The next morning I packed up my gear and tidied up my circle preparatory to returning to base camp. I had trekked in with 16 pounds of water, and I trekked out with 20 pounds of rocks. I was especially careful to take the direction rocks, as the circle will probably be there in Death Valley forever and I didn't want to leave any object-links. (If anyone else ever uses that circle again, they will have to pick out new rocks for the Watchtowers of the directions. I can't be doing all their Magickal work for them.)

Everyone back by the base-camp fire that night was pretty quiet, letting their solitary quests and their varied results cook for a while before the return to everyday life. We did a ritual based on the Medicine wheel and had a feast that night. Food tasted really wonderful, and the questers kept finding themselves smiling at each other for no reason; but there was a tinge of sadness, because our fellowship was coming to an end. Plans were made for a sweat lodge up in Novato during the next month, but we knew that trip-friendships, close as they become during the trip, seldom result in long-lasting relationships. It had been true for acid trips, and it was true for vision quests as well. A shared excursion into other worlds rarely carries over into the mundane world, and the intensity of the love is always weakened by the journey home. I think that the only place where this intense closeness can be maintained is in a group which meets regularly for spiritual work, like a coven, and even then there will be inevitable conflicts. Shamans don't usually run in groups. And even most Witches don't either; most of my Witchy friends are solitaries who just get together on special occasions. I have always rather envied the congregations of the christians, Jews, and other group religions because of that ongoing relationship. But then on the other hand, solitary Witches don't have anyone telling them what to do... Perhaps that's why so many covens and other group efforts become prey to the cult of personality, setting up one person as the Great Leader. It still gives me a bit of uneasiness when people address me as their teacher-- or Teacher. Even though I've taught the Craft, both Feri and non-, it has always, always, been up to the individual student what they kept of what I showed them and what they discarded.

But at the time I was transitioning from being a teacher of Wicca 101 to something else, solitary perforce because of the move to the Napa Valley, where I knew nobody. One piece of more-or-less Witchy advice which was given me directly at the final campfire ritual was the admonition from one of the guides to put less emphasis on the West / Water and look to the South / Fire more. This is shorthand for putting less emphasis in my life on the realm of the unconscious, secrets, and dreams, and more on that of energy, will, and physicality.

And for the next few years I would follow that advice.