Trap the Fire

The smoke isn't that bad. So the numbers - which can't lie, won't lie, directly reflect the quantity and quality of particulates hanging in the drifting air - say. This is nothing, not compared to last fall. Not when we've topped out thus far at a WAQA value of 120, not when last fall took us well above 800. But, then, this is everything: This is now, the present.

It hurts, the smoke. It stings my eyes, offers as a gift only phlegm, a mucky liner for my throat, nose, sinuses. This haze obscures our fine valley, offering not mystery but grime, removing any and all peaks from our skyline. These vistas fade under the air's weight, turn to grey mush, bad oatmeal, all the sharp lines gone soft and empty.

We remember last year, how compromised we were, bench ourselves nearly immediately from outdoor activity. How endlessly sick I especially was, lungs and throats and eyes and ears all shutting down even as I kept running through the diseased haze. We won't be so stupid again, won't let ourselves. We can't afford to get sick - not with a wedding in two weeks, not with a hundred in five. Nor can we realistically hope to wait it out: containment's slow in the upticking, made slower by limited visibility, smoke-induced. Our hearts are on fire, and the Colockum is too.

******

But: not all is sadness and disappointment. Before the smoke, there was summer, infinite and broad, stretching out for weeks before us. There were trails to explore, old friends to re-acquaint ourselves with, hours spent lazing beside high alpine lakes. There were fish, freshly caught, to clean and cook, whiskey bottles to drain, full if sleepless nights in a cold tent beneath a full moon, gin rummy and hearty laughs and the company of chosen family. Team Everclear's third annual trek into the land of lakes at the end of rainbows and goats, goats, goats; fuck-it trees and all these vistas. It was good; it was very good, and all was well with the world.

I had so many snippets of things to shape and form and give to you, so much happiness and adventure yet finding their way into words, all of this. So much, this much, all of it love, and how I wish I could just focus on the good; surely we've plenty of it. Our vows written, our friends soon traveling, and our family'll be here soon enough. Besides, we've just held these mountains as home. But I've this tendency, I do, to look more readily at the damaged places; though it's surely grown stronger, at times this grip on the present remains tenuous. I backslide, into all this grey sky, and feel such happy portraits slip away.

So the three-word drafts I've stored away don't hold their weight; I don't know how to turn the nuggets back into the happy they represent. I don't know how to accurately translate the weight that settles when the sun's routinely blotted gray - not by weather, but by the product of fire. My words aren't enough.

*******




As we drove out Sunday, after five days of sweat and dirt and swimming in lakes, after beers at Uli's and meatballs and re-acquainting ourselves with the seemingly endless fatigue we'd so easily accumulated, a single cloud framed the eastern sky.

"That's a fire," I said. "The cloud's in the wrong place to be the only cloud in the sky." Our weather flows west to east, Cascades to Palouse; if ever there's a solitary cloud, such weather'll rest in the mountains, the high places we'd too rather fly, rather than beside the Columbia. "It's a cloud," she told me.

And then we drew closer, saw the red streaked through the grey, and both knew, absolutely, that it was fire and it was large and our summer was changing, dying, growing into something we dreaded and feared and already knew far too well last fall. Only hours old then, this fire, and still already 10,000 acres, growing quick. In the days since still she grows, ever feeding; we've already approached and quickly passed a hundred square miles. The air hurts and we hurt for it, and then there are those evacuations, the ecosystems already struggling after last fall's fires. Where do we burn past hope? Where's that fire line drawn?

*******

Our lives are coming together, apexing - a wedding in just over two weeks! - and still feel as if they're falling into disarray. This is the helplessness of fire, but also of circumstance: our car, dying; she sick, a kidney infection; my hours chopped at work, a political poison; smoked in, we can't even much exercise. Reasons for joy come easily - a wedding in two weeks! the bulk of our favorite people and chosen family, here, in our fine valley! - but slumping comes easier yet, as does sleeping, struggling through motions that don't carry their usual weight. We're overwhelmed, sinking in the sky of smoke; we use each other as floaties, and still it feels as if we're slowly drowning. The blankness of such a haze feels ancient, a lifetime ago, but no less familiar; we've slept at least ten hours each of the last several nights and still wake tired. This feels like such an old story, the oldest story in the West. You've heard it all before.

The sky's aflame with lightning, a storm in the potential making. Our hearts are bursting with potential, this future stretching out before us. And still, everything's burning.

Images via NWHikers.net