Ritual for the Ocean

A group of indigenous dancers called Huehca Omeyocan holds a ritual to bless and thank the Ocean every year at this time. They invited me to come make photographs again on July 7 (I'm writing this the next morning), and they're going to provide the music for the vigil I'm planning on July 12. 

I left Sue and her family and drove north for a couple of hours to Cape Lookout State Park, where about thirty dancers and musicians in full feathered regalia danced around a beautiful altar in the grass above the beach. The altar was about twenty feet long and twelve feet wide, filled with flowers, ritual objects, water, food, and burning sage. Musicians played drums, many ocarinas, and flutes. They made music and danced for four hours before taking the flowers down to the sea and releasing them to Mother Ocean. Two of the dancers took new indigenous names, leaving their "Spanish" names behind (see Extra). I made 698 photos and was processing until midnight.

Sue very generously paid for me to spend the night in a motel in a little fishing town called Garibaldi, not far from Cape Lookout, so I didn't have to drive home in the terrible traffic on Sunday evening at the end of the Fourth of July weekend after a four-hour photo shoot. I am so grateful. Now I'll get some coffee and drive on home to Portland. Sue has stayed with her siblings and will be there a few more days.

The driving was spectacularly beautiful, up Highway 101 by the Pacific, the roadsides lush with wild daisies, foxglove, and mallow. Today I'll leave the Pacific and head inland, but what a glorious few days it has been!

I'm hopelessly behind on comments and will not be catching up any time soon. Should I close comments on this journal for now? I'm thinking about it, though when I've done that in the past people felt I was being controlling, which is not my intention.