117. Pandemic, Heat, Smoke

This morning the Wallowa Valley is under a layer of smoke. It’s hard to tell whether the smoke is from Northern California, Southern Oregon, or closer Washington and Idaho fires. It follows weeks of surreal summer temperatures, over 100 degrees in June, in the upper 80s and 90s ever since. Little rain; only a brief lightning storm that ignited fires in Joseph Creek on our side of the border and across the Snake River in Idaho. 

The heat has made Wallowa Lake the warmest it’s been in my 50 years here, good for swimming, but scary for fish. Because the rivers, streams, and the ocean shores are also too warm, starfish and shellfish are dying on the coast, and salmon are threatened everywhere. 

A couple of years ago, a friend caught a tagged salmon on the Imnaha and was able to trace its journey up the Columbia as far as the Deschutes, where it found the main stem temperatures too warm and darted up that other river to cool. Weeks later it made its journey back to the Columbia and swam past four Snake River dams to the Imnaha. That’s a small miracle, but one unlikely to be repeated often enough to save a run. 

Fish don’t get their oxygen from the air, but the four-leggeds, two-leggeds, and the birds do. Dogs and people here are complaining. Like they complained about the heat; like they complained about Covid-19 and/or government-imposed restrictions. 

We’ve mostly forgotten about Covid—even the weeks of mask-wearing and fear. My fear is that we’ll forget about this heat and smoke come fall, chalk it up to an abnormal year—records are meant to be broken—or maybe it was that weird el nino current—and go about our business 

We’ll plan new vacations now with travel restrictions lifted; we’ll build more houses in the trees, and we’ll get new air conditioners. 

Or will Napa Valley people move north en masse? Will the broader public embrace the vaccines, build better health care and child care systems, and look for safer places and ways to build their houses?

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