A good month has passed since the valley filled with the smoke of the nearby fires. A general stillness during the month, combined with dryness, growing drought, exploding bark beetle and moth populations, and dry thunderstorms with lightning have produced ideal conditions for fires to break out throughout the land. The smoke is so thick that the mountains have become obscured, and the lookout stations have a more difficult time tracking the fires.
With the state's strained resources, the fires are chipped away at with whatever aerial watering is possible, and the land is worked with ground teams and volunteers. The state asked the federal government for additional resources, and was denied. Plenty to be written about here, but for now I'm focusing on the fires.
During one year, the smoke filled the air for 3 months. Fire seasons like these place a great strain on the general population health, and everyone stays indoors whenever possible. Animals and crops are affected in various ways. Tourism and outdoor activities are suppressed, campfires are banned, and in extreme cases, whole national parks are closed.
There is a widespread malaise that descends upon everyone in the area, probably due to a combination of physical reactions to the smoke, and the psychological effects of being under a sooty ceiling for weeks on end, without sunshine and without a clear reading of the changing time of day.
The day becomes homogenized, and the landscape takes on a surreal and grim quality,
reminiscent of the ashen wasteland in Mcarthy's apocalyptic The Road. Passing cold front may treat one to wind and rain, and a savored reprieve in which one sees sun cloud and sky, but too early in the season, and the valley only fills in with smoke again in short order.
As the fires grow and burn for longer periods of time, and the weather and climate become more unforgiving, the future stretches wearily ahead in the imagination. One's summer becomes an ashen casket.
