My day started off as my eyes cracked open slowly from a restful night's sleep, to gaze upon the interior of a beautiful cozy little cabin in the hills of North-western Washington. I looked around the cabin to notice that my friends had already stirred awake and were probably sitting outside enjoying the morning. Though a part of me wanted to slip back into that wonderful land of dreams, another part, the stronger part in that moment, wanted to go find my friends and join in what moment of joy they might have found in the early morning view. Though I wanted to immediately go outside and find my friends, I also knew that I do much better in the mornings once I have washed myself back into this reality with a nice hot shower.
In a short time later I find my friends, and we begin to talk over the topics of how beautiful it is, how we each slept, and any dreams that one might want to share with the group. At this moment I was looking forward to the wonderful day I would spend with this great group of people I chose to surround myself with on this fine mountainous day.
Keith & Aley
I invited Keith and Aley, two wonderful friends of mine, to join me, as a get away from their busy lives of running the chiropractic office and teaching online college classes.
Donny
Aley and Keith had asked me if Donny, a friend of theirs from Gaia, could also join us on our trip, because he, like me, was going to be up for a visit with them at that time. Though I did not know Donny, I had not connected with him on Gaia before, I knew that if Keith and Aley liked him that so would I. And I was correct.
Sitting outside that morning, everyone enjoying their first and second cups of coffee, and myself enjoying my morning vitamin shake with soy milk, we all began to plan out our day of events for this wonderful Summer Solstice together. Aley and Keith were only up for a couple of days out of the 5 days that Donny and I were staying, so we let them have the choice of what they would like to see. Aley said that she wanted to go up to the furthest point of the North West part of the country, so we pulled out the map and within a few minutes had planned out a day of places we wanted to go see for the day. We also decided that it would probably be good to get our day started off with a nice hearty breakfast, so Keith cooked us up some eggs and bacon.
After breakfast and everyone getting ready, we piled up in my bright blue rental car to begin our celebration of the longest day of the year, and OFF we went. While enjoying nice talks and beautiful scenery out the window, we headed up to Cape Flattery Washington, the furthest corner of the west of the country. When we arrived, there was nothing there but this small parking lot of cars, and a sign pointing to a 1 mile trail that made its way out to the cape.
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We began our hike upon the trail, not knowing what beauties lay before us. Even if we could have known what was ahead, it would have NEVER been able to describe to breath taking beauty that we found. A trail winding up and down the mountain, some parts having stepping stones made out of tree trucks lined along the ground, other parts having a wonderful walking bridge and steps leading up the mountain, and other parts just being beautiful raw areas of forest with dirt trails leading the way. Three-fourths the way up the trail, we were taken off guard by this beautiful cove that was probably 2 or 3 hundred feet down to the ocean floor. From that point on it was one beautiful view, over looking the shore of ocean and land, to another. The whole time we were like a mixture of children and tourist. One moment we are climbing in trees and getting really to close to the edge of cliffs to look down, and other moments we are taking picture after picture of everything around us.
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After taking in all the tranquility and joy that could have filled a whole state of people, we decided to begin our trip back. It took us twice as long to get back as it did to get there, because everyone of us was walking very slowly to savor the beauty of such a wonderful place. It was as if we were ok with the fact that we were leaving, we just didn't want it to happen to fast.
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Once we got back to the car and back into reality again, we all realized that we were all very hungry, it's amazing how so much beauty can take your mind off of such a basic thing as hunger. We asked around and found out that there were no restaurants around, except a small pizza place on the Makah Indian reservation. Going into this small place, that wasn't even finished yet, we placed our orders for FOOD. After settling down even a little more from all the energies of our journey so far, we realized that we had ordered 3 pizza's for only four people, we all just laughed in wonder of how much pizza we were going to have left over. After eating we stopped at another place or two on our way back to the cabin, not really spending much time anywhere, because what could truly hold a candle to the beauties of our day already.
Understanding that the Solstice is known as a powerful day to set your intention of what you would like to create in your life, we all decided to have a small drumming/ceremony to symbolize sending out our intentions to the universe. With me having the most experience in ceremony, everyone just let me come up with something for us to do, which was perfect because while building the fire I had the most fitting thing come to mind for us all to do.
We decided to do a mixture of drum ceremony, and intention ceremony. It would comprise of four rounds, in the first round everyone gave a prayer to the universe, or their version of the Divine, then drumming and me playing my flute to honor those prayers. The second round we began drumming, while taking turns passing around a pad of paper, and giving each person time to write down the things they wanted to create in the following year. The third round I told everyone to get crazy, to drum as loud and fast as they wanted, to move around, shout out, sing, or what ever they wanted to do to build the energies that would help send all of our intentions out into the universe. The forth round we started drumming while giving each person time to take their piece of paper with their intentions on it and place it into the fire, watch it burn and see their creations go out to the universe. We ended the ceremony with giving thanks to the universe/Divine and to each other for sharing such a wonderful ceremony and day together. The ceremony ended perfectly with a nice light shower beginning as the sun began to retire from the longest journey across the earthly skies.
In completion to a most WONDERFUL day in celebration of life, we all sat around the fire talking for a short time, and then headed in to slowly whine down to the end of a glorious day of friendship, beauty, serenity, laughter, and JOY.
Friends