Once upon a time, in a city not to far from where I live, but philosophically far, far, far away from what I embrace, I was having a teenage crisis. I was 16, in high school, being verbally abused, physicall threatened and unsupported from all and sundry. I was deeply depressed and essentialy an athiest, although I still attended a church because of my parent's commands. It was my birthday, and my best friend gave me "The Book of Runes" by Ralph Blum (shhhh quiet, it's my story). I started to read it, and play with the simple ceramic runes in the boxed set. I loved it. I immediately began doing readings for myself, and I would spend time meditating on them, drawing them in my notebooks, using them as a secret code language, and just experimenting. During this time period, my agressors and persecutors were growing more reprehesible, and so I used a rune against them, to get them to be blind to me, and to never see me, even if I was standing right in front of them. Suffice to say, it worked. A little bit too well. Most people from my woeful days of high school don't even remember me it seems, and I have never crossed paths with any of them, except for people who I had friendships with outside of high school. However, even those didn't last through college, when I left the state of my birth, and went to the Midwest.
Another story, shortly after that one, took place through my invovlvement with the Boy Scouts of America. I had the fortune of belonging to a large troop, large enough and with enough dedicated adults to put on it's own summer camp, wherever we wanted, without having to go to a formal campground that was owned and operated by the BSA. One year, we went and spent a summer at the Florence Reservoir of CA. That was during a drought year in CA, and when we arrived at Florence, they had already started to drain the resevoir. After 6 days, the adult leaders realized that if we didn't relocate from where he had been camping, we would not be able to boat out the larger equipment that had been boated in. So, camp was closed down, and we relocated to a spot, closer to the exit, and closer to the swiftly disappearing water. As we were moving things quickly to the new location, a great storm front started to roll in. Giant Black cumulus clouds filled the sky, and the sound of thunder, and the in the distance, rain, started to fall on the mountain peaks. A great number of boys were frightened as the terrible and awesome weather hastened in, a thunder storm, which is a rare sight in most of Southern California. While others bustled about, I took off to a more private area. At the time I was deeply drawn to Hagalaz, and I was working closely with it. I understood that it was tied to storms and hail, and the fierce and rough elements, and so I meditated on Hagalaz and quietly chanted it's name, asking that the storm break around us, and not fall on our temporary campsite. For a great long time I did this, until finally, I felt this deep calm fill me, and seem to spread out around me. I looked up, only to see the clouds break exactly in a circle around us. Direclty overhead was clear blue sky, filled with the light of just post noon day sun, swiftly fading to setting sun. All around us were black clouds and rain and lightning, even a bolt of lightning that struck trees on the mountaintops, causing fires that were swiftly quenched by the hard falling rain. But on us, no rain fell, not all day, and not into the evening, holding until the storm broke that night and moved away.
After that, I knew that I was meant to work the runes, and that they would work with me.