Long Dawn

Day 331: Even with the 45,000 acre Retreat Fire just over the Cascade Crest, skies here had been relatively smoke-free until this last week. For the last several days, "dawn" has persisted for hours, the sun glowing red in the haze even after it was well up in the sky. All day long, the light coming in through the window has an orange cast, tinting my needlework and making it hard to distinguish thread colours. The Mountain is obscured by the smoke layer and even the nearby hills are veiled in dingy yellow gauze. The air is still, but even a stiff breeze would only move the smoke around because most of western Washington is experiencing the same conditions, fires burning in a chain along the Cascades from Canada to Oregon. Earlier in the season, I had thought we might escape this new and unhealthy summer standard. I will welcome the rains when they finally come, even though they come with their own set of problems related to our changing climate.

Broken Dawn

Day 304: Dawn is broken. It does not rise golden to push back the night. It does not cast its lengthy rays across meadow and slope to wake the flowers and the creatures who live amongst them, and rather than dispelling gloom, it brings it as a heavy cloud of despair to settle on those beneath its glaring, fire-reddened eye. Dawn is not breaking; it is broken, shattered by humanity's carelessness and greed. Like a china plate fallen from a fireplace mantle to the flagstones of the hearth, it might be that it can be glued back together, but it will never be the same.