Blowing Smoke

 The sun was a red ball on the horizon. I have seen that before. A couple years back when wildfires raged to the north and smoke filtered everything we saw. 

And breathed.

Back then, we struggled with the air, and eventually surrendered to the oddly twenty-first century notion of a "smoke day" for schools to close. We stayed home. We stayed inside. We sheltered in place. We worried about those with preexisting conditions like asthma or allergies or compromised immune systems. All of this history jumped into my head as I looked off onto that sunrise. To the north of us, a wildfire rages. By all accounts, the Dixie Fire has the distinction of being one of the largest to burn in California. It has already consumed two small towns, and is threatening more. The blaze is so enormous that the plumes of smoke are capable of drifting over the Rocky Mountains and endangering the health of my dear mother. 

In Colorado.

So, a few years back when those wildfires were closing schools, we had yet to confront COVID-19. There were those, a few years back, who wore masks to keep them from succumbing to smoke-related issues. A few years back, people were actively seeking out protection from the potential poisons in the air. They were easy to see. You just had to look out on the sunrise.

Now we have masks by the boatload, and we have a germ that we can't see. And smoke that we can. The air that we breathe could kill us. Which makes me think of movies like Soylent Green, where Chuck Heston was running around a dystopian future, moving through crowds of poorly masked folk who don't have the good fortune to live in the purified air of the elite. That film's prediction of the future was made for the year 2022. It would seem that I may need to update my zombie apocalypse plan to include incineration. Or being made into crackers.