There is a fine layer of ash on the squash plants, the tomatoes, the corn. The sun, anemic behind a veil of smoke, seeps through the fog and plants eerie blotches of orange everywhere it lands. My nose itches as I sweat under my mask, the mask that’s been hanging by the door for the last year and a half because of COVID, and that now protects my lungs from “smoke season,” or “Smaugust.”
It’s an apt name. Last week, we had the worst air quality of anywhere in the world, and this isn’t the first time we’ve held that honor. We gauge the air quality by how well we can see McClure Mountain, four miles away. Often it’s not there at all.
This is life in the West, now: heat, drought, fire. Exhaustion. “Go bags” packed and ready at the foot of the bed. Every text notification bringing with it a tiny shot of adrenaline—is this the one that tells us to go, GO NOW?
The two fires burning near us this year are still nine miles away, across a river and a highway. They probably won’t make it this far. Probably. The flames themselves may not make it; the advance guard—the smoke and the stress—have been making themselves at home here for weeks.
This is where we draw the line. In the six summers we’ve lived here, only one has been without smoke, and without the sense of impending doom. Foolishly, we moved here seeking a landscape that was gentler than the Colorado mountains we’d left behind. A place where we could garden, raise chickens. We knew there had been fires here, but “the big one,” that once-in-a-century fire, had already happened the year before we arrived. What were the odds it would happen again?
Five years later, we see that the odds are not only excellent, but getting better. A quick peek at the acres burned in major Washington wildfires over the years shows an obvious and alarming trend.
If we’d looked at this data before moving, would it have stopped us, or even given us pause?
And so we find ourselves on the hunt for the perfect spot, again. Somewhere we can ride out the rest of our lives, before the shit really hits the fan. I think of all the young people I know and love, and for the thousandth time, I’m grateful I don’t have any children of my own. If I had, they’d be late teens, early twenties now. What would I say to them? I’m sorry I brought you into this mess, where the world is on fire, there’s not enough to go round, and society is hellbent on destroying itself?
I shake the thought from my mind as I shake the ash from the zucchini. Check the chicken coop: one egg. Call the dog and we head inside, to wait.
