An Ye Harm None...
Friday, November 2nd, 2001 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydTuesday night. Our closed circle's Samhain ritual. We're the bed of Boulder Creek in a part that's dry in the winter. We're doing an ancestor regression meditation. A CUPD officer walks by, shining a flashlight on the group and around the area, distracting us. The meditation leader heads out and talks to the officer, then comes back and finishes the last couple minutes of the meditation. He then invites the officer to come talk to us. Appearantly, some people had called to complain about a naked guy running around near where we were, and he wanted to know if we'd seen him. No, thanks. Have a nice night. It's not often an officer bothers a bunch of pagans in a ritual about someone else being naked. The ritual is interrupted, but we keep going.
Friday night, open Samhain. Anna and I have organized it. It's up Flagstaff mountain. We call quarters and I go into a similar, but more elaborate, ancestor regression meditation. I bring people out and we chant and shake makeshift rattles as we walk around the picnic area. Three yellow-suited firemen approach and ask what we're doing. We give some vague explanation. They inform us that the barbeque pit is only to be used for cooking. (WTF?) Our fire could be seen from town, and people thought it was a wildfire. Appearantly there was a big fire north of Boulder recently. They ask us if we have a plan for putting it out. Me: "Oh, crap. We didn't think that far. I feel stupid now." They decide to go find a park ranger and see what he wants us to do. Ritual's interrupted, and most folks don't want to continue. We put a couple apples on the grill as an existential attempt at obeying the letter of the law and stand around the fire chatting a bit. We decide that we could toss dirt on there and a little water. After several minutes, the firemen come back with a park ranger who informs us that there's a high fire danger and that we should really have a way to put the fire out (we inform him of our plan) and that we're not supposed to have glass containers (even sparkling cider). They ask how long we're planning to stay. "Well, it's a three-hour fire log, so we were gonna be here for a while. We know how to put out a fire, but we're just dumbasses." They politely leave, but we put it out with some dirt and about a quart of water and pack up and head down. So... we didn't explicitly "let go" of stuff, nor did we use apples to sybolically take on new things. But we did eat some hot (mmm, soft) apples and apple-oatmeal-raisin "cookies," drink sparkling cider, and head back to Heather's house for hot spiced cider, apple pie, tofu brownies, tarot readings, and grounding idle chatter (ranging from defenestration to deprtonls to puritan names and sexual versions of puritan names to Monty Python to weird cars). An enjoyable evening, even though it didn't go as planned.
So, the morals of the story are...
Friday night, open Samhain. Anna and I have organized it. It's up Flagstaff mountain. We call quarters and I go into a similar, but more elaborate, ancestor regression meditation. I bring people out and we chant and shake makeshift rattles as we walk around the picnic area. Three yellow-suited firemen approach and ask what we're doing. We give some vague explanation. They inform us that the barbeque pit is only to be used for cooking. (WTF?) Our fire could be seen from town, and people thought it was a wildfire. Appearantly there was a big fire north of Boulder recently. They ask us if we have a plan for putting it out. Me: "Oh, crap. We didn't think that far. I feel stupid now." They decide to go find a park ranger and see what he wants us to do. Ritual's interrupted, and most folks don't want to continue. We put a couple apples on the grill as an existential attempt at obeying the letter of the law and stand around the fire chatting a bit. We decide that we could toss dirt on there and a little water. After several minutes, the firemen come back with a park ranger who informs us that there's a high fire danger and that we should really have a way to put the fire out (we inform him of our plan) and that we're not supposed to have glass containers (even sparkling cider). They ask how long we're planning to stay. "Well, it's a three-hour fire log, so we were gonna be here for a while. We know how to put out a fire, but we're just dumbasses." They politely leave, but we put it out with some dirt and about a quart of water and pack up and head down. So... we didn't explicitly "let go" of stuff, nor did we use apples to sybolically take on new things. But we did eat some hot (mmm, soft) apples and apple-oatmeal-raisin "cookies," drink sparkling cider, and head back to Heather's house for hot spiced cider, apple pie, tofu brownies, tarot readings, and grounding idle chatter (ranging from defenestration to deprtonls to puritan names and sexual versions of puritan names to Monty Python to weird cars). An enjoyable evening, even though it didn't go as planned.
So, the morals of the story are...
- When planning an event with fire, make sure to check the rules. Inform the authorities that you'll be having a fire. And thank the park rangers for being nice.
- Always bring a few gallons of water to a barbequeue.
- When doing meditation in public, don't do it in a crowded area.
- Apples are nummy.
