Bonfire Nation

Think of it as Survivor meets Lost meets Woodstock. Bill calls it "Boy Scouts with a budget" :) Yup, and that's Bonfire Nation for you. Bill and Jolie invited us to this event held on 5 acres of land just outside Ann Arbor that is owned by their friend, Eric. It's an amazing set-up if you ask me: there's an area for tents, a makeshift bar, an adult-friendly zip-line, a beer-pong table, a gigantic wooden tepee, and of course, at the center of it all, the bonfire.

What's remarkable though (apart from the awesome "infrastructure" and the initial towering inferno of a bonfire), and the thing that really enthralls Jude and I is how this is the product of a group of people's simple desire to want to just hang out together and have fun. Everything on that piece of land has grown and evolved over seven years- the zip line has broken a couple of times, but they just make a stronger and stronger one each time round; they run our of wood for the bonfire, and so they go into the forest and chop down more dead trees; every time, there's a bonfire, friends bring more friends and other people are embraced into the group: things and people are just added on organically as part of the entire sensibility of fellowship. More than combustion, Bonfire Nation is about communion :)

For pictures and details of the bonfire itself, see here.