Meteors and Mushroom Hunting in (checks notes) December.

January 7, 2025August 20, 2025 Leave a comment

My Handsome Assistant and I like to go cabin camping in winter. Rates are usually lower, things are less crowded, he’s got PTO to use up (or else lose), and there isn’t usually much else to do. A change of scenery does us both good, even if it’s only for a couple of days. It’s also nice to experience the time around the solstice like this.

(We half-jokingly say it’s glamping, because there’s a shower, sheets, heating, and a mini-fridge. Either way, it’s nice and I much prefer it to most of the hotels I’ve been to.)
(Even the fancy ones.)

However, while we anticipated a possibly-snowy getaway/creative retreat to work on music, fiction writing, and so on, what we got was… 60° F (15.5° C) and a meteor shower.

Did any of yas know there was a meteor shower? I didn’t. The only ones I usually pay attention to are the ones that occur over the summer here, like your Delta Aquarids and Perseids, and I have been Missing. Out.

I only realized when I was sitting in bed one night, drinking tea and looking out at the forest through the window, all cozy and idyllic and junk. An object, about as large and bright as the brightest star in the sky, flared to life, moved across the sky, and disappeared. I was, of course, surprised — a shooting star without a tail? A “drone” with an oddly predictable flight pattern and only one light? A hallucination?

As it turns out, it was most likely part of the Quaternid meteor shower. This one is, apparently, often overlooked. It has a short period of peak activity and happens in late December/early January, so most people miss it. Also, the Quaternid meteors usually don’t have long tails. They do, however, produce some very bright, striking fireballs. So that was neat.

The next day, we spent the late morning going for a walk. With the weather as strangely warm as it was, it turned out to be ideal conditions for finding some very interesting specimens of fungi and beautiful colonies of lichen and moss.

Unfortunately for me, most common culinary species of mushrooms and boletes make me very ill. (Oyster mushrooms, why won’t you let me love you?!) I also have only a passing interest in identifying them, since my interest is primarily visual.

A photo of a small brown bolete, with angry eyes and fang-y teeth clumsily drawn on. — It has been years, but I am still inordinately proud of this very, very silly picture.

I’m what you might call an amateur “catch and release” forager. I love looking at them. I love their folklore. I love finding them. I love taking pictures of them. Sometimes, I’m even able to identify them. I get really stoked when I find ones that a) I recognize, b) are useful, and c) won’t try to make me yakk everything I’ve eaten since fourth grade. But that’s neither here nor there.

Look! We found cool mushrooms and assorted other little forest buddies!

A starburst of lichen growing amid some fluffy green moss. Tiny raindrops cling to some of the strands of moss like pearls.

I don’t care how common moss, lichen, and little beige mushrooms are, I will be excited about them absolutely every time. Like a person calling their spouse over every time their cat does something adorable, I will never not be endlessly delighted by them whenever I see them.

Several small, round mushrooms on a rotting stump. — A cluster of what are most likely stump puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme).

A white polypore mushroom growing, like a dish, from the side of a fallen branch. — A cluster of what are most likely stump puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme).

I don’t even need to know what kind they are, I’m just happy to have them around.

Here’s hoping your days are similarly filled with interesting small things.

life · Neodruidry · Witchcraft

Mabon 2024

September 24, 2024September 23, 2024 J.1 Comment

This past weekend was the Mabon camping trip! My Handsome Assistant and I are part of a local Druidry group, and that group teams up with another Pagan group to go have a fantastic time in the woods.

(If you aren’t sure what Mabon is, here is a brief rundown.)

There’s food (lots of food), singing, stories, rituals, and catching up with friends, all set in a beautiful forest. Last year, things got a bit cold and damp. This year, the weather was better, and my Assistant and I knew what to expect. We were more thoroughly prepared (air mattress, extra blankets and sleeping bags, extra dishes, a solar powered fan), so it made for a much more comfortable trip.

The rain also stayed away just long enough for the weekend’s rituals, which was very important.

A close-up of some very pretty lichen, growing in a bed of moss. — Fortunately, there was just enough rain to make the mosses and lichens really pop.

Earlier, during the Midsummer goods and gear swap, a couple of us floated the idea of having a masquerade party. It wasn’t a serious plan at the time — mainly a “this would be really cool” kind of thing. Later, during a planning Zoom call, I mentioned that some of us thought a masquerade would be really neat. Maybe for Samhain?

One of the group’s Stewards knew of a ritual that involved masking — the Council of All Beings. Another person found chants that suited the occasion. Another wrote the transitions and spoken parts of the ritual structure. By the end, it was a beautiful, adaptable, and powerfully creative work.

Some people came to the trip prepared, already knowing which being they’d embody, having a mask or costume, and knowing exactly what they wanted to say. Others took time in the woods or labyrinth, waiting to see what reached out to them and asked to be represented. I’d gotten some inspiration a while before Mabon, so I was all set to go.

A photo of a labyrinth in a forest. The labyrinth is made up of stones, set in a spiraling pattern in a clearing.

The ritual itself was wonderful. The masks were gorgeous, and seeing what kind of entities inspired/spoke through people was fascinating. Some represented a specific organism — like the critically endangered regent honeyeater. Others represented a genus or type of being, like moths, small snakes, or coral. Others represented something broader, like smoke or the sun. Some were natural features, like the bedrock or an underground spring. There were representations from a variety of cultures and cosmologies, all brought together to express themselves through us. I loved it.

(I was the necrobiome, aka all of the little guys that dispose of trash and dead things. I had some trouble figuring out how to express “a tiny ecosystem of various bacteria, fungi, insects, and scavengers” through a mask, so I ended up settling on a skeletal deer mask instead. The presence of decomposition bacteria and fungi was somewhat implied.)

A humanoid figure in a forest. The figure is standing with their arms at their sides, staring directly at the camera. They are wearing gray boots, bandages around both hands, and a black shroud that covers them from their head down to their knees. They are also wearing a deer's skull as a mask, over the shroud.
The photo also appears to be glitchy, with smeared areas and light leaks. — My Handsome Assistant took some photos of me all dressed up. I used them for some little analog horror-style photo manips, and I’ll be honest… this one **really** makes me want to go ominously photobomb strangers.

We also had an icebreaking and learning exercise called Birds of a Feather, where we wore small tags labeled with subjects we wanted to talk about — either things we found interesting and were well versed in already, or stuff we wanted to learn. It sparked a lot of very interesting conversations!

There was also a chants workshop, where a group of us got together to try various chanting techniques and see how they felt both through our own voices and hearing them in a group. (Some of the non-verbal chants, I thought, felt especially powerful. I love exploring and working with different sonic frequencies, so feeling and participating in chants that ran the gamut from “results in full-body tingles” to “surprisingly like the drone of a titanic beehive” was particularly fascinating.)

One group member also gave a talk about spiritual experiences at various megaliths in Ireland. Both my Assistant and I found it really interesting — enough to where he’s sincerely trying to figure out how to create some form of mobile hyperbaric compression chamber so I can get on a plane without Problems.

And then there was food.
(So much food.)
Every meal was a potluck, and there was something for everyone. Vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, gluten-free, nut-free. There was fresh fruit, Koren barbecue ribs, vegan fennel and garlic sausages, fresh bread, pudding made from foraged pawpaws, homebrewed peach mead, vegetable soup made from home-grown vegetables, curried chickpea salad, and a ton of other things I’m probably forgetting.
I ate like a combination of a Redwall character and some kind of Roman emperor all weekend, and it was delightful.
(My Handsome Assistant jokes that he puts on five pounds over Mabon, then spends the rest of the year losing it.)

I also stayed up way too late every night, mostly sitting around the fire hearing/telling stories, talking about things, and having the occasional smoke. This came back to bite me on Saturday, when I set an alarm to wake up, realized I had a terrible headache, and decided to sleep in. This would have meant that I’d miss the Equinox ritual Saturday morning, fortunately my Assistant and I had accidentally set up our tent right next to the ritual area.
I heard the drums going, bolted upright, wrapped myself in a blanket, and poked my head through the tent flap to watch.
It worked out okay until the calling of the quarters got to the South, which meant that everyone turned to face me, who was currently sitting due south and staring out of my tent like some kind of small cryptid. (I kind of slowly retreated behind my tent flap again until that part was over, Homer-Simpson-backing-into-a-bush style.)

So, while I am glad to be home again, I’m sad Mabon’s over. I’ll see (almost) everyone soon, but man do I miss that vibe.

life

Isolation Vacation

December 21, 2020December 20, 2020 J.Leave a comment

As it turns out, there’s a buttload more to working from home than setting up a desk.

I think neither my partner nor I would’ve been able to predict the effects it had: worse sleep hygiene, confused cats, a general air of unease, a much harder time separating work and life, working an extra three hours or so a day. The trouble is, if you have to work from home, you don’t get much choice in the matter — you either have a separate space for an office and the kind of mental walls that help you keep your work life and home life separate, or you’re kind of boned.

So we engineered a way to take a vacation in the most low-risk, isolated way possible.

Getaway offers tiny cabins a little less than two hours outside of D.C. It worked out perfect for us — we booked and paid for the cabin online a few months in advance (they fill up quick), picked up some extra provisions during our last grocery trip, filled up on gas when we normally would anyhow, and made the trip without having to stop. Checking in was completely contactless, too. We received a text with the lock code, keyed it in to the number pad on the door, and stepped into a very comfy, charming one-room cabin.

It was pretty much perfect. There was a spacious bathroom at one end, with a large shower and accessibility bars. At the other, there was a big, marshmallowy queen sized bed under an enormous window that looked out onto the woods. The cabin also had a pretty well-equipped kitchen, with a two burner stove, sink, pots, pans, silverware, and dishes. (There was even a bowl for traveling dogs.)

It snowed pretty heavily, which kept us from really taking advantage of the trails or the fire pit. Even so, it was really wonderful being able to snuggle up in bed with a cup of tea and some pancakes, under that huge window, and watch the snow through the trees. The night sky was gorgeous, too — I stayed up late both nights to stargaze.

It was just cozy, you know? Peaceful. Idyllic. No work emails, no calls, no wifi to answer them even if we wanted to. Just the creaking of the trees in the wind, snow, and the stars at night.

It turned out to be a great atmosphere for brainstorming, too. My S.O. and I did some storyboarding, and he wrote a really awesome short story (that will hopefully go up somewhere in the future). I had about a thousand ideas, but didn’t really get into writing or making art while I was there — I took a few notes and made some sketches, but I didn’t want to lose too much time trancing out in a creativity fugue like usual.

Even the way home was pretty. It rained after it snowed, and the nighttime temperature drop made the water freeze around all of the bare trees until it looked like they were covered in diamonds. The sky was blue, and the sun glittered through the trees’ ice-covered claws until even an ordinary road next to a set of power lines looked like something out of Narnia.

Everything was so bright and pretty, in fact, and we felt so refreshed, that we didn’t really want to go home right away. Stopping somewhere populated wasn’t really an option, but that’s okay.

There’re always roadside attractions.

We’re both kind of suckers for them (by which I mean that, if there’s a World’s Largest Something between here and California, we’ve probably stopped by). The biggest windchime? Been there, rang it, had a slice of pie. My S.O. had barely opened his mouth to say he wished there was something cool on the way home before I had a list of things that were a) large, b) unpopulated, and c) at least slightly ridiculous.

And that’s how we found a giant nutcracker. (Well, mostly the head.)

He used to be a paving company’s tar silo. When a paint company bought the property, they painted it and converted it to this fellow. Honestly, the setting had a pretty unique sense of melancholy — there he was, with the approaching clouds just beginning to gray the sky, strewn with unlit Christmas lights, staring unblinkingly out at a McDonald’s across the street.
It felt very Lynchian, though I’ll be damned if I can explain how.

Our appetites whetted by the urge to see more huge things, we next drove back to D.C. to find an actual giant.

Fortunately, it being the middle of the week, during a pandemic, and also December, the place was pretty much deserted. Several areas were closed off, so I wasn’t able to get closer to the sculptures themselves, but the image was still very striking. There he was, this metal titan struggling up from the beach sand, face twisted in anguished effort.
Then, in the background, a lazily turning Ferris wheel.

I don’t know if any of you have played Kenshi, but there’s one particular area that gives me a similar feeling. There’s just something about massive metal hands clawing vainly at the sky that’s so damn eerie. When it’s juxtaposed against a beach and a carnival ride, it’s surreal as hell. I love it.

Now we’re home, snuggled up with two cats who had Many Things to Say about our absence. If you’re reading this the day it was posted, it’s the winter solstice. Keep your eyes peeled tonight for the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, and have a happy Yule.