Put This in Your Pipe and Smoke It

     Smoke is a gray-white pall on the blue sky. Outside my window it bleaches the small, foreground peak of Little Humpy into the gray-white silhouette of the larger, looming bulk of Humpy Mountain. The horizon line of the mountain itself bleaches into the sky. In the valley, smoke masks the mountains.

Humpy Mountain from my front deck on a day when the smoke wasn't too bad

     Day after day, ever since lightning started fires in southern Oregon on July 14, the air in the Rogue Valley has been "unhealthy" or "hazardous." I even heard that, for a day or so, the air quality in the Rogue Valley was the worst in the world, worse, even, than in Jodhpur, India, worse than in Tangshan, China. It's true that the valley's infamous inversion layer traps air on the valley floor, but most of the time this summer, the air hasn't been much better up here on the mountain. There's no such thing as being above the smoke this summer. I might as well smoke a pack of cigarettes as hike for an hour these days. Day after day I stay indoors, writing, sewing, reading. I debate which is worse: exercising in bad air or sitting around the house with no exercise.

      People suffer from depression and weariness. Eyes water, throats rasp, heads ache. Businesses suffer. No one is walking around town; no one is shopping or eating in restaurants. The cost to southern Oregon, I hear, has been in the millions of dollars. People don't want to float the Rogue River or hike in the mountains. The Shakespeare Festival in Ashland has refunded hundreds of tickets for canceled performances in its outdoor theater. The Britt Festival in Jacksonville, with its summer "concerts under the stars," has done the same. 

      No one wants to vacation here in 100-degree weather and smoke-filled skies. No one will think it beautiful here. But it is so beautiful here. I do so love it. My beloved home is suffering a very bad,  but temporary illness.

      And then the wind shifted. Yesterday, here on the mountain the sky was a very pale blue. Humpy looked hazy, not smoke-choked. In the valley, to my surprise, the sky was a normal blue. Jacksonville was teeming with people. Ecstatically happy crowds were carrying chairs and blankets to the Britt Gardens for the concert under, yes, under the stars, except that last night the concert was under the full moon. I went to sleep last night ogling at a pure white full moon shining through clean air into my bedroom window, and I woke up to a day of brilliant sunshine and a true-blue sky. Tomorrow I'm hiking in the Red Buttes Wilderness, my beautiful back yard.