Solaris 2025 is on its way!

Solaris is a 4 day, 3 night camping festival in the coastal hills near Pescadero. There are workshops & playshops each day and rituals each night. The small size and inclusive nature of the activities leads to a wonderful sense of Community.

Please note! We don’t have the full indoor lodge facilities of Venture. So this Solaris will be more outdoors-focused. We do have an outdoor kitchen, a yurt that we can use for indoor evening events, and a ginormous tent that we’re not quite sure what to do with. If you want to poke around and see more pictures of the facilities, please have a look at their web site.

HEAR YE! HEAR YE!!

Hello Nature Lovers. Mark your calendars for the weekend of June 26th-29th, 2025 and get the days off work now: Solaris is back for another long, leisurely weekend of Deep Play and Spiritual Joy.

Sliding Scale Pricing! $250.00-$350.00 for 3 nights and 4 days of activities, rituals, fun and pancakes!

Some things never change:

Opportunities to connect with self and others.
A community ritual that we all write as a group.
The entertaining and moving evening Bardic.
Snaps. Hundreds and hundreds of Snaps.
Clothing Optional camping.
Morning gourmet pancakes from Ang.
A hot tub.
Jigsaw puzzling (if we can figure out where!), dancing, lounging, laughing and on and on.

How does it all work?

Here is a typical day of Solaris:

Morning Pancakes and Coffee, from about 6am till 9am.
We gather somewhere, where we will announce the day and connect as a group.
We meet with our Team Leaders for any updates or special instructions.
The first set of Work/Playshops. You can attend them or not, your choice!
Lunch break. From your own supplies. (Solaris does not have a meal plan per se, but there is always chips and salsa and gorp around. Bring an ingredient for the “Stone Salad” and enjoy an impressive salad buffet for lunch and dinner everyday.)
Second and Third series of Work/Playshops. Attendance is still quite optional. Chill if you need to.
Dinnertime. You’re on your own again.
Evening events:

On Thursday there will be a small welcoming ritual for us all, perhaps with s’mores to follow.
On Friday we will have the BBQ Potluck Social and the Bardic*.
On Saturday, there will be a large group ritual that we will all have the opportunity to help write. (The Work/Playshop to create it will begin on Friday.)
Sunday at Noon is the infamous ‘snaps’ closing ritual, and then we all pitch in and clean the place before departing.

Variations occur, the unexpected is always welcome, and Eris will be served, but generally that is the way things are supposed to go.

*Bardic: Adj. – being a bard or relating to a bard’s poetry; “bardic poetry”. Our Bardic welcomes your poems, dances, songs, and stories. We ask you to keep it to 5 minutes.

Sound like fun? Yes! But that’s only the Official Program. There are plenty of…..

Other activities at Venture:

Hiking. There are some interesting little trails down to the creek that runs through the Venture property!
The Hot Tub. Seats 10 or so.
A large, but non-heated pool. It may be a little ugly on the bottom due to staining from some of the adventures the property has had in the recent past, but it’s definitely clean.
The Knitting Minions. Karen and her merry band will be clicking and clacking all weekend. Follow the little bits of yarn and you’ll find them. Bring your skeins, spinning wheel and latest project, or start your first!
Bring your acoustic instruments. A jam session is liable to happen at anytime, and is always welcome.
Try your hand at cooking something in the outdoor kitchen! It’ll be an adventure!
Stand by the kitchen counter and eat the trail mix all day. Some folks seem spend their entire festival doing this.
Napping. Cannot be overrated as an activity.
Sun Worshipping. It IS called Solaris after all, and it IS clothing optional. The pool deck is prime real estate for this.

Central to each day are the Work/Playshops.

Playshop Guidelines

The theme of Solaris is: “Sharing Our Knowledge and Power.” We encourage campers to apply as presenters of Work/Playshops, giving you the opportunity to offer your skills to the community. Applications will be evaluated – we want to know how well your Work/Playshop fits in with the theme and fulfills the purposes of Solaris. These purposes are:

Building Community. We would like the playshops to be participatory and to help everyone get to know one another more deeply to build that good ol’ community spirit. Think a circle, not a lecture.
Developing Leadership Skills. We are especially drawn to those playshops that allow participants to acquire and practice communication and facilitation skills, which will make us more capable leaders in our community.

And with only two full days of Work/Playshops, this means that the slots fill up fast. Please understand that we simply may not have time to schedule your Work/Playshop. Then again, someone could be unable to make it at the last minute and we just may need someone to fill in. Stuff happens and we are pretty flexible with regard to changes. So please, APPLY! Please download the Work/Playshop form and let us know how your proposed activity will address our stated purposes. If all this fancy “purposes” talk sounds intimidating, please apply anyway. We want to make Solaris as exciting and enjoyable as possible and, most of all, we want it to belong to ALL of us. So, ALL ideas are most welcome. Fill out the Solaris Playshop Form!

Ideas like what, you ask?

Over the years we have had several dance classes (salsa, swing, belly)
body painting (Solaris IS clothing optional, after all)
gourmet chocolate tasting
backyard forge making
music reading, and music appreciation (separate ones!)
pendulum dowsing
Make your own arrow
basic singing
Mud People
beginning knitting/massage/drumming/reiki and on and on and on
What are you into? What’s your mad skillz? We wanna play!!

Through the magic of the Interwebz, we’ll see your Playshop application when you submit it!

Solaris Work Teams

At registration you will have the opportunity to sign up for one of our teams. Helping out is a great way to meet people and help the festival run smoothly, and we ask that all who come to the festival help. More hands make light work. Here are the Teams and Descriptions:

Housekeeping – will ensure that group areas are maintained in a clean, safe and orderly state. That includes a few toilets, scattered about the property. Also, Housekeeping are the Keepers of the Lost & Found – your misplaced items will be collected in one spot for your retrieval.
Kitchen Witches – From the early morning, to, well, the early morning, and all eatings in between. Three shifts available per day, and also organizing duty before the big BBQ social. We have an outdoor kitchen this year, though there is a real roof. There are many types of jobs available in the kitchen:
- Sous chef – got knife skills? We have a cutting board waiting for you! Multiple shifts on this one.
- Drink Maker – make sure the lemonade and ice water dispensers are filled at all times.
- Snack Filler – keep an eye on the various snacks and gorp, rotate ‘em in and out.
Dishwashers – Soak. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This team will furnish us with clean dish washing water for each meal time, and assist the Kitchen folk with cleanup. Each camper must wash their own dishes, especially so you keep track of your personal diningware (see below). Three shifts available per day, outside, and yes, you will get wet on this ride.
Registration – Help greet and orient all of the campers (that’s you!) as they arrive, and make sure they know the basics of what’s going on next. Great place to get some sun, too!
Ritual Coordinator – create an appropriate welcoming, plus the Thursday night ritual before the drum & dance jam. Lead the community ritual creation work/playshop. Facilitate the Bardic on Friday night. Create a closing ritual for Sunday. Be super witchy all weekend!
Grand Poobah – Be the point person for on-site management, including coordinating with our hosts, leading the morning general meeting, and running hither and yon like your hair was on fire.

What Do You Need to Bring?

Everyone needs to bring their own dishes / mess kit. Venture no longer has china, coffee mugs, silverware, and the like – it was all lost in the mudslide. So bring what you’re likely to need. And what that is?

At its simplest you’ll need:

A plate
A bowl
Eating utensils (spork and knife? or the usual set of three? chopsticks?)
A drinking vessel suitable for cold liquids
and if you’re into that kind of thing, a drinking vessel suitable for hot liquids

Your potluck offering is likely going to need some kind of serving plate and implement, so bring those as well. You should label (tape and a sharpie will be available) your utensils and serving plates so you get them back.

Likewise, we won’t have a gazillion bowls for stone salad offering, so if you can bring it in a servable way (think already chopped in a glass bowl with lid, for example), that would be extremely welcome.

Water

Note that the tap water at Venture is NOT POTABLE. We can wash in it, but it hasn’t been approved for drinking. There will be water dispensers in various places. You will need to bring a portable water bottle.

Camping

If you’re camping in your own tent, that and all the accoutrements that go along.

If you’re camping in one of the Venture-provided spaces, you need to bring your own bedding unless you have made other arrangements (bedding sets including sheets, blankets, and a pillow are available for an extra fee).

You’ll need towels (probably one for pool/hot tub/general sitting if opting out of clothing, and another for showering), wash cloths, all your usual toiletries (shampoo, toothpaste, soap, etc.), flip-flops for the (outdoor!) showers, flashlight, bug repellent, sunscreen. You are camping, after all!

Registration

All Set? Excellent. Let’s sign you up then. And pay attention, because we are continuing to use sliding-scale payment.

The basic rate is $250 per person, with added cost if you need bedding provided. You can camp in a tent you bring, camp in a tent that Venture provides, and there’s even a little room in the Nasturtium Cabin.

Please click on this link to register! We will contact you to arrange payment once that’s done.

Please do not hesitate to ask any questions: solarisinfo@communityseed.org
Thank you very much for considering our little festival. We would be honored to have you at Solaris.

Blessed Be,
Community Seed

Earth Spirit Fellowship

Solaris 2025!