+canadian forest fires+
I woke up to Canada burning. It thought it was just overcast. Apparently, the smoke from forest fires in Quebec had migrated all the way down to Northern Virginia. I walked out to my car and looked up at the haze. The moon was still out. I stared at it. Then I realized it was the sun. The wind changed and the solar mass stung my eyes like a darkroom red safelight running on watts of nuclear waste. It left a chemical aftertaste in my eyes. Why had I always thought Canada was immune to disasters like forest fires?
"Forest fires? In CANada?"
At work the haze persisted, and though I knew where the atmospheric ambiguity came from, subconsciously my mind had spurred my body into that antsy "Tut Tut. It looks like rain" anticipation.
I walk through the lush woodland, collecting tree and wildflower specimens, trying not to let my mind ask questions like, "Where did this all come from?" and "What makes me different from a Downy Woodpecker?" I filled my Ziploc bags and started heading back up to the building to mount and catalogue the specimens for a plant reference collection. As I found a juicy blackberry on my way up the hill, I felt a point of pressure on my head. It was raining. I felt relieved. "Good. Canada needs this." But as I thought that I realized that although we were witnessing evidence of Canada's fires, Canada would probably not see a drop of our rain.