Bay Summer Solstice 2019

tldr: If you’re coming, please donate here. Suggested donation are sliding scale of $15 / $35 / $100 depending on financial situation. If you use facebook, RSVP here.

We were hoping this year for Bay Summer Solstice to actually be on the weekend of Summer Solstice. Alas, EA Global is that weekend. So instead we’re celebrating it the week before – on Saturday, June 15th. Apologies to the purists.

Most communication will happen on the Facebook Event, but major updates will be posted here.

We’ll be journeying out to Marin Headlands – a surreal, remote world of hidden beaches, spooky ruins and epic cliffs.

There’ll be caravan that departs from central Berkeley around 11am. (If you’re interested in a caravan from San Francisco or South Bay, please post a comment either here or on Facebook and hopefully others can coordinate with you)

What’s the deal with Summer Solstice? I’ve written in the past:

An except from Visions of Summer Solstice:

The experience begins with a journey.

This partly by design, but largely by necessity.

Winter Solstice is about the long arc of history. Summer Solstice is about the here and now, and why being human is something worth protecting. It’s about freedom, fun, physicality. It’s about figuring things out in Near Mode. It’s about building things together.

Getting a particular kind of Special out of that physicality requires a particular kind of space.

It’s not enough to find a small nearby park. Ideally, you want an outdoor space vast enough to feel in your bones that the sky is the limit. There is no one and nothing to help you build a tower to the stars, or to cross the ocean, or cartwheel forever in any direction. But neither is there anyone to stop you. There is only nature, and you, and your tribe, and whatever you choose to do.

If you live in a major city, this probably means you may need to undertake a nontrivial journey before finding such a place. The best places will be off the beaten path, and a bit hard to navigate to. If it were easy, humans would have already crowded around it. You might be able to have fun, but you wouldn’t be able to carve out a spot for your people to invoke a Sacred Fun.

As you contemplate this from your comfortable couch and think about the journey, you may find it daunting. If you attempted it alone, you might find it frustrating and lonely.

So, don’t attempt it alone.

Journey together. If you get lost along the way, getting un-lost is part of the fun. You may find something valuable in overcoming the obstacles. I do, anyway.

The best journey is one that borders on the mythologic – you pass through narrow passages, winding your way through wild undergrowth, slightly confused about where you are going but compelled onwards by curiosity. You cross a threshold into a fae-like enclave that clear communicates “you have left the default world behind.”

And then suddenly find yourself at the top (or edge) of the world, slightly unclear how you got there.

Sometimes you are lucky, and such hidden enclaves exist right in your backyard. But the efficient Other World hypothesis says that such unspoiled passages are rare.

There are many possible destinations you can choose for your journey. I suggest one additional constraint: As much as possible, find a low horizon line – a beach, or hilltop. Dense foliage is beautiful in it’s own way, but there is something valuable, for this holiday, about getting a clear view of the sunset.

You are here to celebrate the longest day of the year.