The Smoke from Oregon

Thoughts on an Uncertain Future

I just didn’t think the smoke would be that bad on the run, so I drove out to a small trial head. The smoke in Berkeley was already pretty heavy from the fires in Oregon, cloaking the sky and making the air smell of charred trees. When I reached the trailhead, the smoke there appeared less intense than near the bay. I figured I could do a short run. It was only slightly smokey, so why not? I put on my shoes and went. By the time I reached the bottom of one portion of the trail, less than a mile in, I could feel that burning in my lungs. It reminded me of the burning of cigarette smoke. But, as I tried to heave uphill, I figured I might as well keep running. I might as well get some exercise, seeing as it is only September, and more fires are sure to come, with thicker smoke. This is a fine day, not the best, for a run. But today, unlike others, is doable. This smoke is a part of California. Has been for Millenia until we suppressed it. And our hubris with the climate has made its return only worse. So why not run and go about our days as normal? I might as well go for a run because, today compared to other summers, other falls, isn’t really so bad.

It’s easy to think such a thing, in the moments when it gets worse, that things, the day to day lives we lead will be be unpleasant, but not bad. That we will be able to cope with things easily, go on our flights and travels without much thought to the weather, still. That maybe some days will be hotter, and the weather will shift more quickly, but we’ll still be able to go to work, get a job, and eat out when we can. The world, beyond some shifting heat and rain and snow, will feel the same, at least here. And yet, slightly, this is all changing, and we only remember the portent of a less lucky time when smoke rolls down from the fires, or we hear of anomalies across the atmosphere. But not in the day to day. We can just put it aside, forget it, and who caused it. I know I do. 

In Henry Hoke’s new book, Open Throat, written from the perspective of a mountain lion living in LA (written as “ellay”), Hoke deals directly with the fantasy that he pictures mountain lions, and possibly more creatures, fantasizing about the demise of people for what they have done to the planet, “on quiet midnights back in the caves I could almost imagine that all the people were gone / canyons cleared of their footsteps and voices and cars / the long deaths [highways] standing still / trees expanding and their green swelling the buildings and returning the original smells / returning what’s needed” I am sure, if some animals do fantasize, they think of this dream often. But, it is not even just other animals. Humans, especially those who are strong adherents to the ethics of Deep Ecology find that our death, by our own hands intentionally or not, will bring on a better world for all the creatures of the planet. 

But this is not something I can completely agree with. I love people too much. Our stupidity and genius has brought us to this point in history, where we are creating AI robots that I am convinced will do something terrible to us, though what that is is yet to be seen. But it has also brought, whoever is reading this, the experience of joys and sorrows and the sorrows that have lead to joys. In essence, we are alive, and to be alive must in some way have its merit, its right to be, correct?

I question all of this because, possibly brought on by social media and our hyper connectivity, it seems that at this time now more than ever, something of an apocalypse appears to be brewing. 

Though is that true? We have had many doom-tellers in our world, conjuring up symbols and ideas of what could possibly be the end of things, and to them what was the end of things.  But so far, humans are still here, along with the ever altering earth. As Annie Dillard wrote in her book For the Time Being, which is essentially a rebuttal to apocalyptic thinking, “Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy — probably a necessary lie — that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?” 

I wonder what one day we might say of this moment in time. I wonder if we will think of it similarly to Dillard, as some interesting little moment from the ancient past that shows how little we have changed, or if we will see it as the moment when we past a precipice from being able to fix the world in its many ways, to letting it fall off the cliff, to be reborn with new people, centuries from now, admiring our era’s hubris to think we were so important as to believe the world in its entirety was ending. 

I cannot tell if we are right in our apocalyptic thinking. I can’t tell if the fantasy of Hoke’s mountain lion is completely justified or not. I can’t tell because, as I ran back to my car, sweating after a short run, my lungs heavy like I just smoked two cigarettes, I know that the earth hasn’t shifted like this in humanities lifetime. I know that, because of the climate crisis, the world is inevitably to change greatly, but what that means still, is up to the future, which can never really be known. I cannot tell if these really are important times, or if we are all just so deft at deferring the pain of tomorrow for, well, tomorrow. I cannot tell, sometimes, if that’s what I’m doing by critiquing a book, or writing about a run or a swim with otters. I cannot tell if I’m just not trying to look at it head on, and accept my fear of an uncertain future.