Smoke Haze

Day 346: A veil of smoke from fires in Eastern Washington has drifted south across the Cascades, so thick that at Longmire, a visible haze lies between the administrative center and the Mountain. Even the columnar bastions which give Rampart Ridge its name are tinged with a desaturating brush, less than a mile distant from the observer. Wildfires in Wenatchee and the Okanogan are forcing people from the backcountry and from their homes. The forests are tinder-dry on "the other side of the mountains" (a common phrase which defines the separation of two radically different ecologies), and as we go into the latter part of September, no rain is in the forecast for either side.