Fire Season


My daughter and I road-tripped through some western territories this summer, and hit Saskatchewan just after the big fires started near La Ronge. Not to minimize the impacts of the fire season in western North America this year--it's obviously been alarming, devastating in a variety of ways--but for Claire and I, it was just a couple of spooky days on the trans-Canada highway. We were safe, hundreds of miles south of the fires, and the main effect was the whitewashing of everything. As we drove, landscape features that would've ordinarily been visible for miles came into view suddenly, and everything looked ruined in the smoke. Hawks that ordinarily would've been soaring, scanning the territory for movement, were swooping, hunting the prairie at close range. And the smell permeated everything. I think I was so immersed in the experience that I forgot to take pictures. The luxury of car travel made it a kind of immersive, aesthetic experience, like driving through an apocalypse movie we knew would end once we hit Manitoba or so, and, I hate to say it, but I found it kind of strange and thrilling. Another kind of eco-tourism, I guess. When we reached the states, we spent a couple of days with family on Lake of the Woods, and the smoke followed us all the way. This is a picture from the fishing boat, about 6 PM on the afternoon of July 3rd, 2015--the sinking sun with the smoke from the Saskatchewan fires.

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