pt 6: Bonfire Beach by Omar Najam

In which guests warm themselves against the foggy coastline by exchanging stories around a crackling bonfire and warmer company.

Hello all, 

This year I’ll be, over the span of the next thirteen days, describing a Halloween-themed amusement park that I got to develop with Surena Marie, for fun, specifically for 13 Days.

As a big old imagineering nerd, this is a dream project and I’m so excited to share it with you all. Please excuse the shoddy sketches that accompany the overly written descriptions.

Enjoy.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Down from the pier, not far enough for the waves to drown out the sound of games, but not close enough to hear who is winning what, guests will find an array of fires set up on the calming sand. Chairs and blankets dot the landscape, just out of reach of the breaking tide. 

This isn’t just a beach. It’s the beach. Where the idea of all autumnal beaches have come from. Because this is the last beach day. Here, at the edge of the world, before land slips away into the murky unforgiving unknown, right here at the border of realms, guests will feel the season slipping. Not disappearing, not fighting against the summer, but changing. 

A beach is a respite from unchanging. A place of constant shifting. Waves come in, waves recede, driftwood arrives, shells are carried out. Coasts are never the same from day to day, and in that, they are permanent. Permanence in change. 

And is there anything more autumnal than that? One leaf falling is a transformation for the tree. But leaves falling is a seasonal standard. 

Here, at the beach, guests are invited to take a seat and meditate on this. Much like trees, we are all in a state of constant change, and being a thing of constant change makes us permanently who we are. 

At each bonfire, guests will find complimentary marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolates, as well as apple cider and hot chocolate. Ingredients that are either meant for change, being held over the fire, or drinks that are in a state of change, going from piping hot to cold. 

Also at each bonfire, guests will find stories. They can be complete fantasy, they can be journalistic, they can biographical or bigger than life, but all of them hold truth nestled in there somewhere. Truths about ourselves, truths about others, truths about the world we share. 

These bonfires burn on stories. They’re enchanted fires that spray sparks into the moody morning air, embers of memory. Storytelling takes our experiences and emotions and makes them communal. Actually, that phrasing is incorrect. 

Telling stories doesn’t make them communal. It returns them to where they came from. 

The everything around us. 

And if there’s a story that guests don’t want to say out loud, helpful little hermit crabs will be coming around with scraps of brown paper for guests to write moments and sentiments down on, with quills from Halcyon bird feathers and ink from Humboldt squids — creatures of the storms. 

If guests are to toss the papers into the fires themselves, they’ll notice that they do not burn but instead sit amongst the flames. These pieces of paper are not to be lost to time, but for guests to carry with them, like the stories themselves. 

Because on this beach, on the beach, in a place between seasons, between moments of time, a place of permanent change, fires don’t destroy.

They preserve.