Smoke Days

For over a week now the smoke has been thick and low, and it’s unsafe to go outside. It’s a low time, as outside has been my refuge during Covid-19, for months now.

It started with gardening, and I turned an old garden with grass, bindweed and deer fencing, into the crazy and beautiful flowers and tomatoes and kale and chard and onions and herbs and berries and rhubarb and greens and squash and beans and peas and more garden we have now, still growing food for us.

The walks! Almost daily, and sanity saving, and a chance to enjoy our island. Paddleboarding! Any calm day on the water I could find the time I would go out. It all feels over, even though winter isn’t here. We’ve missed some of my favorite outside days due to the smoke, and it’s made worse knowing how many people and animals and plants have been killed, or lost their homes, due to the fires causing the smoke. Fires that are taking out whole towns, and racing across grasslands and tearing through forests, and there is no end in sight.

Living somewhere with huge and horrid fire danger, and a history of devastating fire, it feels even closer to home than it is. So far, our island has been just getting by for another year, isolation working in our favor as long as an active fire doesn’t start.

From the shore on island, for over a week, we haven’t been able to see land, and at low tide from the shore you can’t even see the water through the smoke.

Please consider donating to a fire relief organization of your choice. A friend suggests going to go fund me, and donating to a family or person displaced from their home.