Mixed Metaphors

A road trip is a must do activity every season of the year and it’s especially wonderful in Wisconsin in the summertime and fall. A road trip with a coterie of friends makes it even more of an adventure, there’s never a lack of stories, lively debates, or insightful observations about our lives as we travel. I’m fortunate to work for an auto dealership featuring luxury European brands, so I volunteered to drive my Mercedes-Benz C-300 on a perfect, blue sky, sunny, summer day.

Our destination: Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp. The “girls” and I, as affectionately addressed by the “P” in PAL, the acronym for our not so secret trio of friends and a special guest, hit the road. We meandered down country roads from our home of Madison, Wisconsin and traveled northwest, to Sauk City and Prairie du Sac, along the Wisconsin River where eagles nest, fish and feed their broods, to the Baraboo bluffs and the non-glaciated, driftless hills and valleys of our state. It was stunningly beautiful.

We drove through small towns, each with its own history and stories, through Reedsburg and La Valle until we reached Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp, seventy miles northwest of Madison, a member of the Western Wisconsin Camp Association, NSAC (The National Spiritualist Association of Churches). The camp, 37 acres of woods and quaint cabins, seems suspended in time, was celebrating its 139^th season, founded in 1874 by a group of Spiritualists from Lily Dale, New York and incorporated, 1901.

 

The Sunflower Motto

As the sunflower turns its face to the 

Light of the Sun

So Spiritualism turns the face

of humanity to the

 Light of Truth

The camp is the summertime home to mediums, healers and clairvoyants, some in residence for the whole season, others for brief periods. Workshops and classes cover such topics as past life regressions, pain relief, word association, spiritual development, automatic writing, spirit drawing and auras. The camp is open and free to the public. The season runs through the end of August. As a visitor for a fee, you can sign up for readings, healings, workshops and classes. If you stay the evening, weekend nights feature Spirit Circle Séances and Group Past Life Regressions.

Now in the spirit of complete disclosure, I must admit to being a skeptic, more precisely an agnostic, yet I remain open to things I don’t understand. I do believe in some kind of higher power, whether it’s simply the natural world or a more ethereal, spiritual force.

This was my fourth visit over the past thirty years, I’m always accompanied by close friends, sister seekers who bring questions and often leave with answers.  When I’m present in that environment, whatever channel I possess that tunes into the spiritual world is clear and open. I’m keenly aware of the energy that lingers from souls whose bodies were once bound to the earth and walked the grounds. The Spiritualists and visitors present also bring an openness and intention, to listen, understand and be guided.

We followed our own paths during our afternoon at Wonewoc, meditating, walking, attending a class and conducting our own Rune readings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We reported to each other on the gifts and lessons of the day. On the drive home we didn’t run out of stories or conversation as often happens on the return trip home. In fact something magical happened; we were more intimate with each other, able to share our shadows and stories which we typically reserve for those closest to us, as my friend Rhonda used to say, we were together and open, “warts and all.”