Ghost Supper

We started this week off with a wander in a new area, with the goal of familiarizing ourselves with the landscape and resident organisms. Voles were present in plenty, their little feet already having worn long, deep runways in the grass.

Coyote scat greeted us at the road in, but above the entrance road bobcats seemed to reign as the common small predator. We named the owner of this scat and scrape Pointy Butt Paul, to go with his feline neighbor on the Blue House Farm side, Big Butt Bob. Every scat of his contained quite a bit of rabbit fur and bone shards, and was long, ropy and pointy like a coyote scat. But each sat firmly in the V of a bobcat-like scrape, each was coated in a slimy shellac-like layer, and each emanated noxious rotten meat and sour milk stink.


On the plateu of the high lands, we encountered more vole sign and wondered aloud where the badgers were to take advantage of this vole proliferation. We found this big dig quite soon after.


Note the deep scrape marks on the inside walls of the tunnel.


Continuing over the plateu, we found this small, chunky scat composed of what looked like Jerusalem Cricket parts.


Further along, nearer the fire road, we found many little circular digs in the grass. Nearby we found a Jerusalem cricket, and later another.


On our way back we found a downed Monterey Pine and experimented with peeling the bark to make containers. We tried the bark on the trunk first, using our knives to cut down and peel the bark, but found that the craggy parts cracked and the knife kept slipping to pierce the inner bark. We decided that that slab would be food, rather than craft material. We revised our strategy, and tried with the smaller, younger, less craggy branches. We used a lopped-off branchlet with a wedge-shaped end to separate the bark from the limb. It worked beautifully, and we returned to camp with our bark slabs in hand.




That evening we celebrated our first night of Ghost Supper. Like many traditional holidays celebrated at this time of year (Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, and others), Ghost Supper is an ancestor honoring ceremony that invites one's dead relatives to mingle and socialize for one night. Based on an Ottawa tradition, this ceremony employs an all-night sacred fire and copious amounts of food. The fire represents a portal to the ancestors, and is intended to be opened (lit) at dusk, and closed (cooled and out completely) by dawn. The hosts make food for all comers, serving their ancestor's favorite dishes and greeting guests as if the guests were the host's departed relatives. All food must be given away, eaten, or burned as an offering to the fire and the ancestors, and the fire must be cold and out entirely by sunrise the next day.

The instructors feasted us and hosted us at their fire in fine form on Tuesday night. We ate and drank and told stories of our ancestors, of ghosts, and of the season. The fire burned long into the night, and was just cold as the sun crested the Eastern ridge.

After our morning bird sit, we devoted the entire next day to preparing for our turn at hosting a Ghost Supper. We had much organizing to do, and just enough time to do it.

Traditionally, men gather the firewood, light the fire, and tend it. Women carry the water, cook the food, serve food and drink, and beautify the site. I had my own conflicts with this system, but I was willing to give it a try to see what hidden teachings might be passed on in this way of doing things.

I wore my Firekeeper tee shirt as a sort of consolation prize, and to symbolically show my dead grandparents, who I'd be serving their favorite apple pie and cheddar cheese, what I'd been up to lately. Our clan discussed the fire, and determined that at least some of us wanted to keep it going all night. Then when we called for fire tenders, only three people raised their hands. I thought that this couldn't possibly be enough to get us through the night, so I raised my hand and said that I'd be willing to tend fire if we needed another hand.

When the sun dipped low and it was time to light our fire, all others with fire kits were absent. I had my elderberry and cedar hand drill on hand, so another woman, myself, and a man all cooperated to spin up a coal and light the teepee that the men hand made.

The final flurry of preparation came, and I was the only fire tender without final prep to do. I tended fire until we all gathered again to greet our first guests. I asked the other fire tenders if any of them would like to take over, but none of them felt called. They said they would like to take over when I tired. We launched into our serving and stories, and I tended fire while the guests sat and ate and talked.

Others took over while I visited other fires, but late into the night most people wanted to snooze or chill, and I was enjoying tending fire. Orion rose in the East, announcing the early hours of the morning. The half moon set in the West, and in the deepening darkness Orion's bow shone in a sparkling arc. I tended and waited for my clan member who had wanted to tend fire into dawn. As I waited I stared at the coals and began to see a vortex spiraling down into the earth. I fed the ancestor's food to the fire, and saw it go up in spirals of smoke to Orion and the shooting stars that peppered the night.

Finally, I decided that I'd stayed up long enough. My clan member wasn't coming back. I let the fire die down to a coal bed, got up to fetch my sleeping gear, and nearly stepped in my pie. I'd forgotten to burn all the food.

Another clan member woke up to help me stoke the fire again and burn the food. We finally managed to burn it all, but the fire was now big and blazing, and my stamina had run out. I passed the fire stick to my clanmate and fell into heavy sleep.

I woke up well after dawn, next to a still red-hot and smoldering pile of mostly-burnt wood, and felt pretty disappointed in myself for not fulfilling the tradition. But I figure that for most of the night the ancestors got a first-rate comedic performance, so it wasn't all bad.

The experience has left me with many questions, and put a sharper edge on one of my sacred questions that RDNA has thus far been honing to keenness. My question, though not entirely articulated in words, has to do with novel practices and traditions, and when one is appropriate over the other. In this ceremony, we chose to alter the tradition and bring in the novel practice of fluidity in roles. Would it have gone more smoothly, with more labor shared more equally, if we had abided by the Ottawa traditional gender roles? Would the fire tenders have been more organized, and would the fire have been put to bed at the right time? Would I have been able to see the twin spirals in the fire? Would I have experienced the on-point in-the-moment awareness brought about by seriving others with vital light and heat that I experienced as a fire tender, had I kept myself to the traditional female role?