After the smoke clears

 As the quality of the air over the northeast hovered between "unhealthy" and "hazardous earlier this week," the result of drifting smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires, I tried to remain calm.

I know I wasn't alone. As native east-coasters, we aren't used to seeing air quality maps bleeding orange and purple into our allergy alerts, let alone deciphering what they mean. 

I believe we (those of us who are old enough to measure time in half centuries, anyway) have sensed the climate tipping our experience of the world toward calamity for decades. 

Even believers didn't want to believe. 

Still, this blood-orange sky turning mid-day into dusk seemed more than just another novelty. More than a fleeting catastrophe that visits once every hundred years …

It seemed important. Like something I should record for posterity, just as I had with the kids' first steps and their smiles before and after braces. A memory I might post to Facebook so it might remind me of it in a few years' time. 

The part of me fumbling in my pocket for my camera wanted to believe this ominous air was more of an oddity than an omen. 

But I couldn't get a picture of the orange or amber in the sky.

No matter how I held my phone - up, down, sideways - the color above me washed away when I pressed the shutter. The sepia sky was seemingly erased.

As the week wore on, I dug out the masks I’d shelved as the pandemic subsided. It felt strange to wear one outside … the one place that, for most of the last three years, felt safe to be bare-faced. But it did its job, helping me breathe a little easier by cutting the smell of wildfire in the air.

I have to give credit to the wiser west coasters who witnessed us unravel, and who dished advice based on their extensive experience with fire-affected air quality, with heaping helpings of concern instead of derision.

This is a club no one wants to join.

They spoke about the benefits of closing windows, putting home air purifiers in your bedroom, and making other small changes to your routine, such as showering at night.

We celebrated when, after four days, the wind began to shift revealing the sky’s lightest blue. 

And when we smelled the scents of the newly bloomed peonies, instead of char and ash, it felt a little like recovering from that other pandemic.

But we aren’t out of those woods.

Because Canada isn’t out of the woods.

And as our index declines, their numbers rise. The fires continue to burn. Maybe even throughout the summer.

But it will end. And a sense of normalcy will resume once more. 

When it does we hope the thousands of people who have had to evacuate their homes find them standing unharmed or with the help they need to rebuild.

Until another wildfire season begins somewhere else...

We can only hope for resiliency and compassion. 

Because we will all need it now more than ever.