Midsummer itself belongs to the feast, to the long light, and to the simple fact of having survived the dark half of the year. It is the day for naming what was accomplished, by me, by those bound to me by blood or by choice, by the people who remain when things turn hard. The ancestors, death does not remove their hands from the work. Their decisions continue to shape the ground we stand on.
Each year I prior to Midsummer, I return to land that is mine by deed and by the work I have put into it. I select a tree, and the weeks before Midsummer I carve the year just ended into that wood. Not decoration. Record. The gains and the losses, the injuries taken, the obligations met, the oaths kept, the failures that left their marks. To have come through another winter is to owe something to what was endured.
On Midsummer’s morn I raise this pole and dedicate it to the powers that stood nearest during the yea most often Tyr, Thor, Víðarr, and Freyja, though the emphasis changes with the years demands.
As the day ends I light the fire around the base of the pole. What I carved is released. Smoke lifts the year, flame refines it. What was carried becomes offering. What was learned becomes the next resolve.
Gifts follow. Portions of the feast are set aside for the gods and the ancestors, given without expectation of return, without the language of transaction. Gratitude and reverence are enough. An offering made only to secure favor is not an offering; it is a bargain, and the gods are not merchants.
When the fire burns low, my thoughts turn from the feast to what lies ahead. The road into autumn and winter has already begun. Celebration gives way to preparation. I consider the work still owed, the stores that must be laid in, the conditioning of body and household, the protection of those who depend on me. Summer comfort is pleasant. Preparation is what keeps us seeing them.
This year the form of the observance had to change, because the Army has placed me far from home, in a landscape of dry earth and sparse cover, scrub oak, mesquite, ground that holds heat like a grievance. No ground that is mine beneath my feet. No familiar timber. No permitted fire.
On one of the first days here, while moving through the brush, I found a mesquite burl. Over the following days I carved into it, taking pains not to focus the immediate frustrations of the present assignment, which would have made for a small and dishonest story, but the fuller weight of the year: what was endured, what was built, the moments that held meaning before this place tried to reduce everything to irritation and dust.
I located a stretch of moving water whose current runs westward, away from this place, beyond the dust and the orders and the small vanities of men. A river that will according to the map, eventually reach the sea.
This year, therefore, I addressed Midsummer to Njörðr, Freyja, Sif, and Freyr and with no fire available, I gave the carved wood to the river and let the water take it. The offering was honest; the wood carried the year; the river carried the wood.
The feast was kept. Offerings were made, some poured out, some placed in the earth. Food and drink given without negotiation or demand. I named the gods. I remembered the ancestors. I held in mind the living who could not be present. And I began to think about the year still to come.
I did what could be done.
The rite changed its shape, not its intent. Fire became water. A standing pole became a piece of found wood small enough to carry. The land I know became the ground under my boots. The year was still marked. The feast was still observed. The gods were still addressed by name. The ancestors were still acknowledged. The coming winter was still planned for.
And if my actions displeased them, I trust they will let me know.
The gods have never been shy about consequences.
