The burning country

in which I have feelings about smoke

smog and dogs (this piece was written earlier this week)

I smell Canada burning.

When I stepped outside with the dog this morning, I thought my Midwestern home smelled like Ireland, like peat smoke carried on a low damp breeze. After the rain, the greens glowed, the moss compressed underfoot, saturated. The thirsty river flowed wide and dark under rushing, windswept fog. I welcomed the pervasive, acrid smell.

But now I’m out on the trail and I realize the smoke is not something quiet and comforting, it’s Canada on fire. It’s pine and hemlock and cedar, the ruins of boreal forests, the char of wildflowers and bog and aspen. It’s not a comfort, it’s a warning.

The low skies seem to pull the smoke close to the ground. The distance blurs into a smoggy haze. I walk briskly, then slow as I taste the bitterness in the back of my throat. Is it harder than usual to get a full breath? I reduce my walk to an amble, unable to decide. A faint sprinkling of mist dampens my face. Fine particles of ash sift into my lungs.

When climate change first became a topic of discussion, people in the land of winter where I live said things like, “Fine by me if it’s a little warmer!” Even now, after another long winter as we have entered an unseasonably hot spring, this belligerence, this determined, pointed ignorance, continues with phrases like, “I’ll take it!”

We want nice things, Callie! Don’t be such a downer!!!

Sure, in theory it sounds nice, the way the scent of distant forest fires echoes the scent of peat smoke. (And it is peat smoke—from burning wetlands.) But it isn’t nice. Maybe you’ll take the heat, but will your lungs accept the smoke? Will your heart? What happens when climate change isn’t just a bunch of graphs but a reality so present it enters our bloodstream? What then?

Even the dogs don’t care for the smoky air. They slow behind me, waiting to turn around. And when we do, the wind bursts into our faces. It soars over the dark waters. It comes from the north: a Canadian wind. We breathe in the burning country.

It’s not just an inconvenience, an aberration, a tragedy. It’s more than a news cycle. It’s more even than the delivered proof of what climatologists have been claiming for years. This is how the earth speaks. If we will only listen, we might hear the earth saying, I need you. Listen. Take in my scent. Help.

The dogs and I make our way back to the car. The ash lingers, bitter in the back of my throat.

In a few days the skies will clear, the smoke will dissipate. The world will rush onto its circuit of Fourth of July celebrations and long weekends and work and hustle. But many of the fires will not stop burning.