SUMMARY: Sometimes you just need to get in your car in 2007 and drive three hours north into a storm that turns into snow at the threshold of your destination. You arrive solo, delivered by mysterious forces, into the arms of strangers who immediately turn into welcoming family, the first of whom chaperones you to the only person you know, the founding stewardess of the gathering, whose birthday happens to fall on Thanksgiving– her eye sparkles as she says “Ahh.” You enter a ritual of nourishment, proceeding over five days, five acts, a ritual of arrival back in the heart of this mystery we are here in. You return each year you can, even on the periphery, participating more fully as cook, as dishwasher, as bodywork, as poet, as friend, as student of invitation, welcoming, community growth, transformation and dissolution. You come to know the land as a home. Photos without faces below… a little taste of the place… most by M. Rauner, with thanks.