By Gina Morton
SUNBURY — Red and blue streamers fastened to wooden stakes snapped in the breeze 360 feet above the Susquehanna River Saturday as a shaman and his audience welcomed summer at the Shikellamy State Park overlook.
The daylong event, which also featured poetry, yoga and music, was marked by Hazleton shamanic practitioner Joseph Burinsky, who with about 30 people sat in a circle surrounded by the four wooden stakes, each representing a compass point.
The summer solstice, he said, is a time of quarterly reflection, to realize how you are doing in life and what accomplishments you had in spring.
This quarterly report “is a good reference,” Burinsky said. “It gives life structure. ... All the environment around us is doing this thing in the summer. We need to remember to get in tune, life gets easier.
“Summer is a time of giving life and doing special projects, when you need to encourage that life to make it want to revisit you for one more year.
“Without it,” he said, “autumn is a sad time. It is a time of completion, harvest, sharing, preparing to go home to God in the winter. Winter is resolution, detox, recovery of residual trauma of last year’s growth. And spring is intentions, strategies, choices, when the cycle starts again. The structure keeps moving forward.”
Shamanism is not what many people believe it to be, said Burinsky, who led songs with drumming and helped those in attendance do soul searching.
“We don’t worship the Earth animals, the river, the sky,” he said. “We form loving relationships with them and they help our lives. ... We are not worshipping them, but checking in on them.”
Sudharman, of the Integral Yoga Center of New Berlin, led a yoga session. Steve Mitchell, of Lewisburg, led a drum circle and Jerry Wemple, of Bloomsburg, read poetry. Jessica Jellen, originally of Kulpmont, performed music.
Celebration coordinator Mark Cox said the reasons for the event were to make sure those in attendance enjoyed it, and to help residents realize what a great resources the overlook and state park are.
“It’s amazing how many people were never up here,” Cox said. “... I can drive back and forth 15 times on one gallon of gas. It’s available to me right here. I can kayak for miles and miles right here.”
Friends of Shikellamy State Park are going to try to make it a yearly event, Cox said.
Author Jerry Wemple, a Shikellamy High School graduate, read poems at the event that were inspired by the area he grew up in.
“I’m fascinated with the river,” he said. “... This was a nice first effort, something the area needs. There are good things in this area that we don’t celebrate enough.”
Burinsky said he planned to be out welcoming the solstice for two or three hours, reminding those in attendance that it is a time to reflect and realize what you are doing with your life.
“If you get in contact with what’s going on in the season, all the rest is the same,” he said. “Choose and vow to do something special so in January you can look back and say ‘Last summer I did that!’”
