Inspired by the “Do you like to Entertain” thread, I’d like to know your thoughts on bonfires. My wife and I have built up a sizable chat pit in our back yard, around a large granite, glacial boulder set halfway in the ground. It looks like a large inverted hotdog bun, so it’s perfect for sitting on. I dug a large hole in the ground and built up the edges with rocks, it’s about 4 foot across and 18 inches deep. Perfect for bonfires.
Personally, I see a trend: When the wife and I invite friends over for bonfires, we tend to get more people for those gatherings than when we simply invite them to a dinner party or cocktail party. There’s something about standing or sitting around a fire that draw’s people to it. Watching the flames, sipping something nice to drink or eating a tastey morsel of something…it just plain fits. People like gathering around the fire. It feel natural in some way…
I love a bonfire. I like to have them at my house for my Christmas parties, and I like to have them at another friend’s house when she has her New Year’s party. And all my friends seem to gravitate to the fire at some point in the evening, regardless of where they started the evening.
I like bonfires, especially when it’s cold enough outside to warrant generating that much extra heat. Good way to make a social event more casual, fun, and prone to drunkenness, IMO.
Love, love, love them! I know, you’re all shocked the hippie chick fire spinner neopagan likes bonfires. I try to be quirky like that.
Seriously, we call it “pagan TV” when we’re camping. I have no idea why, but even when you’ve built a fire dozens of times a year for decades, there’s still something fascinating about it. It’s hypnotic, and it’s comforting and people just can’t stop watching stuff burn!
The metal fire pits for the backyard are uber-trendy. We considered buying one two years ago from Sam’s Club for something like $400, and now they’re in Target for $119.
I like outdoor bonfires. One of my friends in high school had a few birthday bonfires at Dockweiler (I think) beach in Los Angeles. It was so relaxing to sit around the bonfire as the sun set. The sandy smores weren’t bad either.
I am about as un-outdoorsy as one can get, yet I love bonfires. I really don’t know why. Perhaps it’s a nostalgia thing (my parents had a bonfire pit in our backyard and it was a common summer activity).
The ability to have a bonfire in your yard is one of the few reasons I miss having one (a yard that is).
Maybe I’m a purist but around here we have bonfires because we have a lot of brushy shit to burn. For me, they’re loads of work but for everyone else, happy happy joy joy.
Bonfires are the tits! I have a friend who has some property off in the ass end of southern WA and we go out there for parties pretty regularly in the summer. He tends to deep fry turkeys and build huge bonfires and those are the best parties evar. Especially when we get rid of some of the old peanut oil by dumping it on the fire, yeehaw! He and I are both pyromaniacs so when you get two of us going the bonfire is bloody scientific–perfectly built, lovingly tended, gives out symmetrical waves of heat all the way around, minimal smoke, we are ARTISTS! A few weeks ago I went up to help clear brush and burn it off and we built an amazing burn pile that got rid of a couple cubic yards of tree branches, brush, duff and miscellaneous wood–burned for hours, completely reducing everything to easily bulldozed ash for the fill pit. Perfect burn pile, nice…
Cool pyro trick–20 oz pop bottle, filled with peanut oil, cap has small hole poked in it and screwed on. Place the bottle at the edge of the bonfire and stand back–thing sprays up like fireworks. Dangerous as hell, don’t advocate it at all, but if you must try it, a flat, rainsoaked Washington field with a fire extinguisher standing by is the optimum set of conditions.
I love bonfires. Even just regular campires are great, but some of my best memories are at summer camp. Everyone at the fire pit and gathered around, dancing and singing and just being silly. Last night of camp was always the BIG bonfire too.
We’re talking, burn half the night big and still hot coals by the time the sun rises, and enough heat to keep you warm through an end of August night near the Rockies. It was great.
Last fire I was around was Halloween. Well, just before. I ended up at a house party with friends. Spent the whole night standing around the fire, drinking and chatting with everyone else. Kept us warm enough, which was good as later that night it started to snow.
Oh boy, it was like you called my name. I love fires so much, they make me want to cry. I have been clearing our overgrown 2.5 acres for 5 years now. The first year I got 10% of the entire burn permits issued for a town of 13,000 people. Burn season runs from January 15th - May 1st. It makes the dead of winter bearable. I build piles all year. This year I have one left out of the 10 that I have burned so far. If you look at the calendar, you can see I am about to be sad wehn it ends this time around. The flip-side is that I have had the fire department over to my house more times than I care to admit (the volunteer Sparkys are more than a little overeager in my town).
These are more utility fires of course but they are pretty big and I sit around and admire them all day. Sometimes other people come over to watch them as well so I would say bonfires are a pretty popular thing.
I love fire… one of the winter things I look forward to is the annual brush burn. I set up my chair, I bring out some homebrew, and spend the evening burning.
My town is odd, in that you can’t start burning until 5PM, and there is no “no fire after” time. I usually start right at 5PM, and burn until I’m either too drunk, or too tired to continue to tend the fire.
I’ve not invited friends to help in the past, as usually it’s a last minute kind of decision, but it’s a great idea. (and I’d get more brush to the burn spot! :D)
I host a couple each year. We love bonfires! They have some quirky effect on alcohol consumption, I’ve noticed. Last September/October I had one for which everyone was asked to bring one log (instead of a covered dish). I asked this semi-kiddingly, but everyone brought a log. One guy filled the bed of his pickup truck, which created the first bonfire with left over wood.
I love it! ** Pagan TV** I’ve got to use that again! My wife and I are definitely humanistic neo-pagans as well, and that’s got ot be the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while! Nice.
They have burn permits up there in MA? Here in CT we can have a fire whenever…although I’m guessing you mean burning large piles of brush…In that case we have those permits too. The area we have our fires in is sheilded 100% from the road, and no one around here would bother us anyway. Neighbors by in large are cool too - except when they fire their guns off when we’re watching American Idol!
Ha. I laugh at your puny fire. I’ve built (okay, helped to build) bonfires that were still smoldering 2 WEEKS later! *Three story *bonfires it takes more than 3 minutes to walk around that you have to stand 100 feet away from or you get flash burns! Great towering infernos of fire burning so hot that there’s barely any flame - it’s all just orange and white glowing coal for 20 feet above your head and pulsating waves of heat and light and heat and…Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
I <3 pagan festivals.
Phlosphr, if you set your campsite right in line with the main bonfire, you can see both at once - your little fire down in front and the big fire off in the distance a bit. Then you got yerself a Picture in Picture Pagan TV. When you get bored, just poke it a bit to change the channel.
I love a big bonfire, especially in cool fall weather. One caution: be sure to avoid physical horseplay in the vicinity of the fire. My sister went to a party once and was accidentally shoved into a bonfire by some people who were just jostling around in friendly fashion. Poor girl spent several months in the burn ward of the hospital.
Love 'em and in the south we don’t have occasion to enjoy one near often enough and they’re usually just in the copper pots you buy from Lowes. Your hotdog rock and pit sound too perfect.
Our best ever was when two arborist friends spent half a year piling limbs and trunks they’d removed from all over town on one of 'em’s property and then on a winter night we had a kegger and set the whole thing on fire, bizarrely on the only night I’m aware of the aurora has come down this far. Acres and acres of coals on the ground and, seemingly, in the sky as well.
Our firepit is on the ground, but I’m thinking about trading it in for one of those copper thingies.
I love a fire. Keeps the bugs away. I’ve got an enormous pile of kindling in my pit right now. I have to knock it down to about a third of what it is or I risk starting the forest on fire.
I hear that, dude. My first year in my house I was happy to find that I had a fire pit. 'Cept it was overgrown and had a huge pile of rotten wood/debris next to it. I also did a TON of brush burning. Almost every weekend during the summer.
Now I have a proper fire pit and a nice stack of logs I cut. So hopefully this summer I can enjoy said fire pit.
Same here. Getting a permit means calling the guy in charge at the time and getting the OK. One family I know saves up brush all year for a big bonfire during the full moon in January. The gold red glow against blue white snow at night is very cool. But I tend to get too hot too cold too hot when I try to hang out around the fire. :smack:
