It was a good time, all-night drumming, fun music, dancing, rain, mud, chanting, fire (most importantly). Unfortunately, I felt rather out of place, as the entire rite here in the US is religious in nature. Religions of all kinds freak me out, so I wasn't big into the praying and worshiping mother earth stuff. In Scotland, celebrating Beltane isn't at all religious: the dancers and musicians are all paid performers, putting on a show. Beltane is conducted out of historic and cultural context, and there is no praying or worshiping. It's a public event.
Beltane here in Colorado is a bunch of people in elf ears and dragon-master costumes pretending to follow a Celtic tradition that was really just made up in the 1800s and added to by social and religious rejects throughout the decades. The Maypole was fun, but traditional? Medieval? It was Germanic in origin, but largely used as a territorial marker that other villages would pillage to make statements. The dancing around it part is only recent, and certainly nobody in Scotland has ever done it...
No matter, it was a nice weekend of music and drums and dancing and drinking and hippie-dressing and swimming in the freezing creek and mud and not-showering and fire and being outside. Some of my best shots from the weekend:
A close-up of the finished Maypole
The completed Maypole... took a while
A wayward tractor on the festival grounds
Dancing Hippies!
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