The air is like campfire smoke here today.
I was out with the kids this morning, walking around the neighborhood and chatting with a mom down the street. The air was fine then, not great, but decent given the drought.
In the afternoon, the smoke moved in. By evening, when I was out running errands, the sky had turned grey and the sun was red. Buildings were hidden in the haze. My eyes itched and my throat burned walking from the car to the store.
I lived in the Bay Area during the 2017-18 fires, so I’m not a stranger to smoke. I never considered San Francisco home, though. The smoke feels much more oppressive and tragic when it happens here.
This evening, I was struck by the extent to which and the speed with which we’re destroying this planet. I knew that, of course. I’ve devoted countless hours to reading, watching, and talking about it—the food industry, the fashion industry, transportation, energy, consumerism, myriad topics. I studied local ecology in college for crying out loud. I have a freaking B.A. in Biology.
It just hits home in a unique way when it’s in your state, your city, your backyard, your lungs.
It’s different reading reports of fire in Australia, the western US, or British Columbia—versus having smoke from wildfires on the Canadian border blow down home.
Somehow in the back of my mind, Minnesota was pretty safe from the effects of climate change for now. Sure, our temperatures are a little more extreme, and our rainfall trends towards more severe flooding or drought than usual.
But I think I still subconsciously felt that if we had to, we could move rurally here. Be more self-sufficient. Enjoy nature as it once pristinely was, in our own little beautiful midwestern bubble. Escape.
All the dystopian future novels play on that theme—that there’s somewhere safe(r) to run to, to scratch a living off the land.
But there’s nowhere that won’t be touched by the effects of our wasteful, consumerist lifestyles
Truly, nowhere, from the deepest ocean trench, to the most remote Arctic glacier, to the shrinking Amazon, to my small overgrown suburban yard in our storybook town.
One of my favorite lines from the Lord of the Rings movies is when Merry and Pippin are in Fangorn and talking about going home, after Treebeard decides that the Ents won’t go to war with Saruman.
Pippin says, “Maybe Treebeard’s right. We don’t belong here, Merry. It’s too big for us. What can we do in the end? We’ve got the Shire. Maybe we should go home.”
And Merry responds: “The fires of Isengard will spread. And the woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone. There won’t be a Shire, Pippin.”
I have an LOTR quote for every occasion, but this one hits home right now. There won’t be a Shire, Pippin.