Every July, for two weeks, several hundred of the most powerful men in America disappear into a private redwood forest in Northern California. No wives, no cameras, no phones, no press — just presidents, secretaries of state, Fed chairmen, CEOs of the biggest banks and defense contractors, Supreme Court justices, and the occasional foreign dignitary.

Welcome to Bohemian Grove, the most exclusive, most expensive, and most deliberately absurd display of unaccountable power on the planet.

They call it "summer camp."

They arrive by private jet and chauffeured black car to a 2,700-acre compound sealed tighter than a government black site. There they drink century-old bourbon, relieve themselves on ancient trees, and stage a mock human-sacrifice ritual in front of a forty-foot concrete owl.

And we're supposed to just shrug this off as harmless eccentricity?

This is a libertarian lens on how the ruling class — those who control the state, the money, and the bombs — play at being carefree boys while reminding each other who's really in charge.

From Artsy Escape to Elite Fortress

The Bohemian Club started innocently enough in 1872 in San Francisco. A bunch of journalists, artists, and writers wanted a break from the city grind. By the 1880s, though, the real artists had been edged out and replaced by the owners of railroads, banks, and newspapers. The club capped membership at around 2,500, with waiting lists stretching 15 years or more.

Membership today? Expect an initiation fee around $25,000 (in older reports; likely higher now with inflation) plus hefty annual dues that could fund a small country's military. And yes, it's all tax-exempt because the club insists — with a straight face — it's still a “literary and artistic society.”

The Grove itself is a private kingdom hidden among towering redwoods about 75 miles north of San Francisco. Over 120 individual “camps” dot the property, each a little fiefdom with names dripping in aristocratic irony: “Mandalay,” “Cave Man,” “Lost Angels,” “Isis.” Some camps fly in chefs from Paris; others boast their own pipe organs. It's rustic luxury for the ultra-elite.

The Owl Ritual: Burning "Dull Care" (and Maybe Your Freedoms)

The highlight — or lowlight, depending on your view — is the Cremation of Care ceremony, performed on opening night since the late 1800s. Robed figures carry a bound effigy labeled “Dull Care” across a lake to the base of the massive Owl Shrine. A high priest chants pseudo-occult lines, pyrotechnics explode, and the effigy goes up in flames as hundreds of the continent's most powerful men cheer like frat boys at a bonfire.

The club says it's symbolic: just burning off worldly worries so they can relax. Fair enough — if you ignore why the "burdens of the world" need such extreme security to be symbolically torched.

Where Deals That Shape History Get Made

No official minutes exist, but the unofficial record is damning:

• In 1942, the Manhattan Project — the atomic bomb program — was planned over lakeside drinks in the “Cave Man” camp. J. Robert Oppenheimer showed up as a guest the next year.
• In the 1960s, “Hillbillies” camp hosted talks that fed into Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Reagan’s gubernatorial run.
• In 1982, Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz chatted in “Mandalay” camp about laying groundwork for the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”).
• In the 1990s, a speech by then-unknown Texas Governor George W. Bush so impressed the crowd that serious donor money started flowing his way.

Political reporters now quietly treat Grove attendance as the real coronation before the public one.

Defenders call it “just guys being guys.” Try picturing another fraternity that needs Air Force One to land at a private strip or keeps a CIA liaison on-site. They swear no policy gets discussed — while the guest list includes the sitting Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs Chairman, and CEOs of every major defense profiteer.

Modern Optics and the Same Old Power

In recent years, the club has tossed a few crumbs for appearances: a handful of token women were admitted as full members after decades of pressure (though the club remains overwhelmingly male-only in practice, with no full female membership widely documented as of recent years). They now release a sanitized public attendee list that conveniently skips half the names. The owl still burns, the bourbon still flows, and the redwoods still swallow whatever gets whispered beneath them.

Security? Drones, facial-recognition checkpoints, and rumored signal-jamming that kills even Starlink. All to “protect privacy,” of course.

So What Is Bohemian Grove, Really?

A harmless retreat for stressed titans?

A networking event with better catering than Davos?

Or the annual alignment where the men who own the media, the banks, the weapons, and the elections remind each other who's in charge — while the rest of us bicker over culture-war distractions?

From an anarcho-capitalist perspective, this isn't coincidence. It's the visible tip of the statist class in action: the powerful gathering in secrecy, free from the plebs' oversight, to calibrate control over the rest of us. When the ruling elite burn "Dull Care" in effigy, it's usually your care they're symbolically discarding—your taxes, your regulations, your wars, your freedoms.

If this little stroll through the redwoods has you feeling a bit less relaxed than the attendees, good. That's the point.

Stay skeptical. Stay sovereign.

And remember: when the powerful tell you they're just burning burdens, ask whose burdens. Then decide for yourself if you want to keep calling it "summer camp."