As many of my long time followers know, I am in the rock and mineral profession. I spend a great deal of my time in the field gathering rocks and minerals for collecting, landscaping, and selling. Many of you may remember the agate pond I built during the past summer. I usually celebrate all the equinoxes and solstices in traditional ways, but since we have been out here in the desert, I have been practicing more formal, ceremonial celebrations. I wanted to do a fire ritual to our patron allegorical god head, but I didn’t have a suitable space. So today, after talking with my sister about her family’s plans for tonight, I decided to build a ceremonial fire pit using materials we had around the farm. This is the result. It faces westward, with larger stones marking the directionals. the colored stone on the outside is some of the jasper we’ve been collecting. the center is deeper than it appears in the photos, it is just the angle combined with the sunlight streaming in.

Totally built on the fly, going to fire it up tonight with offerings of pistachios seeds, leaves, branches, and yule log. I really like working with rocks and minerals… and on this longest night of the year, i took a moment to reflect on the many layers of allegory hidden within the building of any stone edifice, even as one a simplistic as a fire pit. If every stone is like the individual members of the lodge, i ask myself which do i want to be. The strong, load bearing stones in the center core of the pit. Holding the whole structure together, in the heat, feeling the lapping of the flames. Or would you rather be one of the pretty, decorative stones, nice to look at, adding to the overall dimensions of the structure, and a buffer from the heat… but ultimately just eye candy to make everything appear grander than it is… Just something to contemplate as we end the year… and get ready to begin a new one.

Finally, the last pic is my nephew Victor sitting under my long deceased Grandma Alverta’s memorial tree up on “the Hill” on my Uncle Kenny’s land. It is planted on the spot of Andrew David Monn’s (my grandma’s dad) original homestead. The fam goes there around Yule to decorate the tree with treats for the birds, because Grandma always fed the birds. Happy Solstice Everyone!