beautiful and intense.
The small turnout had the effect of creating a very different atmosphere than our larger and more structured Midsummer Festival, not the least of which was how much more food there was per person when we all cooked for a crowd. (If you missed out on the chili, you really missed out. Or the potato soup. Delicious.) We pulled our circle tight around the fire as we pulled stories from all over and drafts from the keg. The group bonding was for real, tempered in ice and fire and frozen stops at the port-a-john. (Still less unpleasant than a port-a-john in the heat of summer, though.)
Speaking of port-a-johns (might be the only time I've ever used that segue...) the site has had some updates since our last visit. The composting toilet is almost finished. We will still need a port-a-john for Midsummer, seeing as it's a larger event than a single composting head can handle, but there is a toilet at drum circles now, and for smaller events.
The only real downside to having the event turn out more like an extended Fire Circle than an organized Fest is that we're pretty much certain that not everyone who came through paid in. This is not to say that people didn't contribute in other ways, but the folks running Historic St Mary's City do expect to be paid, and the port-a-john wasn't free. We knew that with such a small crowd we wouldn't recoup everything, but we weren't expecting to come up quite that short.
More organization on our part, next time.
I have zero complaints about the Fest itself. Everything that went went well, even if the perchten only had a few people to watch their parade of spooky glory (and faceplants...frost that heavy is super slippery and guess who couldn't see sh*t out of their mask...)
Next year, more perchten! With bells and drums and some folks dressed as beautiful perchten to bring in the good luck after the ugly perchen have chased the evil spirits/bad luck away!
Next year more people, hopefully, to share the fire and the food and the stories.
Next year... well... what else next year? We'll be at coffee this Sunday (our usual time and place- 10AM at Coffee Quarter in San Souci Plaza) to talk about what we liked and what we'd like to do better. We'll also be talking about trying to get some folks together specifically for Yule/Solstice (No pressure, we all know that scheduling anything around the hooplah of X-Mas is insane.) and also a little bit about what we'd like to get on the schedule for next year. If you can make it out for this one, that would be great. If you can't, then I wish you a blessed Yule, a very Merry Solstice, and a Happy Christmas to the Christian allies we've got out there. May the New Year bring you prosperity, peace, and joy.
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