{"id":12935,"date":"2022-06-17T16:54:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T22:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12935"},"modified":"2022-06-17T17:21:11","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T23:21:11","slug":"how-smokey-bear-would-celebrate-the-summer-solstice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12935","title":{"rendered":"How Smokey Bear Would Celebrate the Summer Solstice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

It’s a bonfire at mid-June, but a couple of things are a little off.<\/p><\/div>\n

Flames leapt into the June sky,<\/strong> illuminating the attentive faces of the surroundng watchers, while waves of heat rolled off the fire. Around us was darkness, mountains, and forest.<\/p>\n

I was thirsty, so I walked over the cooler to get some water. On the way back, my boot felt loose, so I put it up on the front pumper of Engine 968 to re-lace it.<\/p>\n

“It’s a great bonfire,” I thought. “Too bad it’s ten days early.” This was the night of June 11, 2022, and the solstice will come at 3:14 a.m. local (Mountain) time on the 21st.<\/a><\/p>\n

I live in a Colorado county where evangelical Protestanism is the dominant faith, although there are others, and all the local political races are settled in the Republican primary.((As an unaffiliated voter, I can vote in either major party’s primary, so this year I voted as an imaginary Republican, since the alternative is to have no candidates at all.)) But since I was here, I tried a Wiccan reading of the event: The fire was lit, and people assembled. (That perhaps is backwards from normal practice.) We cast the circle \u2014 not drawing it with a sword but digging it with pulaskis<\/a>, MacLeods<\/a>, and combi tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A spcialized circle-casting tool based on the Army M1088A1 5-ton\u00a0 6×6 tractor.<\/p><\/div>\n

Then we marked it in fire \u2014two people circled the perimeter with drip torches<\/a> to make sure eveyrhing burned<\/p>\n

And in water. Another celebrant drove deosil around the circle in a Type 4 wildland engine, spraying a “wet line.”<\/p>\n

No salt though.<\/p>\n

Pagan-studies scholar Helen Berger recently wrote a summer solstice-themed article f<\/strong>or The Conversation <\/em>(“Academic rigor, journalistic flair”) titled “Wiccan celebration of summer solstice is a reminder that change, as expressed in nature, is inevitable.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

All sabbats begin by creating sacred space, mostly outdoors when the weather permits. This is done by those leading the ritual walking around an area, chanting as a form of prayer and sprinkling the area with water and salt, which are believed to be spiritually cleansing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it occurs to me that a hypothecal Smokey Bear<\/a> coven could do a heckuva circle-casting just with what is carried on the trucks.<\/strong> How about a ring of Class A foam<\/a>?<\/p>\n

After all, Smokey Bear is a face of the Great Bear, one of the oldest religions of all. The somewhat Pagan-ish American Buddhist philosopher and poet Gary Snyder composed a sutra for Smokey [the] Bear in 1969. Here it is with some commentary that he wrote in 2005, published in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In the sutra, I see Smokey as the incarnation of the ancient brown bear of the North and of [the Japanese mountain bodhisattva] Fudo at the same time. But, of course, the Forest Service didn\u2019t know anything about all those associations and reverberations. That was part of the fun of it all, turning the establishment\u2019s imagery on its head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You read this far and you are still wondering about the fire?<\/strong> The larger fire department in my county and the smaller one to which I belong are operating under a temporary “automatic mutual aid” plan for wildfires because it is so dry now. If a fire pops up in their service area or ours, the other department is dispatched too.<\/p>\n

This was in their area: it took our two engines an hour just to drive there.<\/p>\n

In this case, a member of one of the well-established ranching families, stewards of the land, etc etc., had piled up an acre of \u201cslash\u201d \u2014 stumps, tree trunks, limbs and so onefrom logging or fire mitigation (ironic) or whatever. All nicely dry.<\/p>\n

Then he (or his hired hand) decided to burn some other trash adjacent to it. “We don\u2019t need no steenkeeng permit.\u201d \u00a0And the first fire ignited the slash pile.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The flames were visible for miles , and they sure lit up local Facebook pages as well. It was like a small lumberyard on fire \u2014 there was no way we had enough water to put it out, so we just made it burn more completely. One lucky engine crew (not mine) got to stay all night to monitor it.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flames leapt into the June sky, illuminating the attentive faces of the surroundng watchers, while waves of heat rolled off the fire. Around us was darkness, mountains, and forest. I was thirsty, so I walked over the cooler to get some water. On the way back, my boot felt loose, so I put it up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,23,211,148,342],"class_list":["post-12935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bears","tag-colorado","tag-fire","tag-solstice","tag-summer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3mD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8699,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8699","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":0},"title":"Happy Independence Day & Blessed Be","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Stars and Stripes, a Colorado craft beer, and a Ripley's witchcraft museum goblet. This is actually the summer solstice celebration, I reckon, delayed two weeks. I'm kicking back after driving one of my department's fire trucks in Nearby Town's 4th 0f July parade. Here is a picture of one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/happy-independence-day.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/happy-independence-day.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/happy-independence-day.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/happy-independence-day.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2784,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2784","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":1},"title":"Solstice Is Coming, But Summer is Here Now","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"An exchange on The Wild Hunt as to when the \"summer festival season\" properly began led a commenter to post this link in response to the statement that summer begins on June 21. I hear idiot television newspeople (but I repeat myself) saying that all the time at this point\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"festivals\"","block_context":{"text":"festivals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=festivals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7279,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7279","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":2},"title":"How They Celebrate the Summer Solstice","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"From 2012, a BBC piece on how Latvians celebrate the summer solstice: It is not a complicated festival. All you have to do is head out to the countryside, get a fire going, stay up all night waiting for the sun to come up and drink lots and lots of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5708,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5708","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":3},"title":"Britain and the “Festival Gap”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A contributor to the BBC magazine takes the summer solstice as an opportunity to comment on the UK's paucity of good festivals \u2014 particularly at midsummer: If in this year of 2013, an interplanetary anthropologist came to England for fieldwork, what would they discover? On a variable Sunday each spring,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7629,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7629","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":4},"title":"On the Sidelines in the Solstice Wars","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh wait, it is Christmas that has (news media-generated) \"wars.\" How the winter solstice should be observed, however, has become the subject of almost rabbinical discussion on one of the Colorado Pagan listservs, again. There are always two core factions, the calendrical and the astronomical. The event at stake is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Siberianwinterking","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Siberianwinterking-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=455","url_meta":{"origin":12935,"position":5},"title":"Celebrating the wrong solsticeIn Britain,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Celebrating the wrong solsticeIn Britain, it's time for media coverage of the summer solstice mob at Stonehenge and elsewhere, but some archaeologists think that today's Pagans and friends are celebrating the wrong solstice.It's all in the pig bones, you see.The Telegraph newspaper editorializes,\"And so this multicultural nanny [English Heritage] appointed\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12935"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12951,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935\/revisions\/12951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}