Turning the Tide 2017: What you Need to Know

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Dear Turning the Tide Family,

Hoopla, Tides Family! Our Saturnalia celebration is THIS WEEKEND! Who’s excited? WE’RE EXCITED! As we are all busy preparing and packing in anticipation of a wonderful weekend of rituals, workshops, and fun, keep this letter handy.

This letter contains all the information you’ll need to know for this year’s festival. Feel free to print it out, save it to your favorite doc file, or otherwise have it handy at all times. If you have any questions, please contact our Coordinatrix Maven, Alpandia, at ttinfo@emlc.net.

Please remember there are NO ONSITE REGISTRATIONS!

Plan for the weather! The weather report currently shows a potentially chilly, rainy weekend: highs in the low 70’s and lows in the upper 50’s with a 90% chance of rain. Please pack accordingly. Remember that weather in Florida changes on a dime, so plan for sunny and rainy days.

QuickLinks to Important Information:

Our festival is held once more at the lovely Camp Greynolds, a private campground located off Miami Gardens Drive along the Oleta River. THIS IS NOT GREYNOLDS PARK. If you have to pass through a guard shack, you are in the wrong part of Greynolds. Specific directions are at the bottom of this page. It is common to see all sorts of wildlife, including egrets, ibis, and herons along the river, and owls, bats, raccoons, and foxes live among the great oaks of the camp. Nine cabins, all handicapped accessible and recently renovated, are steps away from a bathhouse and Great Hall with kitchen. A campfire ring is a short walk from the cabins and provides a beautiful spot for our rituals beneath the trees. The spirits of the land are alive and present at Greynolds – it is a well-loved spot that Witches and Pagans from South Florida have used for gatherings for over 20 years!

Our festival will once more include rituals, workshops, our Witchy Auction (so bring cash for tickets!),and drumming!

Registration and Accommodations


Please be sure to have your photo ID with you to help expedite our registration and signin process. Registration will open at 4:00pm for those tenting, and 5:30pm for our family members in cabins. Signup for a volunteer shift at registration. Registration will be in the Great Hall.

All cabins sleep up to eight and have electricity and overhead lights. Please do not plan to store food in your cabin. Critters will find their way inside! A sealed cooler with drinks and light snacks can be kept. Ice is provided in the kitchen. Your feast food should be brought to the kitchen as soon as you arrive. Label your food for feast. Your label should include your name, your cabin, and what the item is. Any leftover feast food will be given back to you on Sunday for you to enjoy at home.

We ask our family to have their cabins cleaned and ready to leave by 12:30pm on Sunday. This includes emptying any trash and sweeping the cabin. There are brooms and dustpans in each cabin. We do ask your assistance in cleaning up the campground before you leave. We do like to leave Camp Greynolds cleaner than when we found it!

If you have attended Tides in the past, we invite you to bring your favorite Spirit Bag from a previous year. We will not be handing out spirit bags this year. Instead, our workshops will provide beads that you can string on your Tides cord you will receive at registration. We will have a limited number of bags available for those who are new to Tides or who forgot. Very limited number. Please also feel free to bring your wooden nametag from last year, too!

Once you are done settling in, feel free to pitch in to help decorate the Great Hall! Opening ritual will be held at 9pm. Our gates will be locked during all rituals and workshop times.

OUR GATES WILL BE OPEN UNTIL 9PM FRIDAY. THEY WILL BE LOCKED DURING ALL RITUALS AND WORKSHOPS. THEY WILL BE OPEN AFTER OPENING RITUAL, DURING LUNCH ON SATURDAY, AND AFTER BREAKFAST ON SUNDAY . IF YOU PLAN TO ARRIVE OR LEAVE OUTSIDE THESE TIMES, PLEASE LET US KNOW.

Planning for Food


A continental breakfast is provided on both Saturday and Sunday mornings from 7:30a-9:30am. The Yuletide Feast on Saturday night is a pot luck with lots of home made deliciousness. Please bring a dish or drink to share! Unsure what to bring? A vegetarian side-dish is always welcome, as are desserts. Please bring your contribution in a serving dish with utensils (as necessary). Keep in mind that there is limited space for food prep, so your contribution should be ready-made or only need re-heating. You will be unable to cook on site in the Great Hall kitchen. Our kitchen witches will be glad to show you around the kitchen but will not be cooking for you.

You are on your own for lunch on Saturday, but there are many stores and restaurants very close to the campgrounds, including Publix. This would be a good time to take care of any last-minute Feast needs.

The camp does not allow alcohol in glass containers. If you choose to imbibe sacred brew, please do so discretely and in a non-glass container.

For a full and complete FAQ about Food at Tides, click here!

Being Green


In order to diminish our footprint on Mother Earth, we ask our TTT Family to bring your own reusable plate/bowl/cup/silverware to the gathering. A washing station will be available after every meal, and we hope to greatly cut down on the solid waste we produce by having each person bring their own reusable utensils. There will be no paper products available this year, so you must bring your own items.

To help keep the campgrounds tidy, please also police your trash. If you are walking from your cabin to the Great Hall and see litter, please pick it up. Let’s leave the grounds cleaner than how we found them!

Rituals through the Weekend


Our festival is book-ended and punctuated by community ritual. We start with Opening Ritual on Friday Evening. Closing Ritual will be held Sunday mid-day. But the focal point is our Main Ritual. This year we will be celebrating a Florida-style Saturnalia!

We will also be holding a devotional to Hekate Friday Evening after Opening Ritual. Feel free to bring eco- and animal-friendly offerings to leave for Her. Our devotees will have offerings that you may use for this purpose.

Weather permitting, after rituals our drummers will be building sacred energy around the fire. Feel free to bring your own musical instruments and drums to join in!

Fun Outside of Rituals and Workshops


We’ll be caroling again before Feast on Saturday night. Please sing along – you know the tunes!

On Friday and Saturday Evening, our amazing drummers will be keeping the energies high at the fire in the ritual circle. Bring your own drums or other instruments and lend your energies to the rhythm. If you’re more of a dancer, the area around the fire circle makes for great grapevining.

Sunday might be our last day of Tides, but it’s jam packed with activities. We’ll have our Faery Seership Breathwork workshop, and a panel discussion that will let you Get to Know EMLC! We’ll also be pulling tickets for our auction of Pagan Gifts. Be sure to purchase your auction tickets through the weekend! All proceeds of the auction are donated to EMLC to help us continue our philanthropic work in Florida.

Donations to This Year’s Charity


As part of building Community energy during our gathering, we would like our family to bring either a single, new unwrapped toy to be donated after the festival to Amigos for Kids. This organization is dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect by valuing children, strengthening families, and educating communities. You can find out more information about them at their website.

This Year’s Workshops


A full listing of all of this year’s workshops can be found on our workshop page. Some workshops will run concurrently, so be sure to check the schedule you receive at registration to make sure you know when and where the ones you want to attend will be. Be sure to read our workshop descriptions ahead of time, as several ask that you bring items for use during the workshop. If you’re tech savvy, be sure to download the EventsXD app ahead of time and search for our event, TTT11. Our Turning the Tide workshop list is featured there, too!

What to Pack

Your ID Your Yuletide Spirit
Confirmation Email with Directions Bedding, including blankets, sheets, pillow
Personal Toiletries & Towel Reusable plate/bowl/cup/silverware for each person in your party
Pot Luck contribution for Feast Food for dinner Friday & lunch Saturday (or go out)
Cooler for Drinks and Snacks Cash for Auction Tickets
Decorations for your cabin Ritual Wear for Saturday Night Ritual
Pictures from past Turning the Tide celebrations. Flyers or business cards for your services of interest to the Tides community
Comfortable festival wear for days outside (check the weather!) Comfortable walking shoes
Flashlight Musical instrument and/or drum
Camp chairs or blanket for sitting outside Notebook for workshop notes
Camera (but get permission before taking pictures of people!) Binoculars for bird watching
Yoga Mat (if you are taking Yoga in the AM) Yoga Clothing
Cell Phone Charger Donations for Amigos for Kids
Offering for Hekate Devotional (something biodegradable: pomegranates, figs, honey, barley, rosemary, dark red wine, also flowers.)

Rules for a Safe Weekend


In keeping with the rules and regulations of our host site, no blades of any kind can be brought into Greynolds Park. We also regret that there will be no skyclad option. We request that our Tides Family respect our sacred ritual area and refrain from smoking anywhere near the Circle or the workshops. All buildings at Greynolds, including the cabins and cabin porches, are non-smoking areas. Smoking is allowed in the parking lot only.

In addition, we ask that you be responsible with your alcohol intake, especially with ritual in mind. While a glass of wine with dinner before Main Ritual is fine, if you are visible impaired or disruptive in ritual, you will be escorted out of ritual and back to your cabin. Should you enjoy adult beverages in the evening, remember that we are a community and to be respectful of those around you.

As a reminder, the camp does not allow alcohol in glass containers. If you choose to imbibe sacred brew, please do so discretely and in a non-glass container.

Finally, please be respectful of our family member’s boundaries. Whether it’s regarding smoking, alcohol, noise, etc…. we are a community spending a weekend in sacred space.

Directions to the Festival


Getting to Greynold’s Park is very easy. Take I-95 north or south to exit 14 (FL-860/Miami Gardens Drive), and head east (toward the water) on Miami Gardens Drive for 2.2 miles. Take a left at the light at NE 22nd Avenue and the entrance to Camp Greynolds is immediately on your right, through a chain link fence. Pull all the way into the parking area, park, and register at the Great Hall, the building on the right as you enter the Camp.

The Everglades Moon Community is incredibly honored to host another gathering of our Turning the Tide family. Joining together to celebrate the beauty of Florida and our diverse but exciting community is one of our favorite things to do, and we are so glad you have decided to join us! As we gather, let us do so with a sense of strengthening our community in mind. As we part, may we take with us stronger connections, clearer paths, and a deeper relationship with Mother Earth. See you all on Friday!

Blessed Be!
Alpandia, and the Turning the Tide 2017 Planning Committee