Smoke
The sky is a dirty tan, the color of chocolate milk made by a zealously health-conscious aunt. Headlights make woeful smears in the palpable air like the lamplighters of a Dickens novel, the tops of the evergreen trees are obscured, disappearing into the dust of their brethren.
I read recently that the smell of smoke creates a fight or flight impulse in people and animals. I like the smell of it, generally, but I think we know the difference between the cheering, warming woodsmoke smell of early December or the sticky, joyful crackling scent of July campfires, but this – this pervasive, destructive, fearful smell makes me want to run, scream, hit something.
I read a book earlier this year, which I hated, despite its being beautifully-written and award-winning and liked by smart people I admire. The premise was that trees are the heroes of our world, they alone are sentient, wise kings of creation, and it’s up to humans to self-immolate to save them. In fact, every person in the book who loved the trees wound up alone, suicidal, crippled or dead – so cheerful and inspiring! This sort of nihilism-as-virtue quasi-morality is a steaming load of sanctimonious bunk, not that I have any strong feelings about it. It makes a goal of the very thing Washington warns against in Hamilton: “Dying is easy, young man; living is harder.”
So, on to living – my horse comes to me for comfort, he nickers and bows his head at the fence and wants me to scratch him, yes, there, there! After a scratch he stands there, his eyes begging me to help him leave, his instincts tell him to run from the ominous smell, and I tell him to wait, rain is coming, blue sky will peek through, nothing lasts forever.
I know this, but still – the impotence of being human is endlessly frustrating. Fight or flight. What do we do when the whole world feels like it’s on fire?
I think we should do what farmers from my hometown did this week. We should go to work. A caravan of semi-trucks, loaded with thousands of dollars of hay, which smells like clean air and fresh water and sunny days, headed slowly over to the stricken, still-on-fire valley. That hay must’ve felt like salvation embodied, given in generosity by folks with cracked hands and sweat-stained ball caps. I imagine those animal owners, hearing the placid chewing of livestock, must’ve cried for the simple and never-again-taken-for-granted joy of it.
So I suppose that’s what I should do now – have a good cry and get back to work. I’ll whisper the truths I know to myself in the dark, when the haze is thick all around and within me. I went outside to do chores this morning and came back in sick to my stomach – I want to punch someone but I remind myself to be grateful for a home to come in to, with the new windows and doors that Adam so diligently installed not that long ago. I chop up zucchini, grateful for friends who share bounty, I heat up my coffee and breathe a thank you for it. Dying is easy – look how fast a million acres and counting went up in flames, look at how destruction can pervade everything, even how we speak to one another. Living is harder – may I do it well, even when I am heartbroken.