A festival about the past is actually about the future, because our present has already been proven wrong in the terms of sustainability. The way we live: consume, work, eat, shop, study, grow food gave us the wrong direction into a one-way street. The good news is, there is an exit, but only on one side, so to be able to get out, we either have to go backwards or turn around. Both of them requires the admittance of our previously made wrong choice. Sustainability today means to get out from there, and so did we, even if it was only for three days.

Last weekend was the Bålfestival (bonfire festival) in north Denmark on Djursland. From the top of the hill (probably the only part of the country where you can find hills) the sky and the sea seemed to melt together into one, let the horizon disappear. But then the sun showed up in a thin, burning red line in between the sinister dark sky and the angry waves of the sea. The smell of the smoke woke me up from wondering, so I kept walking uphill. On my way into the festival I smelled more and more smoke and something else too. The smell, -which probably made the very first humans to talk to each other, and which gathered them into minor tribes- of meat over fire. The smell, which the Greek Gods liked so much, and not by chance. Humans are hunters, therefore meat-eaters.

As I followed the divine smell I found the source. First I saw four deer heads, their legs, skin and blood all over in a big shelter surrounded by kids without parents. They have probably never seen a dead animal before, but have eaten meat several times in their lives. I touched one of the heads, where the eyes were kind of still alive, full with tears. As I touched the wet nose, I could still feel the warmth which once heated it. As the head of the deer got colder, the other part of its body was over the enormous bonfire in the middle of the festival, surrounded by the kids lost parents open-mouthed. People stood around the huge flames, with the sunset in the background in dead silence with admiration and respect in their eyes.

Even tough we all know, a piece of meat had to be an animal before, we tend to forget about it. We don't have the time and the space to think, where the meat is coming from, what life did that animal have, what did it eat, how did it feel when it lived and when it died. And when we actually face the facts of a cute deer being hunted, slaughtered and chopped into pieces to feed us, we forget to close our months. That was a moment of realization of life and death, and the cost of meat.

Meat should not be eaten everyday. Meat should be used more like a spice than a main course. Meat should be thought of as a dead animal with a once beating heart, with warm, spilling blood and not as pink, evenly cubed and measured, lifeless stuff in a plastic tray. Meat should be for celebrations, and big gatherings, not for everyday consumption. Meat should be seasonal, when there is less plant-based food available.

On the bonfire festival we learnt how to make fire without a lighter and paper, and which trees are good for starting fire. What to see and look at when you enter the forest. What is edible and what will kill you. How to fish, season, smoke and roast a fish on fire. What tools you can make with the help of fire.

A local brewery sold their own drinks in returnable cups. Plates were compostable, cutlery from silver. Therefore there was no need for trash bins, only a return-system for the bottles and a compost. On the festival we managed not to recycle, but not to waste.

The bonfire festival was three days long, where something extraordinary happened. 200 people slowed down, found harmony, tiptoed barefoot on the skin of the Earth and whispered about almost lost knowledge, hunted animals out of hunger, made a fire not to be cold. Bonfire festival was about being and cooking together, learning from each other. And it was also about getting dirty and smokey, but learning how to stay innocent, clean, respectful and curios for a lifetime.