Yesterday the smoke was so bad here that I couldn’t go outside.  The sunset was very beautiful again, of course, but a ferocious ill wind came in from out of the northeast, bringing smoke from the wildfires on the other side of the Cascade Mountains.  The wind NEVER comes from that direction.  But it did yesterday.

Branches were falling and the fir cones and branches and twigs and other debris littered the deck and covered the yard and walkway.  At one point as I sat writing a branch hit the roof over my head with a loud bang that made me yell.  The dog came running over to me for protection.  It turned out NOT to be the neighbor’s giant Golden Deodar Cedar tree, the size of a redwood, whose long heavy limbs hang over our house.  It was only a smallish fir branch, falling hard from quite a distance and sped by the wind, from one of the big fir trees behind the house.

I was jumpy all day.  The wind settled down in the afternoon, but the air quality was at a level red and then orange.  This morning it seems clearer, just a haze over the water, but there are still massive fires raging, and I can’t stay outdoors for long without coughing.

Yesterday in Washington State we lost 300,000 acres to fire.  In One Day.

That’s more than we lost all of last year, and more than we’ve lost for 12 of the past 15 years.

What will happen to the wildlife?  To the crops?  To all of the bees and bugs that pollinate whatever is left?

Yesterday I wondered what we’re all doing here.

Today I made an apple pie.  I put cinnamon and nutmeg in it, and the scent fills the room.
Better than smoke.

If we were on schedule, if the project my husband is working on for his company had launched when it was supposed to, then we would be on the Oregon Coast right now.  In the thick of the smoke.  I’ve been wanting to get away to go camping somewhere, and by September the crowds are usually gone.  Safer.

But now that all just seems selfish.   Now I worry about our friends in Oregon, the fires up and down the west, the smoke, the virus, the politics, the world, the entire mess of it all.

So today I made pie.  I don’t have answers.  Today’s just another day of trying to bring some semblance of peace and sweetness into an unknown future.