Ever want to howl at the moon and dance?
Well, now is your chance to ceremoniously “welcome autumn” and help our local environment. The Citizens for Conservation (CFC) is hosting “Ignite the Night!” The nighttime fall festival for all ages happens from 5 to 10 p.m. Sept. 30 at 361 Bateman Road in Barrington Hills.
This outdoor event will feature live music by Dave Andersen and the I-Lites with Henry Heine and Dana Underwood, as well as food, drinks, wagon rides, stargazing and dancing.
Advance tickets are $50 each ($65 at the door) for adults, $25 for ages 13 to 20, and $10 for ages 12 and under. All proceeds will benefit the CFC’s “46-year mission of protecting and restoring land,” according to the group.
Committee chairwoman Ginger Underwood said she is excited about this “colorful, fun and unusual event.” She said she organized a similar event for Friends of the Forest Preserve several years ago, and thought it would work well to benefit CFC.
“The Riding Center and Spring Creek Forest Preserve area is a fabulous place, and the Barrington Hills Park District is very supportive, so it’s a great, positive combination of efforts,” she said.
Underwood also shared some details about the event that her committee is working on.
The cookout dinner will include three different kinds of homemade salads, a variety of home-baked cookies, wood-grilled pizzas, brats and hotdogs until 8 p.m.
Beer and wine also will be served during the event, which also features a gargantuan bonfire, narrated horse-drawn wagon rides and a native animal show by Wildlife Discovery Center.
Attendees also can stargaze with professional, “really, really good” telescopes and take educational flashlight tours with the kids, where they can “listen to nature sounds, look for owls and birds, turn over logs,” Underwood said. Participants also can dance in the grass “under the stars.”
Admission tickets will be held at the gate and the event will take place rain or shine. There is also an exciting raffle that has “a lot of nature items,” such as trees, shrubs and nature artwork – with tickets available at $5 each or $30 for seven, she said.
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Underwood reiterated that the event is “all to encourage environmental interest. … This is supporting and directly contributing to CFC, an organization that affects us all in this area.”
The group protects more than 3,500 acres of local prairie and woodlands. Underwood shared a tangible way to illustrate the benefits of restoration.
“There’s a big 55-acre field that we are using for the horse drawn wagons that used to be filled with buckthorn (an invasive species that disrupts ecosystems). CFC donated 100 percent of all of the seed for these fields now filled with native flowers,” she said.
To purchase tickets, please visit www.citizensforconservation.org. For questions about CFC, call 847-382-7283.
Kimberly Albrecht is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.