We went upstate to the lake for Labor Day to enjoy the merriment that is the infamous “Ring of Fire.” Ok, it might not actually be infamous. I don’t even think it’s a little known fact. But if you are from Canandaigua, NY, hoo-boy, it’s the highlight of your year. (There’s not a lot going on up there.)

The event started out years ago and involved people lighting campfires all around the lake in honor of some Native American ritual at Bare Hill. Well, things have changed a bit over time, and somehow it became a night where everyone around the lake lights traffic flares along their property for what looks like some sort of devil worship ring of evil. It’s breathtaking, really.

My parents were out of town on the night in question, and had asked me to do the honors of not embarrassing them by being the “only scrooges on the lake without flares” as my mom so eloquently put it. So flare lighter I became.

At around 8:45 p.m. I realized that it was t-minus 15 minutes til ignition, so I sort of clumsily stumbled down the steps to the lake, arms overloaded with what seemed like way too many traffic flares. I hadn’t thought about how they went in the ground, hadn’t read the instructions on how to light them, and was generally pretty clueless as to what I was doing. I think I dropped about half of them along the way. My sister and Justin were none too helpful telling me they’d, “Be right there.”

When I got to the water I realized how not on my game I really was. The neighbors had all their flares perfectly lined from property marker to property marker, equidistant from one another, tops off and ready to go. The next five minutes or so were a blur as we ran around trying to get all the flares in the ground. Just as we had finished our neighbor comes over with this huge blowtorch in his hands and bellows, “ARE YOU READY?” As if igniting the flares would somehow disrupt the space-time continuum.

He looked like a mad scientist with that torch and I kind of wanted to ask him where his rubber apron and welding goggles were, but the look in his eye told me there was to be no riff raff tonight. So we lit them, one by one, and an eerie red glow began to spread around the entire lake. The ring was followed by tons of fireworks and a few drunken, “whoo-hoos.” It took us all of ten minutes to be over it and head in to play board games.

Behold, the Ring o’ Fire.