Throughout the ages, cultures around the world have found
their own way of celebrating the Winter Solstice, that point in the year when
the sun reverses its southern course and days begin to lengthen. This event
marks the beginning of a new year and new possibilities. Bluff, as usual, has
found its own unique way of celebrating the shortest day of the year.
The ancient Druids of the British Isles based much of their
culture around the sun’s annual renewal. The great Stonehenge is a vast altar
where masses of people made pilgrimages to observe the setting of the sun
between the stone columns. The burning of a large willow sculpture, called
Wicker Man, was a regular and important part of their celebrations.
For decades, the people of Bluff gathered their dead
branches and downed limbs and brought them to an open field in the center of
town. There, on New Year’s Eve, folks gathered and torched the dead foliage. Eight
years ago, that tradition was remade by Bluff artist Joe Pachak.
Joe is a talented, experienced, and hard-working sculptor,
and he came up with a better use for the discarded wood. He began designing, with
the help of many local volunteers, and creating huge, woven-willow sculptures
made for the express purpose of burning. He focuses on monumental depictions of
Southwestern animals, some soaring more than 40 feet high. Joe’s first
flammable piece was an elk, followed in later years by a mammoth, a bison, a desert
bighorn sheep, a pair of blue herons, and a team of dancing bears. Last year’s
effort was a gigantic wily coyote, and this year the subject will be two
ravens.
His initial structural work begins during the annual Bluff
Arts Festival in October and volunteers regularly show up for the next few
months to work under Joe’s direction and add to the effort. This year, construction
has made good progress and everything will be ready for the conflagration on
the evening of December 21, with festivities beginning around dusk.
Creating works of art made specifically for destruction might
not seem logical, but worldwide, many sculptures are made just for that
purpose. Referred to as Ephemeral Folk Art, people are familiar with temporary creations
like snowmen and scarecrows. The beautiful sand paintings used in Navajo Healing
Chants are created to be destroyed as part of the ceremonies. In a sense, so is
Joe Pachak’s work.
People begin arriving at Bluff’s Winter Solstice as the sun
and temperature begin to drop. While people mingle and final preparations are
completed, the crowd entertains itself with impromptu drumming, free-form
interpretative dance numbers, and gossiping. Anticipation grows until Joe rather
reluctantly addresses the audience, and the festivities begin. Usually, flaming
darts are launched with a prehistoric atlatl into the dry-brush sculpture,
which explodes into an inferno in minutes.
These days, the audience has grown well past Bluff’s usual
250+ population, with folks arriving from Durango, Farmington, and more exotic
locations to take part in the inflammatory event.
As the fire grows, the fragile wooden sculptures are
consumed by flames and collapse into a fiery heap. Red heat radiates on
everyone’s face and what had been a chilly environment grows suddenly warmer.
As the flames lower, a curious parade begins to unwind.
Almost as one, the audience begins to slowly circle the
bonfire, moving together in a counter-clockwise direction. Many stay to enjoy
the fire until only glowing embers are visible. This piece of neo-pagan choreography
seems the proper response to this annual gathering of different individuals becoming
a temporary community, if only for an hour’s duration--- the very definition of
the word ephemera. Later, folks begin to depart and look forward to what Joe
Pachak plans for next year, when once again the ancient wisdom of the ages will
be repeated: “When in Bluff, do as the Bluffoons do.”
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