Life during wildfires

On Facebook the other day, someone posted a quote from the inimitable Robin Wall Kimmerer. In essence, she said that even when the world is wounded, she can’t help but love it. I’m afraid I took this up as a command: thou shalt love the world even when it’s wounded. As if, amidst these horrible fires — Oregon’s, but also across our country, and our continent, and other continents — it was my job to dig deep and love the world even while it burned.

At any other time, I might not have experienced the quote this way, but I was deep in feeling reverberations from six years ago. COVID had hit, and then fires tore through forest land that was precious to me, bringing air quality twice what we’re experiencing now. Back then, I felt trapped and frozen. I’d already agonized over how I could possibly protect my kids from this killing virus. How could I keep them safe from this burning earth as well? My repertoire generally consisted of throwing my body between them and any threat, but viruses and smoke have a way of infiltrating physical boundaries. There was nothing to do with my coiled, protective energy except stay inside.

Not surprisingly, that six-years-ago time came back to me with our current burning forests and poor air quality. Once again, we’re all on house arrest until this smoke passes. Feeling trapped and frozen again means I’m easily overwhelmed. What, another thing you want me to do!?! I’m over here just trying to play out the clock until things change, and RWK wants me to add loving the earth to my plate?

This time around, though, I’ve been trying to not trap myself. I ventured out Tuesday evening to sing with the old-time music choir I’m in (singing with a group never fails to deliver), and yesterday I kept my afternoon appointment with a body worker I’ve had a few sessions with. Her office is in one of Portland’s industrial districts. Heading toward downtown, my car moved through visible pockets of smoke, as if driving through low clouds. Smoke casts an eerie light; my heart sank while simultaneously feeling connected to everyone else on the road.

My appointment was held in an office on the second floor of a warehouse building, roughly fifty feet from the parking lot to her door — up clanging metal stairs that hug the outside of the building. When my appointment concluded, I walked outside and paused on the high landing. I couldn’t help but notice that, dotted among the other cement-sided warehouses and black-topped parking lots and criss-crossing roads, mature trees blossomed into full leaf. Seen through the smoky air, they looked somewhat beleaguered — and still, they were there. It was the easiest thing possible to appreciate their beauty and their presence. There weren’t enough of them to counteract the smoky air, and yet, there they were, still breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen. How could a person not love that?

I was reminded, too, of how good it feels to love. My heart had a little Grinch moment, growing a few sizes larger as I made room to love those trees.

This morning — my birthday morning, by the way — it occurs to me that it’s even more simple than everything I just described. I don’t need to deliberately try to love the world even when it’s wounded. I do love the world. Maybe RWK should have said, “Remember the love you have for the world.” All I needed was that reminder: that love is already — always — there.

Years ago, a friend of mine moved to Guangzhou China to teach. In one of my (embarrassingly rare) emails to her, I told her I’d taken my son to the Air Museum that weekend. This was how we referred to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, which we occasionally visited to marvel over the Spruce Goose and various examples of aviation virtuosity. My friend, struggling under the worst air quality she’d ever experienced, didn’t know the reference and wrote back grimly, “We should have an air museum here in GZ to remind people what the air used to be like.”

This past week, when my small family fled Portland for Astoria, the air quality at its highest had been in the low 500’s. As we drove out of town Tuesday, it was in the mid-300’s – likely higher even than Guangzhou in 2011.

Gallery | The Astoria Column | Northern Oregon Coast

The Astoria Column sits atop Coxcomb Hill, one of the highest spots in Astoria. It tells the story of Astoria’s founding by whites, and from this vantage point, Astoria and surrounding areas – Youngs River Bay, the Astoria Bridge, and Washington State across the Columbia River – are all visible on a clear day. Garth, Luken, and I drove up to the Column on Wednesday.

It was not clear enough to see Washington, but while we tromped around, we discovered a trail that plunged into dense forest, presumably leading to a trailhead at some significantly lower point. We decided to do some research and, if we could learn where the trailhead was, we’d return with Kami the following day to hike the trail.

Years ago, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a book I loved called The Beginning Place. One day, the main character, in frustration and despair, runs aimlessly, trying to somehow escape his dead-end life. He ends up in a forest. He hasn’t realized he lives so close to a forest, and he’s deeply affected when he crosses into it; it feels so different from his uninspiring, urban home that he feels he’s almost crossed a threshold into a completely other land.

Le Guin wrote beautifully about this threshold, about the moment of stepping into a space palpably different, the air fresh and vibrant. This is what I felt Thursday, stepping onto the Cathedral Tree Trail.

It was like crossing into another world. Astoria’s air, while better than Portland’s, was still smoky, still requiring that I increase my intake of asthma medication fourfold. But the air on this trail was transformed. It was rich in oxygen. Even as hundreds of thousands of acres of forest land around the state burned, these “lungs of the Earth” continued to take in smoke and carbon dioxide and transmute it, exhaling oxygen.

For two miles, we hiked. A white and black caterpillar crossed our path and we watched it for a time. A smaller trail off to the side beckoned, and we waded through salal above our heads. Countless banana slugs, a small snake, many scuttling black carapaced beetles, made up the fauna amidst the essential flora.

Our future is secured by our noticing only this: in the presence of tress, we can breathe.

—…Like the Hurricane

Words about the Calm, the Storm, the Free Bench, and More

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Remembering My Love for the Wounded World

The Beginning Place