A friend and I took a 6-mile bike ride yesterday. We had meant to go longer, but the thick air changed our minds, and we decided on six miles riding slowly so as not to have us huffing and puffing the air’s particles.
Along a back road we met two women walking, and they were wearing masks. We should have, we said, and they agreed. And for sure, in our town and in cities and towns we see on TV screens, the increase in people wearing masks with fires and smoke is substantial. Covid-19 is not visible like this stuff, and doesn’t sting your eyes and throats.
My son and family drove from Oregon City under an evacuation order on Friday evening, and said the air was thick from there to La Grande. And although their Oregon City home has gone back to level 2, and they are going back today to make sure their home is all right and to try to resume their normal in abnormal times lives, the state’s air now registers mostly “hazardous” from here to Oregon City.
Covid, Portland protests, election trauma, and even fire were somehow not in our back yard. But smoke is. And in this, we are joined by people from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. (In fact, in an ironic twist for our Leader, I think we are now borrowing fire fighters from both countries!)
The Leader is going to California today—not, I imagine, to think that he can gather votes there, but he will certainly be telling voters in swing states that he is doing everything he can for the Left Coast. He might even wear a mask—against the smoke!
Smoke tells us we are all together in this: rural and urban, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, Black, Brown, and White, and, as the winds shift, north, south, east and west.
Maybe, hopefully, smoke is a lesson in humility that the traumas of 2020 have not yet been able to teach.
# # #
No comments:
Post a Comment