It’s not what one would immediately describe as smoke. Everything’s a little hazy, yes, the yellow sun is tinged an unmistakable hue of orange-red, those are consistent. But there’s no distinct smell, not the pleasant burn of woodsmoke nor the acrid stink of chemical fire. It feels less like an object, a thing sitting on the landscape, than it does a filter, a layer added in post-production that stings at our eyes and scratches at our throats.
Back home, summer smoke became a regular occurrence. At its most extreme it would render the world unrecognizable, an impenetrable yellow fog preventing vision beyond a few feet ahead, but it was always ashy, wood-tasting, unmistakably organic in nature.
Through my life, the arrival of smoke has served as a sort of a descending curtain, the signaling of an interlude or the transition between acts. It felt significant, and, smelling as it did of campfires, it seemed just a little bit comforting, merely an indicator of change. And it has tended to accompany change, though that’s probably just coincidence.
Viewed through the same lens, this current smoke is troubling. It doesn’t offer a scent that might suggest its origins, it harms everyone exposed to it, and arrives accompanied by health warnings and a heat so stifling that it makes this Alaskan transplant once again wonder just how life ever flourished this far south. (Though this type of heat is soon to be everyone’s problem.)
Part of me hopes that it is a transition nevertheless. Perhaps it’s a sign of the caustic emotional haze I’ve been in for the past few weeks, soon clearing to demonstrate that these things won’t necessarily last. Maybe it signals the shift from the me that has been, to the me I’m trying to become.
It’s nicer than thinking of it as merely an omen, a sample of how summers will be for the rest of my life. But I guess there’s no sense in dwelling on inevitabilities.