The Cremation of Care is an annual ritual production written, produced, and performed by and for members of the Bohemian Club. It is staged at the Bohemian Grove near Monte Rio, California, in front of a 40-foot tall image of an owl, at a small artificial lake amid a private old-growth grove of Redwood trees.
The dramatic performance is presented on the first night of the annual encampment as an allegorical banishing of worldly cares for the club members and "to present symbolically the salvation of the trees by the club", but the secretive nature of the Bohemians and the political power of some of its members have been criticized.
History
In 1878, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco first took to the woods in Taylorville, California (present-day Samuel P. Taylor State Park) for a summer celebration that they called Midsummer High Jinks. Poems were recited, songs were sung, and dramatic readings were given; the practice was repeated each summer in other areas, primarily near the Russian River in Sonoma County. In 1881, the ceremony of the Cremation of Care was first conducted after the various individual performances...