Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, but the Firefighters get in the Smoke

Entering the small town of Hiouchi

I started out early in July with a summer cold, a minor sinus infection and a bit of a cough, but just as it started to clear up, the Northwest started to burn.  There has been smoke everywhere I go, from Wyoming to Nevada, to Oregon and California. My lungs and ears and chest hurt from reacting to the smoke.  It has been weeks since I could smell, taste or hear vey well.  But my vision is rewarded by the soft misty light that makes everything have a rose colored glow.

Hwy 199 

 This is backward from any other time I remember being so sick.  Instead of being unable to breath at night, clogging up like concrete as soon as I lay down. This keeps me indoors and out of the smoke and I breath just fine if I stay in bed.  It is strange to wake up each morning feeling healthy, and lie there, telling myself not to move because as soon as I get up, I will start hacking and coughing and my ears and throat will close.

the entrance to Ashland Oregon

Marc Anthony Hotel in Ashland and smoke beyond

 I have been getting out because, well, life keeps making demands, but I carry an inhaler and flo-nase and cough drops and tissue.  I'm really feeling guilty whining about the burning eyes when five fire fighters have died and people have lost homes and so much more than my discomfort has cost me.

smoke enhanced sunset

 S

 I just want to say, I know there are people in a city of tents and port-a-potties, who go into the smoke and heat every day, not quite sure they will come out again.  Thank You Fire-fighters. And may the rains come soon

the smoke makes a lovely light

my eyes burn but the pictures are like opal skies

National Novel writing Month, again.

Lately, every time that I sit down at the computer to write, I open the file with my infant novel, which will hopefully be a fully grown, if still pimply young adult by the end of November.

Promising to write a 50,000 word novel in November is my most selfish piece of craziness, and I refuse to give it up.
National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, turns off my natural self denial buttons and allows me to say, "No you can't have the computer, No you can go by yourself this time. No, I'm not cooking, if you want dinner, cook it yourself." Not that I am advocating total selfishness, but like the Mom on the airplane who must get her own oxygen mask first in order to stay conscious and help her family, I believe that some intense selfishness refills the well and allows me to give to everyone else the rest of the year.

There are, of course times when being chained to my own thoughts at the keyboard also fail me, then I am so glad that I live in a place of great beauty. i can take my camera and take a walk, or a drive and soak in the wordless beauty, refill my well with the cool, clean, splendor of the pacific northwest, and then return home to pour it into an imaginary, fantastical world, where somehow, the thing I always discover, is ME.
This year, instead of returning to the world of Uhrlin, with my favorite protagonist, Duffy Barkley, I have taken a trip along the Oregon Trail, twice. In this years NaNoWriMo, there are two girls making the trip, and they share an ancient wooden lap desk, where they store their treasures and their journals.

But they are taking the same trip 150 years apart. One in a wagon caravan, and one in a Dodge Caravan. Only sometimes, when they slide back the lid on the old desk, what they find is not their belongings but those of the other girl.
Can you imagine walking all day to get 4 miles, and being hot and thirsty, and having to filter buggy, muddy water through a bandana - and then reading a journal written by a girl who drove 400 miles in air conditioned comfort and spent the evening in a motel pool?

I Can. It is what I do for fun.