Greetings all. James asked me to post this on the forum. I originally sent it out as two emails. It is edited for this format.

My Brother and Sister Druids,

   So let’s see: Druids from around the nation meet for an extended weekend at the House of Danu Gorsedd in the mountains above California’s Monterey Bay to share collegiality, celebrate the revival of our ways, study, and do ritual to heal the earth. The healing of the earth was our theme, and we had it in mind in ritual, in our songs, in our communing with the magnificent redwoods around us, and in our conversations with each other. In our main ritual on Lughnasa, we called up incredible energy and sent it out to our mother the earth in honor of our mother Danu.
   We left the magic of the Gorsedd on Monday, August 3 to return to the apparent world. The following day, Tuesday, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to set aside 30 new offshore marine sanctuaries from San Francisco north, comprising 153 square miles of newly protected marine habitat, adding to the already preserved sanctuaries of the Monterey Bay. On the very same day, that day after the Druids returned to their places among the people, a federal appeals court returned national policy to a Clinton era policy that blocked road construction in 40 million acres of pristine national forest. Two days later, on Thursday, yet another environmental victory was won.
   If you attended the Druid panel at the Gorsedd, you heard me talk about the hills of bare stones left behind by the California Gold Rush in which miners literally washed the hills away, devastating the natural plants, trees, grasses and wildlife, leaving bare river rocks baking in the sun, and filling the rivers with brown silt that killed the fish, most notably the California Salmon whose annual breeding run was disrupted because their nesting waters were thick with silt and their nesting areas covered with mud.
   The American River that is a short walk from my home was at the center of the devastation, it being the river in which gold was first discovered in California. In recent years, gold hunting hobbyists have begun using powerful dredging pumps to suck up mud and silt and sand from the river bottoms to sift out the small flakes of gold still found in places on California’s rivers. These weekend gold seekers pour the silt and sand and mud back into the rivers, leaving huge clouds of particulate as dangerous to fish as ever.
   Well, on the Thursday after the Gorsedd, responding to a lawsuit by the Karuk tribe (ironically almost wiped out by the 49er gold miners), the state legislature passed, and Governor Schwarzenneger signed a bill immediately halting all recreational dredging until an environmental study can be done to determine the affects this dredging has on the recently devastated annual Salmon Run, a fish at the center of the Karuk way of life. Environmental groups and salmon fishermen and other tribes joined the Karuk in supporting the bill by Democratic Senator Pat Wiggins from Santa Rosa. We Celts hold the Salmon sacred as the source of wisdom and owe a great debt to the Karuk for halting a practice that endangers them. To the Goddess of the American River and our Native American cousins, the “other people of the circle!’ Sláinte!
   So there you have it: healing ritual by Druids in the mountains above the Monterey Bay, and within three days (love that number, three!), three major environmental victories are signed, sealed, and delivered, touching the whole nation. Coincidence? I think not. I trust you will all raise a glass to Manannán and Fand of the sea, Cernunnos and Druantia of the forest, and Danu of the rivers and our Native American Salmon-loving cousins, the “other people of the circle!’ Sláinte!
      And for our next trick . . .


Peace,
Michael