Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2022

Abstract

Anyone who’s spent time in the Western United States is now familiar with living in and alongside wildfire smoke. The smell permeates everything. When I was on a fire crew in Washington state, we slept outside in the smoke. We’d wake to find our sleeping bags sprinkled in white. Each morning brought a ritual of coughing, itching, dryness and persistent low-grade headaches. Last summer, shortly after I moved to haze-shrouded Sacramento, ash floated through the orange trees and settled on the decaying Victorians lining my street. The formerly niche experience of living in and with the smoke has become ordinary for the dwellers of Western cities. We’re all smoke-eaters now.

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Originally published in The Point Magazine in August of 2022

https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/smoke-season/

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