I’ve spent a lot of time lately chasing rabbits through Pagan history, memory, legacy, and the strange ways communities remember themselves. Somewhere along the way I realized that I have been looking so hard at what has been lost, forgotten, or changed that I have sometimes forgotten to look at what was simply good.
And there was a great deal that was good.
So I want to go back to one of those memories. Not to settle an argument. Not to correct anybody’s version of history. Not to stake a claim to anything. Just because I was there, and I am finally beginning to remember how happy I was to be there.
One of my earliest real experiences of participating in something larger than myself in the Pagan community was the creation of the Vé at Raven’s Knoll.
At the time I don’t think I understood what we were doing. I certainly didn’t understand what it would eventually mean to me.
The idea of creating a Heathen sacred space had been developing for some time. Eventually a clearing was discovered beyond what was then a much less developed part of the property. An old logging route provided part of the way in, and a deer trail entered the clearing from another direction. That deer trail would eventually become part of what we came to know as the Shrine Trail.
When the time came to actually build the Vé, I did what I tended to do around the Knoll in those days.
I worked.
Duchess, the old Massey Ferguson tractor, came along for the adventure. I hooked up the post-hole digger and took her back there to dig the holes that had been marked for the poles. Later the poles themselves had to be carried into the clearing by hand.
That is one of those wonderfully ordinary details that memory keeps. Sacred space sounds terribly grand when you say it years later. In reality, sacred space sometimes begins with a tractor, sweat, dirt, somebody carrying something heavy through the woods, and somebody else wondering whether the damned hole is deep enough.
Then something changes.
The poles went into the earth.
Offerings were placed before them. I remember tobacco. I seem to remember mead. Words were spoken over the poles as they were placed.
“Thunor Wéoh.”
Hallow this.
Make this holy.
I was still relatively new to Heathenry. I don’t think I fully understood the ritual language, much less the significance of what was happening around me. I wasn’t standing there thinking about history. I wasn’t thinking about legacy. I wasn’t wondering whether somebody might write about that place someday.
I was just there.
Helping.
And somehow that afternoon became one of the anchors of my Pagan journey.
The funny thing is that sacred places don’t appear fully formed.
They grow.
Someone clears a path. Someone carries a board. Someone digs a hole. Someone puts a bridge across a wet patch because spring comes and suddenly the trail that was perfectly usable in August has turned into something better suited to ducks.
Someone thinks about the person who might not be able to simply jump across the mud and asks how we can make the trail accessible to them too.
The Shrine Trail grew out of an old deer trail through the woods. It was widened and developed so humans could travel it, including people using wheelchairs. Small bridges crossed the troublesome places. A resting area gave people somewhere to simply sit halfway through the forest.
I remember being part of that work too.
And those bridges matter to me now in a way I probably couldn’t have understood then.
They weren’t monuments.
They were useful.
They allowed someone to get from here to there.
Maybe that’s one of the better definitions of community work I’ve stumbled across during all these rabbits: build something that allows the next person to get farther than they could have without you.
Around that same period, other parts of what would become the familiar landscape of the Knoll were taking shape.
The firepit. The Cauldron. The swimming areas. The trails.
The places where people would eventually dance, drum, swim, worship, laugh, argue, fall in love, mourn people they had lost, and sit around fires until ridiculous hours of the morning solving absolutely none of the world’s problems while being completely convinced that we had.
I remember digging that firepit.
I remember tending those fires.
Gods, do I remember tending those fires.
Many, many, many hours.
Firekeeping became one of the things I was known for there. Most of the time I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether I was officially staff or unofficially staff. There was a fire that needed tending, so I tended it.
Feed it. Watch it. Move things around. Make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. Keep it alive.
There is something wonderfully Pagan about that now that I think about it.
Nobody needs to appoint you Keeper of the Sacred Flaming Thing.
Sometimes there’s a fire.
And somebody has to keep it.
For a very brief period I eventually did carry an official staff role, but the title isn’t really the memory.
The fire is.
The people around it are.
The laughter is.
The drums are.
Looking back at photographs and old writing about Raven’s Knoll, something else strikes me. Those places eventually became landmarks. People came to know the Vé, the Shrine Trail, the Cauldron, and the firepit without necessarily knowing who had moved dirt, carried lumber, dug holes, cleared brush, or spent an afternoon sweating behind a tractor years before.
And that’s okay.
Actually, I think I’m becoming increasingly okay with that.
Legacy isn’t necessarily having your name attached to something.
Legacy can simply mean you were one of the hands.
That realization matters to me because my memories of Raven’s Knoll have become complicated over the last few years. There has been sadness there. Anger. Disappointment. Things I wish had happened differently. Things I still struggle to understand.
For a while those later emotions became so loud that they drowned out what came before them.
That’s unfortunate.
Because they weren’t the whole story.
Not remotely.
There were beautiful days there. There were ridiculous days there. There were exhausting days when everyone smelled like smoke, bug spray, and whatever questionable thing somebody had been cooking over a fire.
There were nights when the drums carried through the trees.
There were mornings when everything was quiet again.
There were winter trips into the Vé on snowshoes when the only regular congregation seemed to be the deer who had decided our sacred space made an excellent bedroom.
There was dirt under my fingernails.
There was smoke in my clothing.
There were friends.
There was community.
And there was that afternoon when some poles were carried into a clearing and put into holes in the ground.
I didn’t know it then, but I was participating in the creation of something that would outlast that afternoon and become spiritually significant to people I had never met.
That is pretty damned cool.
And here’s the part about legacy I think I’m finally understanding.
Nobody can give that experience back to me because nobody took it away.
Someone can forget that I was there. A history can someday omit my name. People who arrive later can walk across a bridge without ever wondering who helped put it there. Someone can stand in the Vé without knowing anything about the guy who once drove an old Massey Ferguson into the woods with a post-hole digger.
That’s how places work.
But forgetting something does not make it unhappen.
Those holes were dug.
Those poles were carried.
Those offerings were made.
Those words were spoken.
Those bridges were built.
Those fires burned.
And I was there.
I don’t need my name carved into anything to know that.
Maybe that’s the kind of legacy worth having.
Not ownership.
Not recognition.
Participation.
For a little while, in one little patch of forest in the Ottawa Valley, a bunch of Pagans decided to build something together.
And I got to be one of the hands.
When I strip away everything that happened afterward and allow myself to remember that moment for what it actually was, I discover something I haven’t talked nearly enough about while chasing all these rabbits.
Joy.
I was happy there.
I was proud of what we were building.
I was excited to see what it might become.
And regardless of where everyone’s roads eventually led, I think those memories deserve to be remembered that way.
Not every ghost needs exorcising.
Some of them just need to be invited back to the fire.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately chasing rabbits through Pagan history, memory, legacy, and the strange ways communities remember themselves. Somewhere along the way I realized that I have been looking so hard at what has been lost, forgotten, or changed that I have sometimes forgotten to look at what was simply good.
And there was a great deal that was good.
So I want to go back to one of those memories. Not to settle an argument. Not to correct anybody’s version of history. Not to stake a claim to anything. Just because I was there, and I am finally beginning to remember how happy I was to be there.
One of my earliest real experiences of participating in something larger than myself in the Pagan community was the creation of the Vé at Raven’s Knoll.
At the time I don’t think I understood what we were doing. I certainly didn’t understand what it would eventually mean to me.
The idea of creating a Heathen sacred space had been developing for some time. Eventually a clearing was discovered beyond what was then a much less developed part of the property. An old logging route provided part of the way in, and a deer trail entered the clearing from another direction. That deer trail would eventually become part of what we came to know as the Shrine Trail.
When the time came to actually build the Vé, I did what I tended to do around the Knoll in those days.
I worked.
Duchess, the old Massey Ferguson tractor, came along for the adventure. I hooked up the post-hole digger and took her back there to dig the holes that had been marked for the poles. Later the poles themselves had to be carried into the clearing by hand.
That is one of those wonderfully ordinary details that memory keeps. Sacred space sounds terribly grand when you say it years later. In reality, sacred space sometimes begins with a tractor, sweat, dirt, somebody carrying something heavy through the woods, and somebody else wondering whether the damned hole is deep enough.
Then something changes.
The poles went into the earth.
Offerings were placed before them. I remember tobacco. I seem to remember mead. Words were spoken over the poles as they were placed.
“Thunor Wéoh.”
Hallow this.
Make this holy.
I was still relatively new to Heathenry. I don’t think I fully understood the ritual language, much less the significance of what was happening around me. I wasn’t standing there thinking about history. I wasn’t thinking about legacy. I wasn’t wondering whether somebody might write about that place someday.
I was just there.
Helping.
And somehow that afternoon became one of the anchors of my Pagan journey.
The funny thing is that sacred places don’t appear fully formed.
They grow.
Someone clears a path. Someone carries a board. Someone digs a hole. Someone puts a bridge across a wet patch because spring comes and suddenly the trail that was perfectly usable in August has turned into something better suited to ducks.
Someone thinks about the person who might not be able to simply jump across the mud and asks how we can make the trail accessible to them too.
The Shrine Trail grew out of an old deer trail through the woods. It was widened and developed so humans could travel it, including people using wheelchairs. Small bridges crossed the troublesome places. A resting area gave people somewhere to simply sit halfway through the forest.
I remember being part of that work too.
And those bridges matter to me now in a way I probably couldn’t have understood then.
They weren’t monuments.
They were useful.
They allowed someone to get from here to there.
Maybe that’s one of the better definitions of community work I’ve stumbled across during all these rabbits: build something that allows the next person to get farther than they could have without you.
Around that same period, other parts of what would become the familiar landscape of the Knoll were taking shape.
The firepit. The Cauldron. The swimming areas. The trails.
The places where people would eventually dance, drum, swim, worship, laugh, argue, fall in love, mourn people they had lost, and sit around fires until ridiculous hours of the morning solving absolutely none of the world’s problems while being completely convinced that we had.
I remember digging that firepit.
I remember tending those fires.
Gods, do I remember tending those fires.
Many, many, many hours.
Firekeeping became one of the things I was known for there. Most of the time I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether I was officially staff or unofficially staff. There was a fire that needed tending, so I tended it.
Feed it. Watch it. Move things around. Make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. Keep it alive.
There is something wonderfully Pagan about that now that I think about it.
Nobody needs to appoint you Keeper of the Sacred Flaming Thing.
Sometimes there’s a fire.
And somebody has to keep it.
For a very brief period I eventually did carry an official staff role, but the title isn’t really the memory.
The fire is.
The people around it are.
The laughter is.
The drums are.
Looking back at photographs and old writing about Raven’s Knoll, something else strikes me. Those places eventually became landmarks. People came to know the Vé, the Shrine Trail, the Cauldron, and the firepit without necessarily knowing who had moved dirt, carried lumber, dug holes, cleared brush, or spent an afternoon sweating behind a tractor years before.
And that’s okay.
Actually, I think I’m becoming increasingly okay with that.
Legacy isn’t necessarily having your name attached to something.
Legacy can simply mean you were one of the hands.
That realization matters to me because my memories of Raven’s Knoll have become complicated over the last few years. There has been sadness there. Anger. Disappointment. Things I wish had happened differently. Things I still struggle to understand.
For a while those later emotions became so loud that they drowned out what came before them.
That’s unfortunate.
Because they weren’t the whole story.
Not remotely.
There were beautiful days there. There were ridiculous days there. There were exhausting days when everyone smelled like smoke, bug spray, and whatever questionable thing somebody had been cooking over a fire.
There were nights when the drums carried through the trees.
There were mornings when everything was quiet again.
There were winter trips into the Vé on snowshoes when the only regular congregation seemed to be the deer who had decided our sacred space made an excellent bedroom.
There was dirt under my fingernails.
There was smoke in my clothing.
There were friends.
There was community.
And there was that afternoon when some poles were carried into a clearing and put into holes in the ground.
I didn’t know it then, but I was participating in the creation of something that would outlast that afternoon and become spiritually significant to people I had never met.
That is pretty damned cool.
And here’s the part about legacy I think I’m finally understanding.
Nobody can give that experience back to me because nobody took it away.
Someone can forget that I was there. A history can someday omit my name. People who arrive later can walk across a bridge without ever wondering who helped put it there. Someone can stand in the Vé without knowing anything about the guy who once drove an old Massey Ferguson into the woods with a post-hole digger.
That’s how places work.
But forgetting something does not make it unhappen.
Those holes were dug.
Those poles were carried.
Those offerings were made.
Those words were spoken.
Those bridges were built.
Those fires burned.
And I was there.
I don’t need my name carved into anything to know that.
Maybe that’s the kind of legacy worth having.
Not ownership.
Not recognition.
Participation.
For a little while, in one little patch of forest in the Ottawa Valley, a bunch of Pagans decided to build something together.
And I got to be one of the hands.
When I strip away everything that happened afterward and allow myself to remember that moment for what it actually was, I discover something I haven’t talked nearly enough about while chasing all these rabbits.
Joy.
I was happy there.
I was proud of what we were building.
I was excited to see what it might become.
And regardless of where everyone’s roads eventually led, I think those memories deserve to be remembered that way.
Not every ghost needs exorcising.
Some of them just need to be invited back to the fire.