This is the shortest night of the year, Midsummer Eve. Tomorrow, Midsummer Day, is the longest day of the year.

Like the full moon is the monthly time to stand on the hilltop and take stock of where things are going, correct your course, and jump forward, tumbling downhill to a breathless finish, this is the solar time, the annual time, to do the same thing. Presumably with a higher hill, a longer jump, and a faster tumble.

Although I join other witches in celebrating the solar year, and use it to mark long passages of time, it is the monthly progression of moon from new, to full, to dark, that guides my everyday life.

A year is a long time.

I am disinclined to look back, because the hill was very steep, and I flung myself from rock to rock, taking the only path I knew. I left behind tatters of my mantle of grief, like a snakeskin painfully shed. I'd rather stand here and look to tomorrow. I"m wrapped in a better mantle right now, layers of satisfaction, accomplishment, promise and silence. Fancy threads. I must have picked them up without thought, to cover the raw nakedness of being. They suit me well.

I will pause briefly and look at the present. This is my fifth anniversary as priestess. The rhythm of the lunar calendar is now as natural to me as breathing. The solar calendar of sabbats is becoming familiar. Tonight, as the sun passes behind the western hills, I will light the sacred fire in my cauldron.

I am ready to look to the future, to chart the course that brings me back to the stillness of midwinter. I have The Project™, the challenge of doing something that I've never done before. I am bound to silence on this one, and the pent up desire to speak about it may be what propels it to completion.

I also have to make a decision by Mabon. Will I return to the Temple of Ara circle for another year?

Sunrise will find me sitting on the rocky headland, overlooking the Sound. There are answers where the water meets the sky.