Aerik Arkadian

I love camping! If you follow my blog, you’ll notice that most of my festival posts come complete with pictures of the camp that Selene and I set up each time. Our equipment has expanded over the years — at this point, we have a giant tent, a full kitchen setup, a separate pop-up sunroom that acts as shade for preparing meals, and some other stuff. We also have a little travel altar that we like to set up, which itself has been growing in the number of accessories that we place on it.

But actually… my mind goes back to decades ago when I went on my first and only backpacking trip. Believe it or not, it was a school trip. Every year, the eighth grade class at my middle school went on a camping trip for some sort of rite of passage.

If you’ve never been backpacking, all you can take with you is what you can carry. You wear large frame packs so that you can hold extra supplies, then hike to a remote location. When you go with a group, you usually distribute some of the heavier items between you — one person might carry the food while another carries the pots and pans. In this way, each person is at least partially responsible for the welfare of everyone else. It’s very different from our typical camping method… where our gear takes up the entire back seat and trunk of an SUV, plus whatever else I tie down to the roof.There’s no luxuries. You take what you need to survive.

They loaded us onto busses and drove us out to the middle of nowhere — I don’t even remember what state we were in. We strapped on our frame packs and hiked for miles. We didn’t take tents — we took tarps and ropes to erect A-frame shelters. It was cold. Freezing at night. We had to sleep in mummy bags with bottles of warm water.

I remember strange, random details from this trip, like how we ate cream cheese and jelly bagels on our trek to the campsite. I remember that my sleeping bag was blue. And that I had just got new hiking boots. I remember walking through a glade that was absolutely covered in wild flowers. And I remember doing a series of team-building exercises, like trust falls. But oddly enough, I can’t really recall who I did them with.

On the last full day, we hiked to a tall rock formation — it had one of those typical names. Something like “Widow’s Peak” or “Gambler’s Bluff,” but I don’t remember what it was really called. We went rock climbing up one side of it and then rappelled down the other.

Surprisingly, no students were lost in any of these escapades. There were no injuries either. We all made it back home safely.

And although I’ve forgotten the names, the location, and quite frankly most of the people, I do remember the experience.

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Good morning and happy Monday, friends.

I think the highlight from this past week is that I played with Legos. But don’t worry, I did it in a very adult and professional manner. Actually, I was testing something that Deborah Lipp told me in Episode 8. She had mentioned building a lego set to help remove writer’s block. I’ve been writing a lot lately, so I decided to give it a try. Don’t worry, I made a short video about it so you can watch me build and see what happens. It’s up on my YouTube channel should you wish to enjoy.

I continued the SMF spotlight series with a Q&A from Lynda Millard. I also started [what will most likely be] a 2 part series on budget-friendly recording.

I’ve been working on Nathan Hall’s interview for the next full episode of M3. It took me a bit of pondering, but I think I’ve finally figured out what I’m going to do for the intro shot. Stay tuned… it might take me until this weekend or so before I can shoot it properly.

So now I’m at a crossroads. How many episodes make up a season? I feel like 9 is a pretty solid number — I mean, it’s magickal and all — so Nathan’s episode might be Season 2, Episode 1. Of course, this means I may have to go back through all of my previous videos and rename them to Season 1, Episode X… but I suppose that’s all part of the fun of making a show, right?

I’ve also been working on a video explaining how binaural beats work. It should be a fun one, but might take me a while to edit the footage. I’ve got a bit of learning to do in terms of how to make clean graphic overlays that will correspond with what I’m trying to show.

Question: how do ya’ll mark your pages in books? I always have a pile of books to read — either for my show, for coven, research, or other things that I want to develop further. I frequently find myself ripping scraps of paper and sticking them between pages to mark my places. Sometimes I’ve even used candy wrappers, but ultimately I’m just making trash that way. Every now and then I’ve used dollars — and sometimes when I come back to a book after a long time, I end up finding money between the pages. For some reason, I’ve never been able to hang onto bookmarks… I always lose them. But I’m going to try again! Over the past week, I made a few leather bookmarks. It seemed like a good use of what remains of my scrap leather.

Maybe I won’t lose this one because I’ll be reminded of the amount of work it was to make… or maybe not. Only time will tell!

If you’ve like to watch me dye some bookmarks, you can here. I also made a short video highlighting a very interesting moment in Christopher Penczak’s interview where he discusses some of his views on deity.

That’s all for now, but more is coming soon.

Cheers!