The first in a periodic series of posts exploring old and new ceremonies connecting with the Wheel of the year.

When I was a kid growing up in Ontario, for a couple of weeks each summer, I had the good fortune to go to Summer Camp.

One of the things that I hold most fondly in my mind were the nightly camp fires... the singing, the stories... and looking back from where I am today... I recognize that it was a kind of nightly group ceremony, with plenty of ritual element.

I believe there’s something deeply rooted in the human psyche that connects fire and ritual. It’s a powerful connection that stirs us right down to our bones... right down to our DNA.

I remember when I moved to BC in 1995, I was introduced to something new that I’d never experienced – fire bans in the summer.

I remember being just flabbergasted!

The idea of going camping and NOT having a campfire seemed utterly absurd... I mean, what’s the point?! What do you do in the evenings without a campfire.

Like everyone around the world, I’ve watched as our climate catastrophe has continued to transform our environment. My son’s birthday is in early July, and I remember how it was a tradition to have a campfire with his friends on his birthday; and marking it as one of the last fires of the season - with the ban coming down usually by mid-July.

As the years have passed, and summers have continued to get drier and drier – the fire ban has gotten earlier and earlier.

I remember the first year that the ban was announced before my son’s birthday.

This year, I’m expecting the stoppage to be announced in mid-June, if not earlier.

In the traditional ritual wheel of the year, as it has been celebrated in a number of my own ancestral Northern European cultures (summer solstice or midsummer or grianstad) fires have always been a central and key component – the fire of the sun, here on Earth.

Fires are used to bless and purify; we make oaths before them, we jump over them, we weave and dance and chant and sing around them... but here, and now... it is both unsafe, and unlawful to include fire in midsummer celebrations anymore; and this makes me very sad.

So, as the march of the climate catastrophe progresses, I’ve found myself wondering if it isn’t time to acknowledge this new pattern itself with two new rituals all their own.

As the time of the fire-ban fast approaches, I’m making plans to hold a ceremony I’m calling “Laying the Dragon to Rest”.

I’ve been watching the BC Wildfires app, and I’ll be holding a last campfire just before the ban comes into effect on or before June 15th.

We’ll light the fire with a bow and drill, a drill of deciduous wood (like Garry Oak or Big Leaf Maple), and a fireboard of conifer (Mother Cedar or Fir) to acknowledge the midsummer transition from the time of the leafing trees, to the time of the needled trees.

We’ll offer seasonally abundant plant medicines, herbs, food, and other offerings to the fire. Medicines and offerings to provide for a period of rest and healing. Like sending a great dragon off into its cave... hopefully satisfied... and not needing to come out to feed itself again before the rains return in October.

We’ll offer our reflections and gratitude to the spirit of fire - for all that it does for us through the year. We’ll offer our deep respect to the fire, in both its creative and destructive aspects and invite it to go to sleep for the summer season. We’ll ask the dragon of fire to spare the trees and the people, and the towns around the world. We’ll offer some songs, and stories, and dancing... and we’ll let the fire burn itself out (under the constant supervision of a firewatcher).

Once the fire is fully out, we’ll collect the charcoal and place it into containers for participants to keep until October, when we’ll gather together for another ceremony... to wake the Dragon of fire once again.

I want to invite you, if this idea moves you... to have your own ceremony of “Laying the Dragon to Rest” wherever you are, on the cusp of fire bans.

… and if you’re in the area of the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island and would like to step in, contribute, and take part in this ceremony, get in touch!

... and wherever you are, may you have a safe, abundant, and sacred season.