Tra la it's May.......It’s Beltane, the middle of spring and the forests of Lothlorien are a flowering feast for the senses. The magenta redbuds still blooming, the white dogwoods and hints of orange in the tulip trees that are just beginning to bloom are all splashed across a backdrop of golden green new leaves. And that’s just at tree level. The ground is carpeted with dark purple, white, yellow and lavender violets. The hillsides around Faerie are speckled with purple, yellow and white from trout lilies, larkspurs, spring beauties, buttercups, sweet william and a hundred other spring ephemerals.
When I was a child I used to pick bouquets of violets and other spring wildflowers and leave them for my neighbors in paper May Day baskets that my mother and I made. I never quite mastered leaving the bouquet on their doorstep before they woke up, especially for the one neighbor who got up every morning at 3 to milk the cows. Consider this your virtual basketful of spring posies from Lothlorien.
This weekend (May 3-4) a small group will be using the lower section of the field (Healer’s, et al) for their own Beltane Celebration. It is still an Earth Steward Weekend. The rest of the field is still open and available for camping, working or just daytime celebration of the season. Sometime during the day, we’ll break away from working on the land to take a Maypole break.
There are just 2 Earth Steward Weekends left before ELFFest. Because everything else in the world, including the cost of driving to Lothlorien has gotten so much higher, we’ve increased the value of each volunteer hour worked from $5 to $8 in To’k’en Tokens, a credit that can be used toward the cost of event, communication and utilities access fees. If you’re able to visit Lothlorien and get reacquainted with the land you can put in some time helping with projects and getting the land ready for the festival season and reduce your costs for the festival, too. Just look around for someone who’s working and find out how you can help. Then record your time in the log book in the long hall.
The weekend immediately before ELFFest, May 17-18 isn’t an ESW. There’s still going to be lots of work going on, but TTs can’t be earned. This is our last set up weekend when festival staff gets our own lives and festival jobs together, so we discourage extra folks being around and extra camping wear and tear on the land. If you’re volunteer staff and an early presence is part of your job, you can, of course, arrive early. If you’d like to come early and help set up and take care of last minute preparations, please contact us ahead of time and make arrangements. Other early arrivals are charged a $20 per night early in fee beginning.
If you can’t make it to Lothlorien before the fest, and you can’t afford to pay the full festival fee, we can still use several volunteer staff folks to help with the many jobs that are the underpinnings necessary to help make the festival run smoothly or at all. We need help in 4 main areas: Parking, Registration, Essential Services and Kitchen. Parking trolls help guide new arrivals to park tightly in the right-sized parking space, help expedite quick unloading on the field and track down folks who’ve parked less than ideally. Registration folks greet people as they arrive, sign them in, collect any fees, fill out paperwork and help people make the transition from highway to festival. Essential services includes cleaning and stocking the composter several times a day, hauling firewood to the field, collecting the recyclables and helping troubleshoot mechanical, water or other problems.
Kitchen staff will help prepare, serve and clean up after breakfasts and dinners beginning Thursday. (On Wednesday there’ll probably be a simple soup and bread dinner.)We need people (or person) to coordinate 4 dinners, 2-3 people each meal for prep help and at least one dishwasher per evening. We’d also like to have someone to come in during the night to make sure that the floors and counters are clean, any leftover pots and pans are washed, that there’s ice in the cooler and everything is ready to go for the breakfast cook. In order to simplify life for the cooks and make it easier to get help, and to cut some of the costs of festival food, we’re changing the menu a little. We’re going to increase the choices on the basic menu, adding taco salads and some additional sandwiches and eliminating the “Daily Special” which usually takes an enormous amount of prep time unless we have a volunteer cook (probably someone with “real” kitchen experience) who is willing to take on both.
We have some kid’s activities lined up, but it would be great if there were more or if parents and other interested campers organized some sort of child care co-op to take turns getting and giving a break.
If you see yourself fitting into any of these jobs either as volunteer staff to help allay some of your festival costs, or just as a volunteer because that’s the elfin thing to do contact me at eventstaff@elvinhome.org , briar@elvinhome.org or through the web page or speak to me in person.
So March came in all lamblike bringing us a bright blue, balmy Sunday afternoon. Lothlorien’s parking lot and driveways are turning from skating rinks to mud puddles. The first crocus bloom spotted. People came out of their winter hiding places to walk around in the warm air. New folks took advantage of the beautiful day to find us for the first time. Braze digging in the garden. Numerous flocks of geese flew overhead, their gurgling sounds audible long before they came into view. And then a few days later, we had 6 inches of snow, more at once than we’d had here all winter, but that snow disappeared quickly leaving behind more signs of impending spring. All sorts of green things are popping up, tulips, daylilies, iris and whitlow grass. I’ve seen flocks of robins and even a few bluebirds.
Even though we know that the earth moves continually around in the circle of its seasons and considering just one moment in that passage the beginning or ending of time is an artificial notion for the convenience of the whirling human world, it’s still good to stop every now and then and ponder where we’ve been and where we’re going and the changes that have transpired since we were last at this point on the Earth’s journey. Although it’s impossible to accomplish in every area, I usually spend at least a part of New Year’s Eve making my slate as clean as possible, getting rid of papers, clothes and other things I no longer need, cleaning out the refrigerator, getting rid of the last of the holiday leftovers, making sure all the laundry is done and tidying up as many loose ends as possible. Then I try to spend the evening and see the new calendar year in with people I care about and want to see in the year to come. 
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Our Yule Celebration will be Friday, December 21 in the Long Hall. It's both Winter Solstice and Full Moon, so it's a dual celebration. There'll be friendly conversation, food and ritual to celebrate the beginning of the return of sunlight. Some folks may be keeping a watch fire in thunder throughout the Long Night. Dress warm; it takes a while to get the Long Hall warmed up. Bring treats to share. And let's hope it doesn't wind up looking like Solstice a few years ago in the picture.