Western Smoke

An ode to misery.

The early morning light is amber as it silts through the windows. Everything seems slightly slowed and drawn out in the season of western smoke. Even the light slows as it crawls its shadows onto the western walls of the house. And everything smells of campfire.

While much of the country thinks “stay safe” and “be careful” with regards to this season, in the west fires are no newer than the internal combustion engine. With well over a century of fire suppression we have become accustomed to these fires and the waxing/waning hazard they bring. Early in the season you get beautiful plumes that lift into the sky dramatically. Some fold over start their own micro weather pattern, pyrocumulus can become so intense they begin dropping their own lightening. I’ve gotten to watch this on several occasions when I worked in a lookout, and it’s honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed.

Moving through the season, we often experience a dense fog of smoke. That is when we in the west truly start to complain, as if it will help. During the dense smoke part of the season the smoke settles instead of moving up in the sky. Visibility is known to drop at times to less than a quarter mile. When this happens we no longer get views of plumes rising in the sky and you can feel the smoke in every breath. This doesn’t necessarily happen every season, and for that we are lucky.

There is a modern phenomenon I’ve witnessed in recent years with the uptick in visitors and migrants to Montana and the west in general. Many newcomers seem to think these fires are an anomaly. They seem to think that driving an electric car will prevent them. It’s patently absurd of course. These fires have much more to do with a build up of fuels over the last century and far less to do with a few weeks of hot weather. And with every passing season that we aggressively put fires out, it gets worse. With every new neighborhood punched into the forest the need for putting them out becomes more justified and “important.” The cycle is certainly not going in the right direction, but then literal hell breaks loose and we are reminded that regardless of one’s theological beliefs, dry wood burns.

Population in the west is booming. And with valid reason, it’s a beautiful landscape, but inevitably we meet a lot of people over the years that come try life here and who quickly retreat. Also for good reason. There is nothing gentle about the landscapes of the west. We do have a soft ocean breeze. We have intense blazing heat in the summer, and intense frigid winds in the winter. We have some shoulder seasons which some years cooperate and offer pleasantries, but more often than not they are a mixed bag of storms and unseasonal highs or lows. As was proven true this last year, we often can get snow well into May. Fire typically erupts in July. That leaves June for a pleasant summer, during which most of the high country is not actually open yet.

But this phenomena of expectation vs reality seems to be national in many regards. While the number of deaths from natural events has plummeted in recent decades, this even as the worlds population has been exploding exponentially, it seems people have become increasingly skeptical of nature and it’s forces. My personal take is that people are far too tied to their devices and not the real world. People look for their phones to tell them what the weather outside is doing. The alternate, which is get up and step outside, seems an impossibility for many? And in this disconnect people think the world has somehow become more ferocious. Summer heat is a new ordeal. Tornados have only just in the last decade become a thing? Hurricanes must certainly have been more pleasant in the days of yore. Neglecting to consider that population centers have become increasingly paved which creates documented heat islands, and more widespread putting ever more people in the path of storms and fires alike, the reality is the world has always been harsh and indifferent to the structures of man. Ever optimistic, we seem to be continually caught off guard by drought and storm. And when nature unfolds before us, the population’s whine always louder for the next season, the next turn in weather, hoping that that one will offer them the gentle beauty they crave.

For me this has become a bit of an annoyance in Montana. Montana has never in its history been gentle or subdued. There is for most who have stayed here longer than a few years a reasonable expectation that harsh weather will strike and it will do so throughout the year. For many of us we embrace it. We get out in it. We love the push into the wilds just for such experience. But with this new wave of development there is a group of whiners that are almost too much to bare. They want this to be San Diego, and it will never be except for maybe a few weeks here and there. If you want San Diego by all means, the beauty of America is the mobility it allows, but please quit with the complaints and incessant hope for something different.

The heat is getting oppressive. I go for an afternoon ride out in it, lungs wondering what I’m doing, now filled with smoke, my eyes slightly burning and a grin on my face as I pass a few other participants in this suffering heat. Like going out into the coldest days of the year, this heat tests our patience, tests our fortitude, and tests our bodies. The reward is a few minutes of cooling down in a quiet creek near the end, and in those moments a bliss beyond any other reminds us of why it is so rewarding to go out in the elements. It’s easy to witness the world when it is 70 and clear, but the reality is much of the time our world has other things in mind. I like to see it during those windows as well. To be out in it, to witness the many faces of what makes these places still wild.