The wind turned again and brought the pall of smoke from the Eagle Creek Fire back to Portland. Last night the smell of smoke woke me. I got up and closed the windows I could reach in the dark. I feel sick imagining that I'm breathing the ashes of dead animals and burned up trees. It's beyond campfire smell. This is the smell of running for your life. This is the smell of the end of days. My chest is heavy. My sinuses are clogged. I want to throw open the windows to bring in some fresh air, but the air is cutting up my throat.Good news, rain is on the way. Tomorrow with any luck, a bit of rain will wash the smoke out of Portland skies and start to tamp down the fire that rages 40 miles away. So far, over 40,000 acres have burned—not the biggest wildfire in the state, but certainly the one with the stupidest origin: fireworks set off by an oblivious self-centered teen. The fire has burned a few structures, a couple homes, shut down the highway for days, and forced hundreds of people to evacuate their pets and livestock. Right now, the fire is about 35% contained.
Bad news, the rain will drench hillsides barren of any growth, and all those dead trees and debris will slide down the steep hillsides to end up in creeks and across roads. I hope not in anyone's backyard, but gravity does what it will.
Meanwhile, life goes on, despite the disasters, natural and human-caused, that seem to pick at my fragile serenity. It's always some damn thing, isn't it? The airbag light won't go off. Sleekly sluggish giant rats come to feed at my bird feeder (can we say Lyme Disease?). My mother's diarrhea plague persists. The new wheelcover (replacing the one broken by the tire company when they sold me new tires) rubs against my wheel, click, click, click. My computer glasses no longer quite work because my arms got shorter or something. Dang it.
The poorly paying editing jobs stack up like planes circling Laguardia. The keyboard space bar sticks because of all the cat hair under the keys. One of my molars repeatedly shudders at cold or hot, bringing up visions of root canals and crowns. That's just stuff in my tiny parched world. Expand the lens out a few hundred feet and it's enough to make a person want to move to Mexico.
In fact, if things keep going here the way they've been going, I wouldn't be surprised to see the trickle of ex-pats moving south become a full torrent of people seeking asylum from Make America Great Again. The place is getting a little too damn great for me.
Oh, poor me, I live in the richest country on earth. Poor me. Of course, I'm not rich, but somewhere here, there are rich people, I'm pretty sure. I don't happen to know any, but I'm sure they are around somewhere. Not that they would do anything for me if they saw me on the street with my hand out, but I'm sure they donate to good causes. I get solicitor calls all the time for a woman who lives on the west side of town who happens to share my name. Somehow my phone number got attached to her address. I know she donates to many good causes. Good people are out there. Even though I'm pretty sure she also voted for Trump. Dang it, there goes the space bar again. Hold on, I gotta hit it to make it stop adding extra spaces. There.
I'd like to take a deep breath and start the day over, but the air in here is just a bit smoky. I hope when I wake tomorrow, the rain is pouring and the smoke is gone. I hope we all find freedom from suffering and the flies finally abandon my kitchen. I hope my airbag light magically goes off and I can go for a walk in the rain.
