A long, meandering journey down memory lane

[ascelyn]

(Reposted here at Eadric's request.  Must obey....)

I first heard about the SCA as a junior or senior in high school.  That would be roughly around 2003, five years ago.  Because of that, this will be long and drawn-out, but mostly because I’ve been to enough events to make it long and not enough to fully compress them like those who have been

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[stitchwhich]

I went to my first event thinking I was going to a Pagan celebration. After all, it was called "Samhain", so it had to be pagan, right? But the person who told me about it said everyone dressed up in medieval clothes so she knew I'd love it.

I took sweatshirt fabric and turned it inside out so it'd look like wool and made a long-sleeved gown and then a sleeveless overdress (actually, not a bad surcote if you ignore the fabric), dressed my poor little boy in far too much upolstery fabric and gave him a little plastic sword which he waved in everyone's faces so I spent part of the event grovelling...

We sat around the fire nearly all night, singing and telling stories while folks shared their brewing experiments. I walked away at one point and as I came back through the fog, I saw a man with a large black hat and puffy-sleeved shirt kneeling over the fire, the trees dark in the mist behind him. And was lost.

Sometimes I have thoughts of quitting but what I'd lose is too great - non-SCA folks don't understand the joy I have in learning about life in our study period, about the excitement when a new dig report comes out or a new display hits stateside, about the romance and the intrigue of that past. To not be able to share that so often with so many would wither something inside me.