In May 1998, the Rites of Spring Pagan Celebration in New England was twenty years old, making it one of the oldest continuous Pagan gatherings anywhere. From its comparatively humble debut over Mother's Day weekend in May 1979, Rites of Spring has evolved into a week-long event involving more than five-hundred participants from all over the country as well as Canada, and including some from as far away as England, Germany, France and Australia.

That first Rites of Spring was held at a sheltered picnic site in Prospect Hill Park in Waltham, just outside Boston. We had use of the site from morning till dusk, at which point everyone went home and returned the next day. Those who came from out of town were provided accommodations in local Pagans' homes. The food was potluck, and plentiful. Toilet facilities were readily available - any secluded spot in the surrounding woods did the trick. There was no registration fee of any kind: photocopying and mailing expenses and the $8/day site rental fee were paid out-of-pocket by MPF (Massachusetts Pagan Federation) members. All told, over 100 Pagans made an appearance during the weekend.

Starspawn, of Boston, rhapsodized about "...the handfasting born of love and magick, Demeter's afterglow as new bride, the marriage horn-cup filled with herbal wine, the children dancing and collecting wildflowers, the Pan music bringing tears of joyous flashback memory, and the Pan dance madness of our neighbors from the Tuatha De Danaan, the closing circle built around the maypole, and our communal understanding of Paganism." He concluded that "...these memories stand stolid and fixed as the snapshots taken. But the true memory for me is not found on paper, tape, or photo-shot. This memory cannot be misplaced, erased, or duplicated, for it burns within me now ... each time I meet another who was there, the memory flames forth... "

This sense of community becomes intensified as the same people attend the same festival year after year. At the end of one particularly memorable Rites of Spring, a friend remarked to me: "Rites is like a magical village that just appears for a few days each Spring and then, like Avalon, vanishes into the mists for another year." Someone else told me: "You know, the one thing that helps me get through the winter is knowing that in a few months I'm going to be with my people again. I don't really know who they are, or what they do. I don't even know most of their names. But I've been with them before, and I know that they're my people."