Mike Prahl has given the cartwheel demonstration before. It’s his standard response when someone asks about how hard it is to move around in 40-plus pounds of armor. “Ready?” he says. “Watch.”

The cartwheel is awkward and low; Prahl’s legs, each one encased in shiny plates of steel, barely arc over the ground before landing heavily in the grass. There’s an audible “clank” as his limbs tumble into each other.

But Prahl, one of about two dozen local members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, contends that his equipment — 60 pounds total, with weapon and shield — is comfortable. “I can take a nap in it,” he says. “I can get in my pickup and drive. But I can’t do a cartwheel.”

The good news is that cartwheels aren’t typically required at the society’s gatherings. Members of the educational organization dedicated to the study of the European Middle Ages fight, dance, prepare feasts (including homemade cheese and flaming desserts) and make beautiful fabrics and clothes — but they aren’t expected to perform gymnastic feats. The only expectation, really, is that they find something that interests them and dig into it.

For Patrice Hunstad, who first learned about creative anachronism from an article in Seventeen magazine, that interest happens to be medieval dance. For Bart Saxton, it’s medieval coins. For Melanie Wing, it’s embroidery and needlework. For Anna Schuster, it’s making shoes, sausage and cheese, from the milk of her own cow.

“I guess I go to extremes,” Schuster laughed. “I have my own cow, so I start with that.”

Not everyone is as fastidious as Schuster, but most members are committed to recreating one aspect or another of the medieval lifestyle as accurately as possible. Although they come from all walks of life, they seem to have at least one thing in common.

“What binds us is that we all love history,” Linda Prahl said. “And we all prefer to be participants in it, rather than spectators.”

Participation varies from person to person. “It’s really up to you,” said Hunstad, the seneschal (much the equivalent of the president) of the group. “You can be as involved as you want to be.”

There are monthly meetings of the Shire of Rivenwood Tower, the local chapter of SCA. There are also regular “fighter practices,” in which members don armor and wage battle against each other with blunt weapons (such fights are on the honor code; if a participant takes a hit that would, for example, seriously wound one arm, it’s his responsibility to refrain from using that arm in the rest of the battle). Weekly “armory nights” in the Prahls’ heated workshop allow members to pound out new chestplates or repair worn equipment. The group also gets together with some of the larger organization — it is part of the Kingdom of Northshire — for campouts, feasts and other occasions. When they gather, they dress in their garb — clothing their character, known as a ‘persona,’ would have worn. Many members fashion those costumes themselves, but they can also be bought or, in some cases, bartered for. The fighters make most of their suits as well, including chain tunics that can take as many as 80 hours to link together.

“It’s very similar to knitting,” Linda Prahl said. “You wind the wire, cut it and close it. At least you don’t have to rivet every individual piece like they used to do.”

Although they take great pains to be as historically correct as possible, they also take great pains to avoid, well, pain. Fighters are required to follow rules about padding and weapons to reduce the risk of injury.

“We can’t be entirely historically correct if we want to be safe,” Hunstad said.