So I’m about to take a week off and I’m thinking about where I should go with my tent and my coolers and my kindling and my hotdog roasting skewers just in time – once again – for the BC Wildfire Service to issue their annual fire ban.
As of yesterday at noon, you can’t burn wood anywhere outside the “fog zone” again.
And you won’t be able to until late October – unless told otherwise.
So, as happened last summer, I won’t be camping again this year.
I don’t know what it is about having a fire when I’m camping that not being able to do so makes me not want to even bother. I mean, it’s not like you need the warmth the thing provides. And there are more than enough ways to cook food that don’t require you to light wood on fire.
And when you do have a fire while you’re out camping, you get home and all your stuff smells like smoke.
But nonetheless, I just don’t have the urge to go out into the woods if I can’t light some sticks on fire in the middle of a little circle of rocks in the dirt.
And I’m not alone.
I heard my friend Kevin Skrepnek, BC’s chief fire information officer, on CBC radio the other day discussing the imminent bans and he admitted that they hate having to implement them, but it gets to a point where they have no other choice.
“It’s a double-edged sword in some ways,” Skrepnek admitted, because when they institute a fire ban, there are immediately fewer people who will head out into nature, which means they have fewer sets of eyes out there helping them watch for wildfires breaking out or people behaving in ways that could cause one.
I hopped on Facebook to ask him if there was any kind of middle ground. I mean, maybe there is some way we could have “semi-bans” or something. Like, maybe some kind of “responsible use” restriction that imposes enormous fines on people engaged in activity that endangers our environment while still letting people who are respectful and careful have a small crackling fire beside a lake or waterway to cook a few hotdogs over.
But there’s no manpower to monitor this. I know that.
They can’t be hiring 3,500 “fire judges” province-wide to go around looking for the warm glow of a fire so they can inspect it and question the people present about how to properly take care of it and extinguish it when they’re done. And so be it. I’m not going to risk the $1,150 MINIMUM fine for being caught having a fire when we’re not allowed. And I won’t be risking my very responsibly-set and monitored fire getting away from me and causing mass destruction.
Maybe I’ll go get one of those propane fire pits and record a few hours of audio off the fireplace channel to play through a speaker underneath it. More likely, however, is that I’ll just wait for the ban to be lifted in the fall and get my fill of camping then. And maybe plan a vacation for June next year.