Who We Are
If Midnight Sun has a shape, it is a circle...
We are a collective of many ears listening to the land...
Origins
The seeds of the the fertile friendship that roots Midnight Sun were planted in a Grass Valley parking lot seven years ago, playing frisbee with Annette’s dog, Moki, during a 15 minute break in the writing class in which we (Comet and Annette) originally met. We could not have imagined how our lives would converge to create a shared foundation for this offering.
Founding Guides (and dogs!)
Comet ☄︎ Kelly
Comet (she/they) believes the land offers us its most radical dreams.
A multi-disciplinary creative whose magic roots within the deep soil of her Celtic ancestry, Comet’s artistic projects seek to integrate the invisible strata of magic and memory held within human-disrupted landscapes.
Comet trained as a guide with the School of Lost Borders at Wild Mountain, and is currently growing her practice as a somatic eco-therapist.
At home in the Sonoran Desert with her partner and their magical pups, she lives for morning walks with the land, desert thunderstorms, co-creative play, and good coffee.
Annette ༄ Otter
Annette (she/they) is a great believer in “we cannot do this alone!” She seeks and finds refuge in wild places, in friendships near and far, within the miraculous universe that is music, in hikes and swims with her beloved dog, Moki, in creative explorations with words, watercolors and wool, in resting when her body asks for rest, and in her relationship with her daughter, Eva, who is literally a dream come true.
As she pursues her dream of musical collaborations with piano, cello, composition and singing, Annette continues to explore new landscapes inside of herself, in her mother’s homeland of Norway, and in the Sierra Nevada, living into what it means to balance and re-balance our hearts and souls in these challenging times.
As guides of European descent – Annette, a daughter raised by parents from the Deep South (her mother a first-generation Norwegian immigrant and her father a settler of Scottish/Welsh descent); and Comet, an 11th generation daughter of Scottish, English, Irish, and French settlers, including early colonists — we honor the gifts and blessings of our ancestry while recognizing the severe trouble of the "white" agenda and the limitations of our own white conditioning.
We want to center the unanswerable questions that arise for any of us who walk on stolen land — knowing that holding and asking these questions in community may not always offer answers, but is necessary work for our times. At the heart of our ceremony is a willingness to find the scars and wounds within the land, within culture, and within ourselves — to ask into repair when appropriate, and to seek the land’s visions of abundant futures.
We believe in the creative roots of ritual without appropriation, in radical unlearning, and in the regenerative pulse of ceremony that has danced humans into deeper aliveness since the beginning.
Midnight Sun was born of queer magic 🌈 As guides and co-weavers who root joyfully in our own queer expression, we welcome participants of all cultural backgrounds and identities. The fire of this ceremony seeks new edges — we want your voice, and whatever music your ears catch on the wind.
“Maybe the separation wound isn’t a given — maybe we dance with it… correspond with it.”
— Tyson Yunkaporta
Our Name…
Like a star falling to Earth, the name Midnight Sun found us as we were dreaming up our first gathering…
During the long winters and midnights of our lives, and as we traverse a collective rite of passage through the dark, what is the burning star that keeps you not just living, but alive? What sources of vision, direction, and nourishment do you most need? What invites your genius out from the deep soil of your becoming?
“These are underworld times,” writes mythologist Martin Shaw.
What - where - is your Midnight Sun?