Tag: forest fires

Fires

Stepped outside a few minutes ago and took a photo of the sun. It is red from the forest fires burning nearby. It has been hot and the smoke has rolled in the past few days. It can and probably will get a lot worse. The moisture seems to be getting sucked out of the earth.

Giant sunspots can be seen on the sun. The photo was taken with a 200mm lens. I have cropped a great deal of the photo as the sun took up a small part of the frame.

It is the smoke acting as a filter that makes this photo possible, but it also shrouds the detail.

Still the sunspots are big. Every bit as big as the one that erupted in early May that caused those magnificent auroras.

The moon will come up shortly when the sun dips and could be as red rising in the east. These colourful cosmic bodies could be a harbinger of doom, yet in their own right, hold an otherworldly elegance. Nature’s reminder that we aren’t in charge nor ever will be.

smoke & Mirrors

The sun rises in darkened smoky skies.

The smoke in the valley has been crushing. I think about my father in his later years how difficult this would have been for him.

Forest fires are raging all over BC. I expect skies won’t clear for awhile yet. Last year was clear. The largest fire in BC was burning close to us, about 60km to the south. It was almost like forest fires took the summer off due to Covid. This summer is a return to summers previous.

The valley is exceptionally busy with tourists, going hell bent this way and that, dragging boats, ATV’s and other expensive noisy toys in tow. Alberta keeps bitching about how hard done by they are, but you couldn’t tell it from the white and red plates polluting the valley air and waterways on this side of the provincial border.

It is hard to recognize the valley bottom in times like these.

Of course, valley business owners and small town politicians (the same folks in many instances) are rubbing their hands together while chanting into the grey skies, ‘more, more, more’, while their staff, paid minimum wage are crowded into run down staff houses.

I read the valley newspaper, The Columbia Valley Pioneer, this morning. It is the newspaper Lisa and I started 16 years ago. The look of the paper hasn’t changed much in that time, the picture I took of the wetlands still adorns the masthead. It is odd to see it week after week. Reading the paper I often think, do I live in the same town this newspaper claims to cover? True, the newspaper is now owned by a chain notorious for poor coverage of the communities it serves, however, it does occur to me, with some irony, it’s me that no longer fits in.

Mid July

Rising above.

Been hotter than. . . well, hell! Lot’s of smoke. The sun comes up red and goes down the same. It will get worse before summer is over.

Purple flowers. Nothing like a hail storm to make everything bud.

Wind today drying everything out. Fires burning across BC will flare up and become harder to contain.

Catching rays.

The garden is bouncing back. It thought it was dead, so has been working extra hard trying to mature. I cut lettuce and let it sit to ooze out the bitter white milk. I remember, as a youngster pulling dandelions and touching my tongue to the milk of it’s cut stocks and just about dying of thirst with it’s bitterness. The lettuce is still pretty good.

Another couple weeks of +30 weather is forecasted.