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MacKENZIE's Dragon's Nest

Category Archives: Climate Change

Monsters Beyond the Dragon-Fire

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Climate Change, Dark Times, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Monsters, Month of the Dragon, Nightmares, Nuclear Weapons, Politics, WAFDE

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Dragons, Dragons for Beginners, Extinction, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Monsters, Month of the Dragon, Nightmares, Politics, WAFDE

These are the days of spooks and goblins, ghosts and ghouls. Days when spirits cross between worlds and ban-sidhe wails ride the winds. Perfect time to stir the embers of nightmares: binge on horror flicks, attend a séance, visit a haunted house. Court the monsters of the shadows and the things that go bump in the night.

Long ago, when our ancestors huddled together in fire-warmed caves, just living was a frightful proposition. In the darkness lurked bears and lions, serpents and birds of prey, all much larger and fiercer than their modern kin. And, most frightening of all, there were Dragons.

Rightly or wrongly, they haunted ancient dreams and struck terror in primeval hearts. It’s an understandable turn of events in a draconically unenlightened world. Even today, though our interspecies relations are at a passing level of détente, I know a Dragon or two who still get quite kick out of giving us humans the shivers.

Lately, though, the Dragons of the world have themselves been shivering. Not since the Dark Times has their world been in such turmoil. It is only fitting, then, to ask what gives Dragons nightmares?

What can make these near-invincible, sentient, apex-predators toss and turn, tremble and quake? Sadly, the answer is what it’s always been: Humans.

Ignorant, selfish, careless Humans. Puny, thin-skinned, myopic Humans who put self-preservation on hold in place of short-term greed that would put Smaug to shame.

Over the past year, certain two-legged powers that be have been systematically undermining science and learning, dismantling efforts to combat climate change,Related imageand putting the future of the planet and all its inhabitants at risk. (The loss of 40,000 Adélie penguin chicks this year brings tears draconic eyes. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?” they demand. “Even if you have no care for others’ hatchlings, can you have so little for your own?”)As Humans have escalated tribalism, internecine conflicts, and weaponized pissing contests to the brink of world-wide cataclysm, courtesy, truthfulness, even basic human decency have become as rare as a snallygaster in New York.

“This isn’t politics,” the Dragons insist. “We have no use for politics, or religion, or any of your sillinesses. This is survival. Yours and ours.”

In the past, of course, Dragons had a distinct advantage over us hapless humans. They could always fade into the mists, bide their time until cooler heads prevailed. They did this during the worst of the Dark Times and survived. But then we two-legs lived, died, and killed on a local scale. Now we’ve gone global and even the misty realms are endangered.

“Destruction is so easy. We should know.But where we have learned, you have not. At the end of the day, who will be left rise from the ashes of your irresponsible stupidity? Who will be here to restore the wonders, the lives you’ve ruined? And many of you don’t even believe we are here. Is it any wonder we fear for our very existence? 

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald warned of the type of arrogant humans who now run roughshod through the world:

“They were careless people,… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

They are the disasters waiting to happen; the Monsters of our modern world. They lurk beyond Dragon-fire and are fought in draconic dreams.

We’d all sleep better if they’d simply fade away.

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AAD Week: Planet Out of Whack, Dragons in Need….

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Adopt-A-Dragon, Climate Change, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Month of the Dragon, WAFDE

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Adopt-a -Dragon, Book Giveaway, Climate Change, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Dragons for Beginners, Endangered species, Glaciers, Ice Age, Month of the Dragon, WAFDE

 climate-change5

Not every threat to Dragons comes at the tip of a sword or in the belly of a bomb. In fact, today, one of the greatest risks to their survival is one they share with the rest of us: climate change.

Unlike certain politicians who shall remain nameless, Dragons don’t need doctorates in climatology to know that we are in real trouble. Dragons have been around for a very long time. They have survived natural extinction level events, big freezes and global thaws, floods, droughts, and years without summers.5

They have watched and listened to the world around them, and their extensive knowledge puts them in a unique position vis-à-vis what has been happening over the past century. They know, for example, that what the planet is currently experiencing is not part of a natural cycle. They know that melting icecaps, rising sea levels, acid rain, holes in the ozone, and the accompanying loss of species, great and small, is a result of industrialization, over population, and the arrogance of one species (Homo sapiens) who believe they can use the world as they wish without negative consequences.climate_change_0

In time, Dragons on every continent will hurt from what we have been doing to our shared home. Right now, the weyrs most impacted are in the polar and boreal regions where glaciers are melting at an alarming rate and the wildlife who rely on them – and the Dragons who rely on the wildlife – are threatened. climateChange



For your Adopt-A-Dragon Week consideration:

LOHIKÄÄRME WEYRp

On the shores of the Greater Saimaa Lake in eastern Finland is one of the world’s most northern Dragon habitats, Lohikäärme Weyr. Here the Dragons nest in the sheer cliffs rising above the water – reminders of the last Ice Age when they shared the land with great mammoths and woolly rhinos. Now they cavort with the inland seals during long summer days and spin wild tales during the deep winter nights.

The Weyr’s banner is a study in blue and black with a frosty Finnish Dragon at the centre of a radiant sable sun.

 


TUNIIT WEYR r

The virtually unpopulated expanse of Canada’s Southampton Island is the perfect home to nesting Lesser Snow Geese and Canadian Frost Dragons. Frost Dragons are New World relatives of the Nordic Snow Dragons who came to the Americas following the Second Migration. A little smaller than their European kin, they are ideally suited to the environment of Southampton Island and Hudson Bay. They are also very protective of the many birds who use the isle as refuge and breeding grounds. The Weyr is named for the indigenous people of the area who, though now extinct, welcomed the Dragons in centuries past.

The Weyr’s flag shows an argent Dragon on a sable harpoon with six falling ermine/snowflakes, all set on a field of evening purple.


PENZHINA WEYRz-m

In the northern latitudes of Eastern Russia, not more than an afternoon’s Dragon flight from the Arctic Circle, the Penzhina River flows through Siberia into the Sea of Okhotsk. There, at the river’s mouth on the mainland side of the Kamchatka Peninsula, is Penzhina Weyr.

The Dragons of Penzhina like to think of themselves as hybrid beings: a lot of European Ice Dragon mingled with a little Oriental Sky Dragon. Though there is a lack of empirical evidence for their claim, the Dragons do display rather whimsical inter-species temperaments. They guard their neighbour bears and Unicorns and make snow Dragons well into May.

These capricious Dragons are represented by a black standard burning with two suns – one large and bright with Dragon fire, and one smaller, balanced by the yin/yang of the World Tree.


TONRAR PASSz-t

The glaciers and mountains of Alaska are a northern Dragon’s delight. Tonrar Pass Weyr is situated in the mountains southwest of Denali National Park. Like the land around it, it is one of the most expansive Weyrs in the world, embracing mountains, lakes, acres and acres of sub-arctic scrub, and woodlands. Sheltered from the bitterest of Alaska’s weather, it is home not only to Dragons, but also bears, caribou, marmots, wolves, and a variety of birds, nesting or simply passing through.

Until the advent of WAFDE and UNECESCO, the Dragons of Tonrar Pass spent much of their time keeping mineral hounds and oilmen at bay. Now they are protected, as is the wilderness around them, and they can devote their time to other pursuits – like stargazing.

Their flag is purple and white charged with a nonet of stars and a fiery sable Dragon.


If there is one beam of light in this dreary scenario, it is that Dragons have survived worse. Solace for them. If we don’t wake up soon, we may not be so fortunate.

******

**In the tradition of Month of the Dragon, everyone who leaves a comment here at Dragon’s Nest has their name go into a hat. At the end of the month, a name will be drawn and the winner will receive signed copies of my books, The Dragon Keeper’s Handbook and Dragons for Beginners (both from Llewellyn Worldwide). Hope everyone is feeling lucky!

 

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Adopt-A-Dragon Week…

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Adopt-A-Dragon, Climate Change, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Dragons for Beginners, Fantasy, Month of the Dragon, Myth and Lore, WAFDE

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Adopt-a -Dragon, Climate Change, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons for Beginners, Endangered species, Month of the Dragon, WAFDE, Weyrs

A

Every year, as Month of the Dragon winds down, the folks at WAFDE and the Dragon Conservancy reach out to dracophiles young and old with the Adopt-A-Dragon Program.

For those of you new to MotD and all it entails, a bit of history:

An integral part of Dragon Conservation, the Adopt-A-Dragon program was started as an offshoot of WAFDE and the Dragon Conservancy in the relatively peaceful decades following WWII. Growing steadily year by year, it came into its own at the end of the last century.hatchlings

Modeled after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s National Wild Horse and Burro Program and the American Bear Association’s Friend of the Cubs, AAD is a way for Dragon lovers around the world to stay connected to these marvelous creatures and contribute to the continuance of Dragon welfare on a global scale. For a reasonable annuity (sliding scales available), Dragon-loving individuals can “adopt” a Dragon anywhere from the Himalayan Quad to the forests of Belize. You get a certificate of fosterage and a weekend pass to the Dragon Sanctuary of your choice.

adopt

A recent adjunct is the KFD (Kids for Dragons) school outreach program, geared at students from the 6th-grade (first form, for our British friends) on up.* With parental consent – of course! – school groups can pool their resources and adopt a young Dragon. The fee is virtually nominal and AAD tries to hook classes up with Dragons from nearby Sanctuaries to facilitate visitations. As a scientific teaching tool and dispeller of negative PR, the program is without equal! And, for field trips, nothing beats going to see the class adoptee, watching her grow through the years from gangly dragonlet to full-winged, fire-breathing adolescent. If you or your school are interested in partaking of all KFD has to offer, contact your local chapter of WAFDE.

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Throughout this week, we are going to highlight certain weyrs which are especially distressed due to climate change and human interference – wars, habitat destruction, etc. Each has a story to tell, Dragons to treasure.

If you are interested in adopting a Dragon, take a tour of Dragon Nations, pick a weyr that appeals, and contact me here or through WAFDE’s Facebook page. Your certificate will be e-mailed to you, tout de suite.

Merlin's Dragon - Paul Youll
* Dragons can be a little too terrifying for very young children.
There are enough obstacles to our friends well-being without adding irate parents and the wrath of the psychiatric community worried about youthful nightmares to the mix.

 

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