A Spring Renewal
Ridgeview’s annual Valborg event will take place on April 2. This will be the first time in some time that our community will come together to welcome spring in this uniquely Ridgeviewian way, and we are seeking and anticipating one of the largest turnouts in our history.
Valborgsmässoafton is an event lifted from German and Swedish history. Our rendition of Valborg, however, is only a nod to tradition, and a comingling with the Irish and Scottish Beltane with an admixture of our own personality. This may seem like a bastardization, but the whole holiday began as a pagan festival and ritual, became something else for Christians honoring Saint Walpurga, and has continuously evolved since the eighteenth century. The university students in Uppsala this year are more likely to be dousing one another with champagne than lighting fires on rural hilltops to frighten predators away from their livestock or deterring menacing witches.
Our version of Valborg is meant to herald spring, to steel us for the final stretch of the year, to make new connections between young and old, to strengthen our community, and achieve a bit of catharsis by an invigorating run through the hills at the entrance to the Big Thompson Canyon. It is smokey, muddy, dirty, wet, and glorious. It is students with wild hair, faces painted blue, hollering boisterously, throwing axes, javelins, shooting arrows, climbing rocks, eating, and laughing. It culminates in an obstacle course and an off-track endurance run beginning at dusk and lit only by headlamps.
Best of all, there is something here for everyone. Everyone who wishes to can run the race, throw an axe, go for a climb, or simply enjoy a meal around the bonfire and laugh with friends. Most importantly though, it is an opportunity to come together again after so long. To take up our old traditions once more and become again an in-person community. This is, perhaps, the most important renewal this spring.
I look forward to seeing as many as many of you as possible this year. It is very good to be getting back to things.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
