Why Light a Bonfire to Celebrate the Solstice?

Maybe let’s start with five basic “reasons,” but as you'll see below, it's way richer.

Students lead building the pile, with care and pride. 

1. To celebrate that, after the solstice, daylight hours will increase for 182 days in a row. Longer, brighter days are so welcome on December 21.

2. To relax, escape the malls and shopping. To see friends and be peaceful and natural during a crowded season. Hey, it's a celebration with great people on a great day!

3. To honor the woods, trees, wild animals, and the planet and - of course - the workings of the solar system. To be conscious and appreciative of it all.

4. Here at Somme Forest Preserve, we jointly thank the stewards for another year’s generous work. And to thank the neighbors and the public generally for their support.

5. And it's practical! We burn up and get rid of a huge amount of invasive brush. It was cut to restore health to the ecosystem. And teach people why that’s good. The brush we slay is often so thick that to leave it heaped everywhere would then just stress the ecosystem in yet another way. Good blazing riddance!

The event is a drama. It starts slowly, with a single match.

You’ll notice that there’s no strictly “religious” message. This festivity is not “faith-based” although it is “faith friendly.” The Somme Forest Preserves are owned by the people of Cook County, Illinois and are situated in the Village of Northbrook, Illinois. This town has large numbers of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of other religions as well as fine neighbors who observe none. To the ancient Druids and Celts, solstice bonfires may have been directly religious. To Christians and Jews, 'festivals of lights' and 'good will' are said to have some historic connection with the general time of the solstice. We partly celebrate because all this makes us feel good ... and celebration makes us feel even better!  

But technically speaking, December 21^st is fundamentally about science. With the shortest daylight of our year, it’s an opportunity to explain to curious kids what the sun does and how the tilt of the Earth’s axis works ... and how temperate ecosystems mostly take a break and "turn off" during with winter. The solstice is a day when religion and science can relax together.

Here's video that that gives a bit of the sense of this bonfire's power:

Stewards cutting brush often say, “Let there be light.” There’s joking and interesting discussion throughout the year as the Somme volunteers clear bully invasive plants to let in the sun. One day a boy said to his dad, “Oh, I get it. You need the ‘photo’ to have the ‘synthesis’.” 

Death by shade is the sad fate of many woods. Stewards work to bring biodiversity back.

There’s a parallel between “ecosystem death by shade" and shortening December days. But for us, getting up and coming home in the dark is only temporary. The oak woods and prairies of the American Midwest need this alternation of seasons. They're also fire-dependent natural communities. Thousands of species are declining and losing genetic richness because, in the absence of controlled burns, invasive trees and shrubs shade out understory plants, animals, and even oak reproduction. Ecosystem extinction is like what would happen if, after 182 days of darkening, the sun just kept shutting down. Ecosystem recovery after brush clearing is like spring. At the solstice bonfire, we celebrate "the return of the sun" in two senses.

 

Thriving natural woodlands need stewardship and community support.

For five million years, the lightning-lit fires that swept the prairies and oak woodlands followed rhythms somewhat like the seasons. Vegetation would burn off, grow back, and burn again. When the “Native Americans” arrived from Asia millennia ago, following the retreat of our most recent glacier, those new Americans started burning the landscape for their own purposes, as people do over much of the temperate world. Thus our major ecosystems evolved with lightning fire for millions of years and then as tweaked by people for the last few millennia. Without fire we lose the species, food sources, other resources, and heritage of that long evolution.

Somme's annual bonfires (these days held on January 1st, because it works better for most people) draw as many hundreds of neighbors. We don’t advertise beyond a couple of Facebook posts and a banner by the entrance. Possibly, part of what’s good is that it was never hyped. People come by word of mouth. They relax about it.

After the procession following the bagpiper, people first study the pile, as a looming odd curiosity.  When the fire is lit, people are restricted from standing downwind, so any animals hiding in the pile would have an escape route (though we haven't seen one yet), and so people don’t get burned by falling embers. Initially, especially on years when the wood is covered with snow, the fire kindles slowly. White smoke is mostly evaporating water. Over five or ten minutes the conflagration grows, and people move back, then farther back, again and again, as it gets hotter and hotter. We feel awe for its power. When the flames are going up thirty feet or more, they make a roar and a wind that shakes the nearby trees. It becomes a power of nature. Like an earthquake, lightning, hail, or a tornado. It humbles us. Feelings of peace and good will may be facilitated by that humbling power.

After the fire peaks, generous people serve home-made spiced cider, hot chocolate, and baked morsels. We watch the aesthetics and physics of the fire, and talk, and think. Some sing or play music. In conversation, stewards thank neighbors for putting up with occasional smoke, or tell them of seasons when the preserve is especially worth visiting to see plants and animals, or we all just talk about whatever people talk about.

Kids line up to master the art of climbing a tricky tree.

Parents let kids play. In these  woods creative youngsters consistently discover a giant playground. Every year in different ways they mine the opportunities. Big old downed trees look festive as kids in their bright colors drape themselves over limbs. They make snow sculptures or turn over logs to check for creepy crawlies. Streams and ponds lure them. Parents supervise but treat them with holiday indulgence.

As the fire dies down, the drama draws to a natural close. People move closer to the flickering embers, especially if the day is cold. We and the ecosystem are ready for another year.

Photo credits: Carol Freeman, Lisa Culp, and Tina Onderdonk

A different blog on this event, written mostly for stewards, is at: http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2015/12/solstice-bonfire.html 

Two more photos below:

When we leave the parking lot, following the ancient strains of the bagpiper, we enter a different world and time.

On some years, a falconer brings a red-tail or goshawk.
It's another way for people to be in touch with balances of nature and the magic of the ecosystem.