One Afternoon, The Summer of My Twelfth Year

I discovered self-designed ceremony the summer of my twelfth year. I was in Westport NY, at my live-in job for the Jones’ family, tending their 3 horses, resplendent garden, and 100-year-old house perched on the edge of the mysterious lake Champlain, and flanked by endless fields and forests on the other three.

That day began like any other, riding my favorite of the three horses – Shady, a strong, broad draft pinto horse – through the fields and woods of upper New York State. I was already on my way to a certain kind of euphoria, my belly full of freshly plucked red and peach raspberries from the hedgerow next to the stables. Shady and I had decided to take a slightly different route through the neighbor’s alfalfa fields when, rounding a corner, we found ourselves amidst four or five bee hives, tucked almost invisibly into the edge of the alfalfa rows.

Instantly we were surrounded by angry, protective bees. With too much adrenaline in me to pay attention, all I was aware of was the lulling droning hum of the bees in my ears and a diffuse sensation of fire spreading throughout my body. Shady took off at a gallop and instinctively took us into the thick forest to the south of the alfalfa, as far away from the bees as he could get. Once in the woods, he went straight to the stream and began to sink himself into the water, with me on his back. Soon we were both immersed in the icy cold relief, facing up stream, as he tossed and plunged his big head into the water trying to soothe the many stings on his ears and face. I began feeling my arms and legs for welts. Too many to count. And, without any warning, I burst into tears. I let myself fall onto Shady’s wide neck, my legs and arms dangling limply and being moved rhythmically by the strong current of the water.

Apitoxin, the word for the ancient chemistry the honey bees use to protect their hive, is a powerful elixir used over millennia for many things, including autoimmune disease, certain kinds of dementia and, believe it or not, bee allergies. It is also an entheogen of a kind. Being injected with high quantities of the protective venom of a creature known for its hive-mind brilliance, its autonomy and interdependence, can have the unsurprising effect of reminding us of our own autonomy and interdependence in the wider, ineffable yet ordered Web of Life.

And that’s where my first self-designed ceremony began.

In the icy stream, feeling the searing stinging pain coursing through each limb, I began also to feel a sense of euphoria. Of wellness. Of aliveness. Of gratitude. Of love. The chemistry of all of this, combined with the connection between me and my horse companion, the clear flowing water, and the intoxicating magic of the woods, I entered the altered state of consciousness I have come to know is the portal to much of the ceremony I have engaged in over the years. The tears that came involuntarily were not an expression of fear or sadness or anger. They were an expression of gratitude; gratitude for being a part of something, for being important enough to warrant the honey bees organized territorial attention. Gratitude for Shady’s wise immediate response. Gratitude for the way my own body seemed to be so fine, so well, despite what had just happened. Or maybe even because of what had just happened. Gratitude for the opportunity to participate in something so old, so wise and so magnificent…simply, Life.

With the water flowing around us, Shady’s thick tri-color tail swirling in the current behind us, I began the first spontaneous prayer of my own making. After years of reciting prayers that meant absolutely nothing to me, prayers meant to indoctrinate me into a sense of meaning and order that is ultimately demeaning and demoralizing, the prayer that came out was to the bees, to the horses, to the fields, to the water, and to my own body. After that came my love for them all, and more…for the lake that these fields poured themselves into and for the fish who swam in that lake. For the raspberries digesting in my belly. 

Then, one by one, I began ceremonially removing the stingers of the bees (in some heartbreaking cases, with the dead bees still attached), who had sacrificed themselves to protect their hive. Under the branches of a tiny Balsam tree just sprouting on the bank of the stream, I made a small altar, arranging the bees and stingers in the shape of a heart. Turning back to Shady, who had risen himself up again, I noticed a few of his thick tri-colored tail hairs snagged on one of the granite boulders at the edge of the water. I scooped them up and braided them into a long fine string, which I used to decorate the tiny balsam like a garland.

As we made our way back home, taking a longer route to avoid the hive, I felt like a different person than the one who had set out that morning. As I continued throughout my day, I realized I felt different than I ever had. Something had been awakened in me. At the young age of 12, I had many miles to go before I knew anything consciously about what I had experienced that morning, and I had no adult guidance to help me land and weave this life-altering moment into my own nascent cosmology. But it was there, part of my being. And each time after this one, that I have wittingly or unwittingly stepped into self-designed ceremony, they take their place within me as essential, and weighty, reminders of my own place in the order of all things.

This June, as we approach the Summer Solstice, we are gathering, in the flesh, to engage in self-designed ceremony together. Under the stars, and among the glorious shimmering Aspen, at the edge of the magnificent Continental Divide of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, a group of women will emerge from a year that for some has been a horror and for others has been a respite and for still others, perhaps both. As we come together for Eros, Ceremony & Belonging, an all-camping three-day weekend, we will flex our atrophied community muscles and hold each other with care as we each step across our own thresholds and into our own processes. It is time to remember our togetherness, our reliance on each other and the webs we weave that tend to our human belonging. We hope you will join us!