I start getting giddy for fall in the Bay Area in June. Pandemic or not, the months of September through November are something to look forward to: Hot days, the occasional warm evening that mimics the Midwestern summer I grew up with; the pinkest sunsets, and a schedule that (any other year) is bursting at the seams. I try to make the most of it because it will pass with a blink—it always does.
Contrary to fall being an inward-looking season, the impermanence amplifies my urgency to do. Hours of the day shrink. Morning air is cooler and crisper. Leaves change colors. This season is a visual and physical farewell, shepherding each of us into a slower, darker season.
If you live in California though, it’s not always gentle. Because fall runs in tandem with fire season, it can be dramatic like racing against time, or some form of destruction, annihilation. I’ve woken up the past two weeks with a sore throat, but not for the reason you’d think. My body reacts to the reality of meanwhile: Somewhere, somewhat but not that far away, daily life is ablaze. Not quite. It’s not one place that’s on fire, it’s many.
Fire season came early and with it many questions: What if climate change is worse than predicted? What will happen to California and the American West? If evacuation is necessary and there are fires in all directions, where do I go? Oh and the pandemic is still happening. Fire tornados? Wow, no thank you.
There are fires and then there are fires. Thousands of miles away in Kenosha, Wisconsin, there is righteous outrage for the racial injustice Jacob Blake experienced (a piece of the larger issues of racial injustice in our country) and friends experiencing devastation for their small city and home destroyed.
2020 has been trending toward apocalyptic for a while now, and as much as I fear the fires, I believe in their reckoning. The ash from forest fires will add nutrients to the humus—our healthy forest soil, that living stuff the dead make, as Ross Gay teaches. Maybe broken systems need to blaze until there is nothing left, even if we don’t know where that will leave us.
Can I trust in the blaze or the ash? I’m not sure. Easier said than done when I haven’t been forced to evacuate my home and when the systems in place have left me unscathed because I’m white.
This is not going to be the traditional season of doing I look forward to every year, but I’m not going to let it be a season of dwelling, or swimming in the language of the apocalypse that has been so fun. This year has been an undoing, a whole lot of cringing-while-saying “as if it could get any worse.” I’d like to say it’s time to focus on healing our people and our places, but I know everyone is at a different point in processing, and rightfully so.
Instead, I’ll put the question of what healing looks like—collectively and individually—out into the world. Maybe impermanence and what I don’t know can be rearranged into rebirth just like a blaze can become a forest, slowly then all at once.
I made this for you:
Has anyone else replaced refreshing Instagram with the Purple Air website? The new standard if it’s safe to go outside: If all the bubbles around my house are yellow and below 75, it’s good as green. I endorse these tunes for walking, cooking, or dancing through the haze of the week.