CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Columbia Gorge shrouded in smoke. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Hōfuku, pointing at the mountains: “Is this not reality?” Chōkei: “It is. But it’s a pity to say so.”

Hōfuku, pointing at the mountains: “Is this not reality?” Chōkei: “It is. But it’s a pity to say so.”

On August fifth, Lola and I went for our morning walk. It didn’t feel like morning. It was too hot for morning. It didn’t smell like morning. The winds had shifted overnight. Instead of blowing off the Pacific, they were now coming from the northeast. From central Washington. From Spokane, when Spokane was burning. We were looking at a sky scrimmed with smoke from the fires of Spokane, three hundred and fifty miles away. We were inhaling the ashes of the Lilac City, the smell of lilacs in the dooryards burned, Walt Whitman’s song of the “bleeding throat” come to call.

That morning Portland would register the worst air quality of any major city in the world. Most of the smoke was from Spokane and the fires near Lake Chelan. But Oregon was burning, too. Burning big time. More than two million acres had gone up in flames during the last three weeks. That’s a record for an entire year and there are three months left in the fire season, assuming fires restrict themselves to our seasonal calendars anymore. The fires were growing by the hour. They defied any attempts at human control. By the end of the week, a fire on Mt. Hood had threatened one of the world’s greatest hotels, Timberline, where Stanley Kubrick shot the exteriors for The Shining. Timberline is, as its name suggests, situated at timberline. These fires don’t restrict themselves to our tidy geographical boundaries. The fires go where they want to go and only the fall rains and snows will stop them, if there are fall rains in this year of the Super El Niño.

One way or another, most of these fires are ignited by humans, either arsonist freaks or their transnational doppelgängers, the fossil fuel and timber companies. A few years ago, a kid burned down the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge by shooting off fireworks into the parched forest. A........

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