9pm. There was no formal announcement. No bell was rung. But the Bohemians instinctively knew that the time had come for them down at the lagoon. The ceremony was about to begin. Rick and I found a prime spot, directly opposite the giant stone owl. We sat on the grass and we rested our backs against a tree. Soon the grassy bank was packed. A thousand men had drifted down, in groups of 20 or 30, and were crowded together, sitting cross-legged on the grass. Many lit cigars. A few scrutinised me. I was probably the youngest person there.
I glanced behind me and spotted Alex and Mike. They spotted me. We looked away.
‘First timer?’ asked a big man wearing glasses.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’re going to love the ceremony,’ he said. ‘FOOLS! FOOLS! Ha ha!’
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘You’ll see,’ he laughed. ‘Here. Have this.’
He handed me a colour programme. The cover read ‘Cremation Of Care. July 15th 2000. 121st Performance. Bohemian Grove.’ I thanked him and flicked through it. It was a cast list.
High Priest - Jay Jacobus.
Voice of the Owl - John MacAllister.
Funeral Cortege - The Gentlemen of Lost Angels Camp.
And so on.
From across the lagoon, a single violin began to play. A hush descended. A figure appeared before the owl. He wore lederhosen. His lederhosen was covered in leaves. He resembled some kind of elfin Germanic Tarzan. He was, I learnt from my programme, Eden’s Garden Soloist.
He stretched out his arms and began to sing, with operatic grandeur: ‘Glorious! Glorious! Oh twigs! Oh Boughs! Oh trees...!’
For the next ten minutes or so, Eden’s Garden Soloist eulogised nature’s splendour, his voice ringing through loudspeakers concealed in the trees. Spotlights picked out individual redwoods. They glowed green.
Then we were plunged suddenly into darkness. The drums thundered. Boom! Boom! At each boom a robed man carrying a flaming torch appeared amid the trees. There were perhaps 30 of them. It was, without question, a berobed torchlight procession. Their hoods were red, their robes black. They resembled posh Klansmen, or the cast of a Broadway musical, should Broadway ever decide to do the Moloch Pagan Cult of Sacrifice story.
They lit a pyre at the foot of the owl.
‘Hail, Bohemians!’ said the High Priest, and it was clear he was the highest of all the priests because his robes were silver and gold and made of silk. The High Priest reprised Eden’s Garden Soloist’s eulogy of the great outdoors. ‘The ripple of waters, the song of birds, such music as inspires the soul...’
To summarise, he informed the crowd, these men of wealth and power, that dull care, arch-enemy of Beauty, must be slain, right here and right now!
‘Bring fire!’ he roared.
I wondered what Alex and Mike were making of this. I, personally, took dull care to mean the burdens and responsibilities of business, but I imagined that Alex was interpreting the scene differently. A naysayer could easily presume that dull care meant the world beyond the Grove, the average Joes, and that the High Priest was suggesting the world leaders in the crowd should not give a damn about ordinary people.
As I pondered this, a startling thundercrack rang out through the trees, followed by a scary, cackly voice. It was the voice of Dull Care.
‘FOOLS!’ he roared. ‘FOOLS! Ha ha ha! When will ye learn that me ye cannot slay?’
Dull Care suggested to the High Priest that he was invincible.
‘When ye turn your feet to the marketplace,’ he mocked cacklingly, ‘am I not waiting for you as of old? FOOLS! To dream ye conquer care.’
At this, and in a breathtaking display of pyrotechnic wizardry, the spirit of Dull Care spat fire onto the High Priest. From the tree tops, a gob of fire rained down upon the High Priest’s hat. This infuriated the High Priest.
‘Nay, thou mocking spirit,’ he spluttered. ‘We know thou waitest for us when this our sylvan holiday shall end. But this too we know: year after year, within this happy Grove, our fellowship has banned thee for a space. So shall we burn thee once again and in the flames that eat thine effigy, we’ll read the sign. MIDSUMMER SET US FREE!’
And the crowd roared and cheered and yelled the last line back at the priest.
‘MIDSUMMER SET US FREE!’
At this moment, Death appeared on a gondola on the lagoon, carrying a papier-mâché effigy towards the giant owl. Dry ice floated upon the lagoon’s surface. It was a beautiful sight. The effigy was retrived from the boat by (my programme informed me) the Brazier Bearers, held out to the owl’s midriff, and then thrown - by the Mourning Revelry Dancers - into the fire.
‘AAAARGH,’ said Dull Care, his grotesque death rattle filling the forest.
‘Hooray!’ said the crowd.
Then fireworks erupted. Then everybody sang And When The Saints Go Marching In. Then it was over. We clapped. The Grove descended once again into silence, broken only by the sound of many elderly men murmuring to their neighbours: ‘Could you possibly help me up? Thank you so much.’
‘Well, well, well,’ I said.
‘Pretty spectacular,’ said Rick.
‘I guess we should go,’ I said.
We wandered back towards the exit. A ragtime band was playing near a bonfire. All along the path, men unzipped their khakis and urinated up against the trees and straight onto the road. This did not strike me as mere convenience. There were public toilets everywhere. It was a statement. I needed the toilet myself, so I urinated too, my urine joining theirs, forming a little golden stream down the path and into the mud.
