It was dark, windy. A sliver of the moon was still high in the sky.

Minutes before a sunrise ceremony was set to begin in mid-June — campers at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington, were still warm inside their tents.

But they didn’t need an alarm to rise before the sun.

All of a sudden, the museum’s groundskeeper bolted by on a golf cart, a cowbell ringing as he went. Tents started to unzip. People milled about.

Then, they headed a few minutes down the road to the museum’s replica Stonehenge.

“The place is so iconic. I mean, it’s above the Columbia River on this plateau, which is just an amazing, grand view,” said David Lee, who organized this first official celebration at the replica Stonehenge.

That’s right. They weren’t in the United Kingdom. But they planned to celebrate just the same.

In this early morning dark, tealights marked the gravel walkway and illuminated the stones.

About 65 people filed in, as soft guitar music set the tone. As they walked into the monument, people selected flower crowns and noise makers to help ring in the sunrise.

“We love this, modern druids do. It’s a repository of energy, a repository of power, and it’s fun to do a ritual inside it,” said Rev. Kirk Thomas, a senior priest with the Ár nDríaocht Féin Druid, or ADF, religion.

The Stonehenge Memorial is actually dedicated to service members who died in World War I, built by Samuel Hill.

Hill built a hilltop mansion on land he had hoped would be a Quaker farming community. When that didn’t work out, a friend convinced him to turn the mansion into a museum — nearly 100 years ago.

“It has cultural significance and architectural significance, and people sometimes don’t connect the Stonehenge Memorial with Maryhill Museum of Art,” said Amy Behrens, the museum’s executive director.

Both the Maryhill Museum of Art and the Stonehenge Memorial are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she said. In fact, the museum’s leadership recently asked the state legislature for funding to help conserve the monument.

The structure has some surface deterioration on the top horizontal stones after 100 years of wear and tear.

Although this is the first year the museum has organized a solstice celebration, Lee said it’s been happening for decades.

“I came last year, and there were maybe 10 people, just a kind of smattering of people,” he said. Other years, he said there’s been 200 people at the site.

So, he asked Maryhill if they’d like to partner for an official, more inclusive event.

“It’s taking the solstice out of the pure hippie thing and making it more mainstream,” Lee said.

Historians theorize solstice celebrations at the original Stonehenge could have been more mainstream.

“The sun is used to mark the various seasons of the year so that, well, in the old days, it was about when to plant, when to harvest, when to bring the cattle back from the hills, when to slaughter,” Thomas said.

It’s something people aren’t as connected to these days, he said.

“ So many people think that we have dominion over the earth. Oh yeah, right. We have dominion to destroy it if we’re not careful, we are part of it,” he said.

However, Lee said he still feels the importance of the solstice — millenia later.

“The sun is what unites us all. The warmth in our body comes from the sun. All of our food comes from the sun. So I think it’s a great way to tie people together because without the sun, we wouldn’t be here,” Lee said.

At the monument, Thomas led the group in singing a single note. The pitch rose continuously to greet the moment.

“Intonation is the actual musical term for it. It’s also called the Druid Buzz,” Thomas said, laughing.

“You make a sound, a note like, ‘ahhhhhh,’ and you just keep doing it until you run out of air and immediately fill up again.”

While they sang, people leaned against the replica stones or stood in the nearby field. And finally, the sun broke the skyline over what’s called the “heel stone,” which is just outside the circle.

“The idea behind it is that when the sun rises, it kind of sits on top of the stone,” Lee said.

However, the alignment on the heel stone is a tad off, Lee said. That didn’t matter. True to a Northwest morning, clouds blanketed the horizon and blotted out the sunrise.

The moment wasn’t sunless, though.

Denise Halackova held onto a shimmery golden circle as a stand-in for the sun. They’d anticipated the moment, so she let the circle peek through the pillars.

“This worked perfectly. I don’t know how it looked, but it was awesome,” she said after the ceremony.

After the sun rose, the group walked in a circle inside the monument, chanting, “The sun is rising, bring us joy.”

They threw slips of paper into another stand-in: a boiling cauldron filled with Columbia River water. Typically ceremonies use fire so people can burn something they’d like to release and ask for something good to fill its place.

“We have to innovate here because of the burn ban,” Lee said. “It was actually kind of atmospheric.”

Museum leaders said they hoped to continue solstice celebrations at the replica Stonehenge. Moments after the sun rose, Lee said he began brainstorming some ideas.

“ I’m in this for the long term,” he said.

Courtney Flatt is a reporter with Northwest Public Broadcasting. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/29/maryhill-stonehenge-memorial-solstice-ceremony/