Sometimes we talked to them, not believing anyone was listening. There are young women, self-appointed witches, who earnestly invoked the old gods and prayed to be given the keys to the heart of the land. There are writers of novels who, after a few brandies too many, came to believe the soft old phrases that resonated in their hearts. There are a few old men and women like me who did things a certain way because they seemed right, and lived in little country cottages with butterfly gardens, and watched the world hurtle by, and wondered out loud how long it would be before it crashed. We gather, from time to time, in the long, warm days of summer, when the crops have nothing to do but grow.
Travel is difficult, of course, for the others have taken all the horses for themselves.
Animals like them and, having grown used to their soft voices, frighten easily at ours. But we walk the necessary miles to gather. They are strange gatherings. Rather than telling ghost stories around the campfire as we might have in earlier days, had we known each other, we enact rituals of a different kind. My favorite is when we count down the launch of Apollo 11.