Small Town America is burning
A displaced city girl and young ho chimes in.
The morning light flushes my kitchen with a lovely pinkish peach. The window above the sink is rendered into a portal to Eden, warm beams bathing dirty dishes below. I may actually wash them before my mother gets home. The leaves outside glow the same pinky peach and beckon me to join them outside. Of course, I acquiesce. I feel it would be impolite to decline their invitation.
As I open the door to do so and bask, my eyes begin to burn. The air between me and a blurred sun is more grey than peach, and my nostrils taste industrial and tangy. I search for a color coded map online. Canadian Wildfire Smoke Maps and Live Updates: Smoke Pushes Air Quality to Dangerous Levels for Millions. AQI sounds like AI. It really is everywhere, isn’t it? On the map, I do not live in pink or peach, no, I live in the Deep Burgundy that tops the scale for the dangerous conditions; I also live in a mountain valley, a bowl waiting to be filled with hazard.
The Deep Burgundy tells me to stay indoors, but I am feeling defiant this morning. I instead venture deep into the forest behind my home to test its efficacy in producing oxygen as I learned in grade school. My eyes are searing at this point. I continue onward as the grey increasingly veils the green. The sun is finding pockets of sky between the leaves and the smog, feeding me more of that delicious peachy radiance from behind the kitchen window, and I’m embarrassed to say, fabulous selfie lighting. I walk deeper until the grey seems to peter out a little. I smile. Some tang and burn linger in the air, but the leaves persist with their intent to sustain life.
I do still worry about the leaves and the green and where their limit may lie. I worry about the green burning on the other side of the border a mere four hours from me, and the burning atmospheres here and worlds over, as I have for a lifetime now.
I even worry about the black bear that’s been ruining my second summer in Appalachia. There isn’t much for me to do here in this township with a population of 600 other than walk and drive to places where I can walk. Or purchase things. But this bear, She insists on thwarting these precious daily walks of mine and smoke breaks and singalongs with her incessant, menacing presence behind my home, relentlessly plotting against my fragile nervous system and lofty pursuit of its correction by way of ‘communing with nature.’ I know this pursuit to be futile after decades of pesky neuroticism and stupor and mania, but still I rise, I guess. I am told She, the bear, is terrified of me, but it is I, the young woman, who is terrified of Her. It feels like stolen valor. Only one of us can run 30 miles per hour, climb up trees, and roar. Crepuscularity is the only thing we share in common. So I let her roam the forest during the more ideal hours of twilight and begrudgingly cram my own roaming within a four hour window, midday, when the sun is highest and she is said to be at rest. The smoke is so very bad today, but a sick part of me hopes she has no other choice than to burrow for the next day or so on account of weakened lungs.
I think back to the first time she came across my path, or perhaps, I came across hers. I’d just finished smoking and was suddenly in a situation that seized my chest and feet in place, as this wild animal barreled onto the same path I take to get home. I remembered the rules on what to do in the event that we encounter one another, stay big, stay far, stay facing forward, and do not run. They didn’t say anything about crying because there’s no service in the woods and I can’t call anyone to come get me, and even if I could, they too would have to face bears. My mom would probably cry with me. At least my neighbors all have guns.
I followed the rules for about 10 minutes until I could no longer feign proper composure, splitting the moment a tree told me the bear was far away and it was safe to succumb to my baseline human instinct. Run. Alas, my lungs were weak and weighed down by my recent activities. I couldn’t make it the whole way home at top speed, which probably wasn’t all that speedy. It didn’t help that I was frightened and disoriented from the sky rapidly changing in light, signaling the impending night and emergence of additional wild animals, rendering my breaths and retreat shallow, shaky, and useless. I imagined the bear taunting me from behind fallen tree trunks in whispers:
Smoking kills, girl.
Yesterday, before the smoke got too bad, I’d ventured up and out of the valley to retrieve my crazy woman pills. I observed the man in front of me on line for prescription pickup bravely donning a blue face mask. He was very old and very slow and coughing slightly. His eyes, slightly bugged out and watery, refused to meet mine. I could tell he wanted to cough more. A presumable ally of his in line behind me remarked that he should free himself and take off the mask, that we’re not scared of nothing here, harking back to the pandemic. His words hurdled right over me, as if my presence was something to be bypassed. This wouldn’t be the first time in this same line for my crazy woman pills that a pale man lamented on his loss of freedom 6 years ago, because of the masks and the vaccines and having to be home with his wife that he hates and sedates with Amazon Prime packages.
The old man told his ally that he (tried to) quit smoking in ‘05 but it smelled like a pack of cigarettes outside because of the wildfires up in Canada so he might as well start smoking again, but it ain’t no good that these big fires are happening year after year and it’s already getting too damn hot in the summers.
He seemed very regretful about it all.
With a glint in his eye, his ally then stated quite loudly, seemingly to both me and the old man, not to get all wrapped up in that stuff, Canada is just weak, we’re strong in here in America, they can’t get their stuff under control. And anyways, The Government might have directed energy lasers or unleashed illegals to start the fires like in Los Angeles last year. I’m not sure if The Government is strong or weak in your argument, I wanted to remark back at him, but that would be a crazy woman thing to do. Especially because I had an inkling The Government also meant The Jews, and where there are Jews there is White Genocide, for which my temporary residence in Population 600 does not bode well.
The pharmacist called out for the next person in line. The old man pulled down his mask once as he approached the counter. It seemed he too was picking up some crazy man pills. He’d also heard something on the news and sought corroboration from an industry professional. Something about potential rollbacks to healthcare programs for veterans with PTSD from gunfire and the like. Oversharing, or volume for that matter, are concepts that do not concern nor exist for elderly veterans around here.
The pharmacist began to speak in a hushed tone. The old man’s face twisted with even more regret than it did when we were in line. He pulled his mask back up and plodded towards the exit. Although he’d picked up before me, I managed to lap him and held the door open upon our simultaneous arrival. A greyish yellow blanketed the parking lot. Somehow in the past twenty minutes, a little bit more of Canada had descended into the valley. We shared twin squints to shield our eyes from the pressing air and its burn. I smiled goodbye to the old man, who pulled out a cigarette and coughed again after shoving his blue mask into his pocket.
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note: none of these photos are mine
My favorite piece of the week- atmospheric, summery, moody and so current. Could have kept reading! Really loved it.