Trial By Fire

Okay, I'm getting a bit dramatic here, but it was a dramatic event! We attended the Pit Fire Festival out at Cochise College on Wednesday night with our friends Jeff and Liz. As usual for Bisbee, the crowd was an interesting mix of cowboy hats and body piercings... the ceramics department from the college built a huge (I mean football field huge)bonfire of pallettes over their ceramics, and then the object of the evening was to set this monster on fire, to fire their pots and provide a spectacular blazing headache for the Bisbee Fire Department.

There was a silent auction of some remarkable ceramic works - I bought a piece of Mata Ortiz pottery from Mexico - and the culinary arts students fed the entire crowd with free food! As you can imagine, there was quite a line, and we feasted on truly delicious chili, clam and shrimp chowder, sandwiches, fruit veggies and out of this galaxy delicious chocolate mint cookies. There was a festive show with local bands and ethnic dances - then as the sun was setting, the college rodeo team galloped around the fire pit bearing the American and Arizona flags - an enormous cloud of dust turning pink and purple in the sunset as they tore down the field... goose bumps, for sure.

Before they started the fire, a pyrotechnic dance troop did an amazing fire dance featuring scantily clad girls and giant devil dogs on stilts, all juggling fire batons to feverish drumming... and then - at the signal -pit fire was set alight with a whoosh - the sparks flew in the air, the wood crackled and the whole world took on an orange glow, under the midnight blue, cloud streaked sky... a full moon looked like the glowing end of a cosmic cigarette, dropping sparks and ashes all around.

Imagine what this looked like the following morning... billowing clouds of taupe colored ash on the ground, colorful pots sticking out of the ash like newly sprouted plants. The whole evening was either an amazing tribal ritual, or proof that people will go to great lengths to entertain themselves in a small town. I prefer to think the former.