Exposed

I grew up back East where it was green and rained a lot. Sometimes I could see the horizon, mostly I saw trees. I was a Girl Scout and camped every summer. Tent camping, not cabin camping.

After my first go through college, I moved to North Carolina, which is wetter and greener than Michigan. I cut my photographic teeth on the Blue Ridge Parkway and tent camped in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Now I live in Utah, on the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. It was quite a shock moving from where rain didn't count unless it was an inch or more to a place where a tenth of an inch of precipitation is an event. But still, not five minutes from my house, I can drive up a tree covered canyon with a stream bubbling near the road. Several of the finest ski resorts in the world are within an hour's drive. Albion Basin is an easy morning trip for flower photography. Last week I went on a photo expedition to southern Utah, to red rock country. To get to the red rocks, one has to drive through a whole lot of nothing. There are many abandoned farmsteads standing desolate in the middle of the desert and the remains of soddies crumbling into hillsides.

I looked at the parched, windswept abodes and wondered how anyone could choose to live in such places, exposed, solitary, naked to the sky.I need the comfort and security of trees. I need green.

Summer of Fire

Here in Salt Lake City, it hasn't rained since the first of June and the temperatures have been pretty consistently in the 90's and 100's (mid to upper 30's Celsius.) On the 4th of July a new all time high record for Utah was set at 118 (48 Celsius) in the southern part of the state. Hot, hot, hot! (I've said that before on this blog, haven't I?) The whole state, most of the western USA, is a tinderbox. There are currently eight major wildfires burning in Utah. http://www.utahfireinfo.gov/

Although the major fires are mostly south of SLC, the air here is filled with smoke. The Engineer had to disconnect our smoke detectors Monday night to keep them from waking us with intermittent alarming.

We have a swimming pool. This morning when I went out to clean out the skimmer I was totally disgusted when I saw the water in it. It was covered with a gray scum of smoke dust which coated my hand when I reached in to pull out the trapped leaves and debris. It made me realize that everything is similarly coated. It's not visible because it's not concentrated like it is in the skimmer, but it's there nonetheless.

While the West is burning, the southern middle of the country is drowning.

It frightens me to think where this planet's climate and ecology are heading. It frightens me more when I hear the current administration claim it ain't none of the USA's doing. Why, don't yah know, that the climate on Mars is heatin' up too. That means it's not humanity's pollutin' fault, it's that mean ol' sun and its solar flares.

To quote an old saw, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

P.S. The maps are live links, so they show the current conditions when you're looking at them.