Themes

May. 23rd, 2011 09:32 pm
dreaminghope: (Bee Faerie)
Every year, the Gathering for Life membership votes on a theme for the next year's event. Every year, someone suggests "no theme" to allow it emerge naturally during the event. I always vote for "no theme", but it never wins. Still, unexpected motifs do always come up throughout the weekend, and this time was no exception.

It was a different event than in the past: colder and wetter due to the new date; smaller due to the price increase and date change; changed in more subtle ways due to our return to our original event location. The Gathering was intimate feeling - softer and more mellow - but incredibly inspired and inspiring.

Despite the small membership - only a third of the previous event - there were four skyclad rituals by three different groups on the schedule, in addition to several other rituals and a full itinerary of workshops. Every person except one, who was already known to be coming on Saturday, was on site before 7 PM on Friday. The turnout at the closing ritual in particular was the best we've probably every had, in proportion to the membership. Everyone just seemed so present and so grateful to be at the Gathering together.

The primary theme for my Gathering this year was "sharing". So many people were opening their hearts and giving generously of themselves. People gave up sleep to tend the sacred fire. Every time something needed to be done - from setting up a tent to chopping fire wood to moving a picnic table - people stepped up to do it with pleasure. People offered up their amazing talents: the Bardic was short but packed with amazing singing and music; the workshops were informative and interesting; the rituals were well crafted; the merchant area was tiny but full of beautiful things, mostly handmade. People were offering healing and their other skills freely. When it came to pack up and clean up the site, everyone pitched in and it was done quickly and easily. And all around, all weekend, people were thanking each other for sharing.

The generosity of the members of this community is not new, but this year, it seemed to be present in each and every person and in the community as a whole in a way I've never felt before. There have been Gatherings that have been more energetic, more powerful, more sexual, but I don't think I've ever experienced one more full of grace.

My secondary Gathering theme this year seemed to be "tell Melissa how great she is". I got so many compliments about the two rituals I ran. One woman gave me a little gift to thank me for leading her first skyclad ritual. Several people made a special effort to come up and talk to me about my themes and even ask for copies of the text. I also gave a bunch of Tarot readings and got great feedback about them as well. I even got compliments on my clothing!

I still have so much to process and I have some new ideas that need to be recorded before they fade away, but first, I need a lot of sleep. And I need to do a lot of laundry.
dreaminghope: (Flying)
The season is really getting started now. Friday evening was kiting, Saturday morning was slope soaring, Saturday afternoon was kiting, Sunday morning was slope soaring, and Sunday afternoon was... first flights! All weekend, Russ and I, and sometimes Craig, were with the new batch of P1 and P2 students for iParaglide. This weekend, they were doing their first training sessions and their first flights ever.

The wind was a bit wild on Saturday morning for their first hill training, so Russ, Craig, and I ended up packing our wings up and spending the morning helping the first-timers. When the wind is higher and is cross to the hill, there's a lot more work involved in setting up and keeping everyone safe. I spent my morning running around, cheerfully ordering people around ("Mind that tip! Pull the brakes! Step back! Step forward!") and cheering people on as they made their attempts. This became a bit of an issue when I got home (late) to run a Beltane ritual that was also the rehearsal for the Gathering's main ritual and ended up bossing all my friends around too. Luckily, they took it well ("You ordering us around is kind of hot, actually...").

Sunday morning's wind was lovely: laminar and just the right speed. I helped with set-ups a lot again, but also did four of my own practice launches. I'm still building my confidence, so Russ called the commands* for me twice, Dion did it once, and the last one I did it all on my own.

At about 4 that afternoon, the whole class was on the mountain launch at Mt. Woodside. There were seven people with our school doing their first flights, plus me doing my twelfth. Russ opted to do the driving instead, as his knee was bugging him, and he took some video and photos too.

I was the last of the class to launch, so I got to watch every one of the first flights. They were a remarkable group: every single launch went smoothly (no aborts) and we cheered each other on. One student sang a bit of an aria for us when he was at 3000 feet. Even though we were mostly strangers to each other before the weekend began, there was a great sense of support and camaraderie. Dion, the senior instructor, sets a good learning environment: he is very energetic and motivating and gets everything going fast until each student steps up for their first mountain launch. At that moment, he slows everything down, triple-checks everything, and calmly inspires the student. You can hear him a little bit in the following video of my launch:

Shaking off the cobwebs on Vimeo.


Sixteen seconds from ground to air. It wasn't a perfect launch, but it was a good one - quite possibly my best yet. You can see that I bring my wing up evenly, I stay low to keep the wing loaded, I keep my arms up to let the wing fly at its best, I turn my head to look at each wing tip to check that it's in the correct position, and I keep my legs pumping the whole time to reach launch speed. Solid. Next up: doing it on the mountain without anyone else calling for me.

My wing and I turn beautifully together. The Icaro Instinct tends to turn quite flat anyway (doesn't lose a lot of altitude with each turn), and I have gotten pretty good at weight shifting, which means smoother turns than pulling more brake. I remember how nervous I was to weight-shift on my first flight: even if you know that you are safely strapped in, leaning way over to one side feels very weird until you've done it a couple of times. You can see a bit of me weight-shifting and turning in this video (please excuse the music; I woke to the chorus of this song on Monday morning and couldn't resist using it to cover up the wind noises that dominated in both video clips):

Flying on Beltane on Vimeo.


On the LZ, one of the apprentice instructors, Degas, was doing the landing coaching. I am getting closer to not needing a coach, but it was still very reassuring to have a voice on the radio reminding me of every step. I was anticipating each movement, so I was able to respond very quickly. During the debriefing, he said: "It was like having a radio control paraglider: as soon as I would say something, she was doing it." I got a high-five from Dion for keeping my feet during my landing (I used to stop moving my legs so instead of walking off the momentum of the landing, I'd fall to my knees a lot).

Overall, a fantastic weekend of shaking off the winter dust and getting my body and head back into flying. Hopefully both Russ and I will be flying again this coming weekend.

* The launch commands: Ready? 3-2-1-tension - release and stabilize - load and run.

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