Sitting at a cafe in my tiny little mountain town–contemporary easy
listening music playing from the house speakers. Golden sunset light
streams through the east facing window, coloring the room like a
December evening on Playa Zipolite. But it isn’t sunset.
It is early morning.
The sun is rising over the eastern mountain ridge, its light filtered through a haze of forest fire smoke. We’ve been enveloped in a Beijing-like gray cloud for weeks now as the west burns up. Fires from California all the way to northern British Columbia. Over 600 blazing through this province alone. A record fire year beating last year’s record.
Breathing in this reality.
Feeling it irritating my sinus passages and the back of my throat. The heaviness in the air makes my eyes water. Though I was okay for the first few weeks, now I’m feeling the impacts to my health. No choice but to slow down, stay inside, the windows always closed, tired by early evening. From the table I watch cottonwood leaves flutter in the smokey wind.
I wonder:
What messages do they receive from the carbon their burning relatives are releasing?
Thinking about the land–how it has been treated as nothing more than a resource bank since the white colonists arrived. That truth perplexing me throughout my adult life while today, the smell of charred forests wafts into the cafe every time a patron opens the door. Listening to our small talk punctuated by coughing...
I wonder:
If perhaps the Earth will no longer let us breathe so easily as we go about the business of domination.
It is early morning.
The sun is rising over the eastern mountain ridge, its light filtered through a haze of forest fire smoke. We’ve been enveloped in a Beijing-like gray cloud for weeks now as the west burns up. Fires from California all the way to northern British Columbia. Over 600 blazing through this province alone. A record fire year beating last year’s record.
Breathing in this reality.
Feeling it irritating my sinus passages and the back of my throat. The heaviness in the air makes my eyes water. Though I was okay for the first few weeks, now I’m feeling the impacts to my health. No choice but to slow down, stay inside, the windows always closed, tired by early evening. From the table I watch cottonwood leaves flutter in the smokey wind.
I wonder:What messages do they receive from the carbon their burning relatives are releasing?
Thinking about the land–how it has been treated as nothing more than a resource bank since the white colonists arrived. That truth perplexing me throughout my adult life while today, the smell of charred forests wafts into the cafe every time a patron opens the door. Listening to our small talk punctuated by coughing...
I wonder:
If perhaps the Earth will no longer let us breathe so easily as we go about the business of domination.
