Hunting

There's no jiu jitsu in this (unless you count the fact that I TALKED about jiu jitsu a little bit to a couple of people during the week).  Feel free to skip it. In fact, if you are not Pagan, this post will surely convince you that I am either going to burn in hell or that I need to be measured for a nice white jacket that will let me hug myself (if you weren't already convinced of such). I'm not really supposed to talk about the Hunt..... but since only about 2 people read my blog, and even those 2 will likely not be interested in reading about THIS, I don't think it really matters. This blog is mostly for my own processing purposes.


I'm probably going to remember more details later and sprinkle them into future posts, but here's the gist.....

As previously mentioned, Darian and Finn had their virgin burn. I do a little streamer poi, enough to appreciate how hard they have been practicing. The entire Herald Camp went down to watch and cheer, even though Du could barely stand up (more on that later). The boys were so excited, and thrilled at all the attention they were getting from us.

Pathwalker, who normally brings my tent for me, could not be there this year- to the disappointment of many. He sent my tent along with a friend. On day one, I saw him out of the corner of my eye and did a triple-take. Someone had made a life-size cardboard cutout and dressed it in the clothes that Pathwalker typically wears. He had one hand up with a little shelf attached so that you could put a beer or a tamborine in his hand. It was hysterical. Flatwalker went to all of the events that he normally attends. He stood on stage at the welcome meeting, led the opening rit procession, drummed in all of the morning meetings (except the morning after Pan's Ball.... he must have been sleeping it off under a bush somewhere), stood on stage at the Tuatha Dea concert wearing one of their T-shirts and playing the mandolin (I didn't know Pathwalker could play the mandolin!). He was at the Carpenter's Ball and the Hunt. Everyone was getting their pics taken with him. At one point, he fell over, and the med staff came roaring out in their golf cart to put him on a stretcher and give him CPR.

With the lack of Pathwalker, a few other people were tapped to lead ritual drum processions. I was not one of them. Of the two I attended, they were- shall we say- well, mistakes were made.

My plantar fasciitis remains moderately painful in my right heel. I was able to ignore it and do my job- I'm good at that- but that combined with my patello-femoral syndome knee pain made the prospect of doing any dancing wince-able. I did get in a couple of careful sessions of Extreme Contact Improv For Martial Artists with Eric, which was wonderful.

We only had one day of torrential rain, but there was a hideous windstorm the first night. I was certain a tornado was bearing down on me- it was that loud. I got out of the tent (not wanting a tree bough to come down on me and pin me in there) and squatted in the bushes in the dark for an hour until it started to die down.

My Evil Twin and I had a lot of fun this year. I had brought us matching tank tops that said (respectively) "Not Kitsune" and "Not Jo". You didn't even have to know us to get the joke, you just had to look at us. We look and act exactly alike when we're not trying, so it was eerie when we *were* trying. We walked around together, mimicked one another's positions, and halfway through the morning meeting, we switched chairs. She got up and made my Heralding announcement at the meeting, then we sat there straight-faced like nothing had happened. We couldn't decide if it would be funnier if people noticed, or if they FAILED to notice.

Unfortunately, I ate like a sow all week. I'm not even gonna weigh myself for a while.

Cute little frogs- smaller than your pinkie fingernail.

Gorgeous full moon. Even better reflected on the lake. With firespinning on the beach. See pic.

To my dismay, I spent two nights dreaming about Autumn 2011. I did put that situation on the Hunt fire- with moderately more resolve than I did so last year. It seems that I'm still not quite ready to move on from that, although I am somewhat more firm about *wanting* to move on from that.

Sacred Hunt- there are some things that I wish had gone better, but that is always true. It's a tradition for us to sit around Herald Camp and obssess about all the things that we think we phucked up.... then we go to the post-mortem workshop, and hear that everyone loved it and that they got what they needed... so then we sigh in relief and say, "I guess we pulled it off again."

The good:

Our problem drummer from last year- whom I was going to have to take aside and evict if he appeared, and which confrontation I have been dreading all year- did not show up to the event (although he was at the festival). I think he saw that Dru was coordinating drumming again this year, and didn't want to deal with her any more than she wanted to deal with him.

I was camped right behind the Crone Temple Of Wisdom this year. I decided to barge into one of their meetings and ask them to pass the hunt horn around their circle to bless it, which they did.

Cindy filled in for Pathwalker as the fire keeper. She did him proud (as I knew she would).

Our coordinating team was 6-out-of-9 female this year. Girl Power!

Finn Villaged for the first time. This made three Hunt coordinators plus three additional Herald Camp people. Herald Camp is truly taking over the Hunt. Darian wants to be in it next year, as well.

Herald Camp dolled me up- Margaret did a wild Celtic braided and ponytailed updo with my hair, and Thalia painted my face (black/red/silver). I asked her to accentuate my eyes- I wanted people to be able to see my expressions, but not recognize me. I got a lot of good feedback on this.

As I entered the circle through the chute of villagers, I was moved to put my hands out to both sides and touch them all as I went though.

As the Hunters entered the circle, I was waiting across the fire. This was the first time they had seen me (aside from a silent horned silhouette in the dark at the vigil). They entered and circled up at the fire, about 3 min apart. As each one came to the fire, I moved so that we were on opposite sides of the pit and stared hir down for the full three minutes. OMG, did that ever rattle their shit. ((evil giggle))  At least two of them were ex-military. One of these said in the post-mortem that I had scared the crap out of him. There was only one out of the 11 who would meet my eyes even briefly. I think this was my favorite part of the entire thing. When Bo came down after the final Hunter, I did the same thing to him- I didn't recognize him until he started speaking.

The bad:

I spent literally hours in the sun-blasted field behind the parking lot trying to learn how to blow Bo's hunt horn. That horn and I did not click. I figured it would take some practice, but I know I have the lungs for it- and I play bass clarinet. Eventually it got to where I could get a good sound about 6 out of every 7 blows. On the night of the Hunt, my first blast was perfect. Every one after that sounded like a water buffalo after the Elks Club Community bean dinner. This is a small thing, but it galled me because 1)I had put a lot of work into the effort; 2)my personal power (especially at PSG) is very sound-oriented... heralding and drumming; and 3)It ruined a dramatic moment. Nothing like looming up out of the woods with my face all glitter and blood, meeting a Hunter's eyes across the torch, having a fierce and intense staredown, sweeping the horn dramatically to my lips, embodying a badass warrior goddess, and then: weak bovine farting sound. Anticlimactic to say the least. If I do this again, I'm going to need to find my own hunt horn in time to get at least a few weeks of practice in.

Dru's lieutenant fell down on the job. I saw her with her head tipped back, eyes shut and jaw slack. She knows better. I don't know what the hell was going on with her. When I asked Dru later, Dru said she had been zoned out for much of the time. Inexcusable even had she *not* been the backup leader. I'm pushing for Michael, Bart or my Evil Twin as drum lieutenant next year.

All of the Hunters were Hunt virgins. I was fascinated to see how this would turn out. However, it did seem to negatively affect the way the Hunters play off each other. Bo and I were both of the opinion that we should give first dibs to people who had not had the chance to do it before. Yet now I'm feeling like it would be a good idea to try to avoid an all-virgin group of Hunters in the future.

The site is suboptimal. There really isn't anywhere else for us to go, though, so we're stuck with it. The cars passing on the road didn't bother me this year, but the Hunters were too spread out. There were 8 on the left side, and only the nearest three or four of those were visible at all from the circle. It made it really difficult for the Villagers to adequately work with them, as well as intensifying the aforementioned problems of the interaction between the Hunters themselves. Those farmost four on the left were impossible for me and Bo to even get to without stepping right on the borders between two other Hunt spaces.  Also, the sweat lodge is seriously in the way.

It seemed to be The Year Of the GPS-challenged Hunter. I blew the horn for one Hunter who immediately lit out in the opposite direction, toward the lake. I had to chase him, holler after him- for a minute I thought I was going to have to tackle him. He got turned around, then went for the stream. Another Hunter took off through the woods in more-or-less the right direction yet nowhere near the path- charged right between two other Hunt spaces, way too close, and I actually lost sight of him for a couple minutes. That was the scariest moment of the night- I was responsible for making sure each of my Hunters got into the circle okay. The most dramatic wrong-way of the night occurred when a Hunter crashed out from right behind the drummers and almost took out my Evil Twin, who was standing on the edge of the bloc. I tried to head him off, but could not.

It was also The Year Of the Downed Hunter. This is a non-speaking ritual, and we don't want to speak to them unless it's absolutely necessary- yet I ended up having to speak to SIX out of the eleven in order to chivvy them back up onto their feet. One was on the ground nearly comatose. At one point he was lying on his back. I got him up to a squat, but he was just hunched in on himself with his head in his arms. He would look at me occasionally, then go back to his fetal position. I couldn't get him up.  A second Hunter- when I found him down and screamed at him to get on his feet, pulled something out of his pocket and waved it at me. I couldn't see what it was, but I thought, "That can't be an inhaler...?" I had told them in the pre-meetings that if they had any medical conditions or other issues, to let me or Bo know. None had come to me with any, and when I asked Bo, he said no one had issues. (I chewed this guy out later for not telling us he had asthma... turns out he had told Bo and Bo apparently forgot to tell me. I apologized and said that I'd chew out Bo... which I still need to do.) This guy took about 2 full minutes to drag himself to his feet upon my command... that was a really powerful thing to watch.

Comatose guy... we didn't know quite what to do with him. When they're down, it can be really hard to figure out what is going on with them. Whether they're still working, or sunk uselessly in emotional trauma, or having a heart attack, or bored. Bo tried to get him up as well, and had no more luck than I did. He decided that we sould call that guy in first. Handed me the horn. No pressure. "What the hell am I going to do if I call him out and he just huddles there?" "Coax him." Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It was such a temptation to shove this back on Bo... it was kind of a low blow to stick me with that situation for my very first calling-in on my very first Hunt as Huntmistress. But I *was* Huntmistress... this was my job, including coping with the clusterfucks. I took the horn and went. (Fortunately, Comatose Dude looked up when I blew the horn at him... then when I followed this up by thundering "IT'S TIME!!!!!!" He got up and went.

Dru, who has bad knees, collapsed as soon as the rit was over. I had to call Moonfeather (at 1am) and ask her to come over in the golf cart to truck Dru directly from the Hunt space to the med tent, where we spent half the night. Then the med staff trucked her to Herald Camp, where she slept in the dirt on the ground because she could not pull herself into her camper cab. Needless to say, she spent the rest of the week on her ass (we had to threaten to bungee her to her chair) and could not do any more Heralding. I thoroughly embarrassed her in the post mortem by relating the story and having the entire group give her a standing O. She said that I had almost made her cry. This is, incidentally, the second Hunt in a row that has ended with Dru in the med tent. Next year, she is using a chair whether she likes it or not. This will of course make it more difficult for her to charge any drummers. She didn't charge anybody this year, though.

While we were in the med tent, a stroke victim was brought in. The staff was like a kicked anthill, to the point that it scared me... I thought he was dying. Dru and I were sitting there ten feet away, telling each other chicken jokes while we tried to respect his privacy by avoiding looking and listening. The ambulance came, and the paramedics stared at me in my face paint and long Dracula-esque cloak (I had taken the antlers off, at least). The guy was back onsite the next day, on his feet. Great relief.

The interesting:

One of the Hunters took out her tiki torch. Fortunately I was standing right there at the moment, and was able to pick it up and right it before it extinguished or set the woods on fire. Bo came galloping out (putting out your tiki torch is the "emergency signal"). This Hunter was astonished when I told her about this incident in the post mortem. She had no memory of it.

One of the Hunters, every time she caught sight of me, stalked me like a panther along the borders of her space. I was a little anxious that that one was going to physically attack me. She later told me that I was her special challenge all the way through the process (this was also the only one who would make eye contact in the beginning).  She also said that this Hunt was the peak experience of her life. Wowza. To have a hand in that.

I have spent something-teen Hunts confined to a space as wide as my tai-chi-stance feet, and one of the things I was really looking forward to this year was being able to move around the space and get different perspectives. I hadn't taken four steps before I accidentally stepped between a Villager and the Hunter s/he was sending energy to, and it felt like I had stuck my finger in an electrical socket!!! Moving around the ritual space felt like navigating a tangled spider web of laser beams! After that first zap, I looked around carefully to see where people were shooting before I took a step!

The trip home: I just want to say that Alaska Airlines sucks.

When I placed my styrofoam box containing the antler crown on the scale, they said "You can't check anything in styrofoam- it's not adequate packing." Huh? "It's really THICK styrofoam." "Doesn't matter." Well, I knew I wasn't going to get those antlers through security as a carry-on (can't have me hijacking the plane with a bad ol' deer antler), so all I could do was stuff it in the top-loader duffle and hope for the best. The entire styro box wouldn't fit, so I took off the lid and hacked a few inches off the top edge, then packing-taped across the top. Then they made me sign a release saying that I wouldn't sue them when my antler headdress was ruined by being checked with "inadequate packing". WTF??!!? They make me take it out of its perfectly adequate thick styrofoam box and stuff it in a duffle bag, then sign a release because of course it's going to be destroyed? Why can't I just sign a release for the styro box? Wait, there's more. In order to get the hacked-up styro box into the duffle, I had to dump most of my dirty clothes, toiletries and other possessions out on the floor at the ticket counter and try to stuff them into my carry-on and shoulder bag. So I check the duffle and am about to walk away when they go, "You'll have to put that in the sizer (pointing to carry-on)." Of course now it's stuffed just full enough that the wheels won't fit into the sizer. "You'll have to check it. That'll be another $35."   I then proceeded to Security Theater where I declined the naked-picture machine and was forced to submit to being aggressively groped. At least checking the carry-on (with the bell drum inside) saved me from getting my bag rifled this time. They always search my bag when they see that bell drum on the x-ray.

I finally succumbed to Facebook- which I have been resisting all this time- solely because I *NEED* to get feedback from the Hunt participants, and that's just the only way a lot of people will engage you these days. It's been two days, and it has already gotten completely out of control. I "friended" everyone in Herald camp, the other Hunt coordinators,  Tasara and Tiff from Turtle Drum, and a handful of other PSG people that I'm particularly close to.  I was then DELUGED with friend requests from people I know and people I don't know and people I'm not sure I know. I'm the Herald- everyone knows me. Help! I'm drowning in "friends"!  Am I an asshole if I don't want to "friend" these 649 people? I am *NOT* going to get sucked that deeply into Facebook. Am I an asshole if I say- for example, "asshole" in a comment, now that Lilly from Herald Camp (age 10) is my Facebook Friend? (Although Lord knows her parents are some of the worst potty-mouths I've ever heard in my life, LOL...)

I had been looking forward to going back to class on Monday evening- but I had been really struggling with allergies all week, and by the time I left the campground, I had a sinus infection. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Back to work Tuesday. Boss is immediately all up my butt about piccayune stuff, and being sick doesn't help me stuff down the impulse to triangle her.

I have won a Tuckerization in Shirley Meier's current online novel! First I need to catch up on the chapters I missed while I was out of town, but this is going to be exciting!