Apostrophe S

Pilot Butte is partially obscured by smoke, and you can see the smoke’s effect on the horizon.

Where I come from, a “wildfire” is something that happens when an idiot farmer knocks over his burn barrel and destroys half his hay bale crop for the season. In the High Desert, it’s something entirely different.

Slowly, almost stealthily, the strong wind today has moved a cloud of smoke over Bend from a nearby brushfire. (The Bulletin has the details.) The smoke isn’t thick, not really. You can’t see it in front of you. But you can see it down the street and across town. You can smell it in the air. It stings your nose and makes you want to clear your throat. Your eyes water.

It’s strange, I’d always had this notion that a fire was something that would go out if you didn’t tend to it. But in this case, with brush and forest fires, a fire is something that won’t go out until you tend to it, or until the beast consumes everything that it can.

Fires out here is treated like an environmental phenomenon, like earthquakes or tornados or hurricanes. There is a season for them, and people always seem to dread their arrival. Except, the fire hasn’t arrived in Bend. It’s not even that close by, and it’s not really headed this way. And yet, we all know it is near, as our homes and businesses are enveloped in an enormous cloud of campfire smoke. It’s widespread, as far as I can tell. I drove around a bit, and I couldn’t get away from it. From across town, where I work, the same butte shown in the above photo was probably 50 percent obscured by smoke.

It was striking.