Why You Should Try a Winter Bonfire
The Winter Bonfire are one of the most underrated winter activities.
Not enough people do winter bonfire’s. They are so much fun and so different from summer bonfires.
For starters, there are no bugs so you aren’t getting assaulted by them.
For seconders, there are no bears. Which comes with obvious benefits.
For thirders, the risk of wildfire is massively lower.
For finishers, fires in snow are magical!
The first winter bonfire of this year was for the solstice.
I’ve made it my personal mission to initiate solstice celebrations. This year, my friend and I went up to the mountains, found a fire pit, and hung out for like 5 hours. It was dark, cold, snowy and perfect. We brought chairs, beverages, things to burn and roast (cue in the roasted starbursts!), a speaker because we needed to dance, and bear spray. Not for bears but just in case of men. This part is unfortunately not a joke. It is always a very real concern for us “poor females” (Kiera Knightly, Pride and Prejudice”.
It was so fun doing this that I planned a second winter bonfire!
For this winter bonfire, we started in the daylight at about 4pm. That gave the family about an hour of good sledding before it started to become campfire hour. You might be wondering why we make the effort to sled in the mountains. The answer is simple: we just really like being in the mountains. There are awesome hills in town but sledding in the mountains just hits differently.
Plus, if you wanna do sledding and a winter bonfire, you kind of have to do it in the mountains.
Hyalite Reservoir is where we always go.
It’s a relatively short drive from Bozeman and it is almost guaranteed to have snow. Usually we sled the boat because it’s long and fast. As it turns out, the boat ramp is very hard to sled on when there is a foot of fresh powder on it.
Across the lot on a different, shorter hill was a rambunctious group of Guatemalans having the time of their lives. Deciding it was time to try a different hill with the kids, we walked over to join them.
Finally, I had a reason to practice my Spanish!
Our new Guatemalan friends wanted us to try their sled on the jump they made. Who are we to say no? We joined them in their fun, laughing and having a good time watching each other fly off this jump.
The kids had more fun on this hill because they could gain some serious momentum.
Laughs were had.
Sadly, the sun started to descend, as it does. Patrick found a fire pit, dug it out, and began to prep the area for our winter bonfire. Our new friends all left.
Our son Rufus loves to help with everything all the time.
More often than not it creates a bigger mess and takes a lot longer. But we let him help. Tonight he was determined to help with the fire so we let him. Patrick taught him how to stack logs. I taught him how to use our tiny axe to make kindling. We both taught him the technique of blowing on the fire to help it grow.
My favorite part about including our kids in these more “dangerous” things is it gives them a healthy respect for the thing and it build their confidence in their ability to deal with stuff.
I notice that a lot of kids don’t have confidence in their abilities to handle a knife or axe, be around fire, or go off a jump on a sled by themselves. And it makes sense. We, as parents, don’t want to see our kids get hurt. But the way I see it is, I’d rather be the one to teach my kids these things young in a controlled manner while I can supervise them than let them learn with their very inexperienced peers in an actually dangerous situation. Also, if we trust our kids, they will trust us.
So we let him help and experience life, much like children born just a generation or two ago.
Once our fire was warm enough…
We busted out the good ole wieners (hot dogs) and began roasting them. The kids also love being involved in this bit. There’s something super satisfying about cooking over a fire and even at the ages of 4 and 2 they recognize that.
By this time, our youngest was pretty cold so we let her play in the car to stay warm while Rufus, our oldest, roasted marshmallows.
When 7pm rolled around, we headed home, all of us feeling happy with how today went.
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