May Day!

Well, a couple of days late.

I get so caught up in tilting at windmills (and writing about it) that I sometimes forget about other things. This was brought home a few days ago when I bumped into some friends with whom we used to be in a folk dance group and they asked me what my husband and I have been doing for fun lately. Uh, er, uh ... "Fun?" I said sheepishly. "What's that?" Time to start paying attention!

But what I did for fun this week was to celebrate May Day, which, along with Groundhog Day is right up there among my favorite holidays. In my city there is a lovely place called Picnic Point, a wooded peninsula that juts out into one of our lakes. (Fun fact: Picnic Point is in the background on the cover of Joni Mitchell's album Hejira.) Anyway, the local Morris Dance team gathers at the end of the point every May Day to dance up the sun. They erect a Maypole (the operative word being erect, because it's all about fertility), build a bonfire, and sing May Day songs.

Most years May Day falls on a work day, so it means getting up an hour earlier to get out there, and then rushing back across town to get to work on time, and coming in to school smelling of campfire. Too often I look out the window and whine, "It looks like rain, maybe ..." and roll over to go back to sleep. That's exactly what I've done for the last couple of years, but this year I went with my daughters, and it was a lovely time. I love that this very pagan thing is going on, and 99.9% of the city doesn't have a clue.

And the walk was wonderful; the birds were singing and the woods were carpeted with blood root and trout lilies. As you approach the end of the point, you start to hear the Morris bells and the concertina ... it's very magical.

So I do know how to have fun. I just have to make it happen more often.

(Note: I wish that American workers would reclaim May Day as our rightful Labor Day.)