Once again I find myself having ignored my duties of updating things here at Eligius for a long time. In fact, if you have been keeping up with me and the happenings in my life, April 28th, the date of the last of post is not too terribly far from the time I found out, or at least began to suspect I had MS. In many regards, since that was known, I have kind of avoided posting here. Many times I have thought about, but I was just not sure what to say – especially since I was not sure I was going to continue to doing medieval stuff, giving I am still not sure about my ability to ride horses.
Oddly enough though, I have some commitments going forward over the next couple of years that I fully intend to honor through despite my own issues. Beyond that though, some conversation with a friend or two (you know who you are) have kind of convinced I need to give things that hard try before just deciding that I can not. In some ways that reminds me of my personal history with this whole riding horses and doing medieval stuff. I recall my first trip to Gulf Wars, where the combination of a slightly high-strung horse and a very green rider was, well, while not a disaster, certain the inspiration of my getting the area at 6:00am every day before heading the office and a LOT of Saturday rides on goat paths on the weekends. Did not manage to return to GW until two years, but won a Known World Equestrian Tourney that year and in the meantime had a contract with a two Ren-Faires to perform on horseback.
Still, had a lot of thoughts of just doing the minimum if the horse stuff does not work out in the future, but out of the blue a really good friend made back around the time of first really getting into the SCA sent me an invite on Facebook. Interestingly, I had wondered about her and her family a few weeks back – as in the Barony of Black Diamond we are the premieres in a particular order. That message made me realized and certainly reinforced, even if I can not DO the equestrian or even heavy fighting activities I so love, there is still a LOT of other things I do enjoy. I could count hundreds of them, such as the food and revelry, to the aspects I love about the medieval sciences and arts, but certainly at the high-point of any list would be all the odd (yes, I said odd) friends I have all over the Eastern United States – and even just west of the Mississippi and up into Canada that I would so miss if I just skipped out and let it go.
So, just a few minutes ago I put some events on my calendar for 2012 – including of course Gulf Wars (which is one of those obligations) but also a genuine effort to get up to Pennsic for my second time next year. Now I just need to find a group with which to camp at that event since there is a lack of equestrians there, at least as an organized camp.
** – Image from web, copyright Cheryl A. Knowles.
