Today I'm back out on my patio. The air is cool, pushing 70 degrees F, and although the sky is still overcast with smoke, I can't smell it. Three days ago when I came out here, the air was brown. When the sun came up, everything looked orange, like looking through brown-tinted sunglasses. Yesterday the air was lightly cooler but had a strong pungent acrid odor. I didn't come out.
This is California. This is the central valley. This is August and it's supposed to be hot, but we've had record temperatures, most between 100 and 110 with a few above that, for over a week.
This is also wild fire season. (I've split that word because these fires are indeed wild.) Most are due to lightning strikes in the mountains. It causes me to wonder who is in charge of lightning - God or Satan? Surely it is God because He is master over all creation.
Right now there is a fire dangerously close to my favorite vacation spot - a Christian camp called Mt. Hermon. Our family spent a week of our summer vacation every year at Mt. Hermon for many years as our family grew up. What a tragedy it would be for this place of spiritual renewal filled with majestic redwood groves and unique yellow banana slugs if it were destroyed by a wild fire.
I have not heard any current news on the fire this morning and I feel rather like Frances Scott Key when he penned the words, "Oh say does that Star Spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
It is cooler today. In fact there is a little breeze to blow the smoke out of our valley. Does that portend good news? Does Mt Hermon still beacon the weary to come, be refreshed in the redwoods covered in the early morning mist? Come with me. We'll go see if the banana slugs are still awake.
Insightfully yours,
Paulita
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