This post was originally composed a little over a year ago.
This weekend has brought poor air quality. Outside it smells like a campfire, the sky is hazy, you can straight out look at the sun—it’s a faint yellow or red disk—and any pictures you take come out in sepia tones.
My first thought was wondering what horrendous new wildfire was now raging somewhere in Colorado. It seemed most of the news headlines were given to the fires in California but last summer three of our fires became the three largest fires in Colorado history. The tourist town of Estes Park got caught right between the Cameron Peak fire (#1) and the East Troublesome Ridge fire (#2). For a week or two it wasn’t clear that anything in the town would be left standing. The firefighters must have made a valiant effort because the town is fine, but it was sure close. At least one of the fires got within a mile of town. One of the things people who owned horses in Estes Park did when they knew they would not have enough time to transport them to safety was to spray paint their phone numbers onto the animals’ backs and turn them loose, hoping they would find their way to safety and that whoever found them would call the phone number. At least there were pictures of that circulating on social media. I don’t know anyone personally who lost their homes, but I do know people who had to evacuate more than once last summer.
I do not live anywhere near fire danger. Although the view is not as enviable, there are considerable advantages to living out on the plains rather than in the mountains when it comes to steering clear of wildfires. But the smoke can sure travel. It blots out the sun, drops ash, irritates throats and lungs and in general makes one feel like it’s the Apocalypse. There was one day last summer when I was driving on the freeway around two o’clock in the afternoon. I needed my headlights; it was that dark. For some reason I took my kids and brand new puppy to a park with a water feature (I had another reason to be driving to town so was doubling up). My kids played in the water while ash rained down blackening the sidewalks. I took a ton of pictures of the puppy because from a photography point of view, the lighting was perfect. And I wondered what in this crazy world I was doing taking my kids to a water park while everything looked like doomsday!
That was last year. The summer of 2020. Known for corona virus, riots, and… record setting wildfires.
Last week my oldest daughter and I drove through the Cameron Peak fire burn area. Since the fire happened last year there was plenty of new growth, so lots of lush green. But… acres and acres of charred dead pine trees interspersed with graying beetle killed pine trees that hadn’t burned. That’s just what we could see from the windy road we were following.
This time it’s not one of our fires causing all the smoke that’s making me cough. I’ve had a dry throat for about a week and was starting to wonder if I was coming down with something. Strep throat? A normal head cold? Covid? Delta variant? Nope, just plain old smoke irritation and the fatigue that goes with it. At least I know. The smoke has been settling into my neighborhood like an unwelcome long term guest moving in. According to this article it’s the result of a smoke plume from fires currently raging in the Northwest and California. We do have some fires burning in Colorado this year, but they are small ones. We’ve had a lot of rain this year so our local fire danger is much lower, though still there. But other parts of the country have not been so fortunate and that’s where our smoke is coming from.
