I was inside working most of the day, and around 5:00 in the afternoon, I decided I needed to get away from my desk and go for a bike ride. As I went outside, I was immediately struck by a burning smell, a general haze in the air, and noticed the sun was still high in the sky but looking a deep orange. I could tell right away that something was wrong, but having been immersed in work most of the day, I was not aware of any current events to explain what I was experiencing. I didn’t have my phone with me to take a picture, so I have an A.I. generated image above in an attempt to create a visual of what I saw when I came outside.
Despite the overall smoky haze, I just figured something had burned somewhere in the neighborhood and that’s why it smelled the way it did. I got on my bike and started to ride, but it didn’t take long to get the feeling that something was wrong, something on a bigger scale than just a neighborhood fire. As I turned onto a local street, two fire department vehicles (the smaller kind, perhaps called rescue or emergency trucks?) followed me, going the wrong way on a one way street, so it made me think there might be a big (yet still local) fire. Then more full-sized hook and ladder trucks started driving down the next road over, and as I continued on my way, wondering what was going on, a woman in an SUV pulled up alongside of me, rolled down her window, and said: “it looks like they don’t know where the problem is, and they’re just driving around looking for it!”
I could see by this point that the smoke and haze was everywhere, that it wasn’t anything local, but rather something on a much-larger scale. I decided to ride my bike about a mile further to a vantage point up on a hill which allows a view (from my hometown of Belleville, NJ) of the New York City skyline … I wondered if there was some disaster or major problem in NYC causing all of this smoke?
As I got to the top of the hill, I could barely see NYC through all the smoke (another A.I. generated image below to capture the feel of the moment), but it appeared that all was fine in Manhattan. After biking for these 10 minutes or so, I felt pretty certain that it wasn’t a good idea to be out breathing in whatever this was that filled the area with a burning smell.
When I got home, I asked a neighbor if they knew what was happening, and the guy mentioned that it was the result of Canadian wildfires. That seemed amazing, considering the Canadian border is over 300 miles away. When I got inside and looked on my phone (after closing all my windows), I saw news reports that said more than a hundred wildfires burning in Quebec were the source of this smoky sky covering the East coast. Then I read that wildfire smoke contains tiny particles called “PM2.5,” which, if inhaled, can enter the lung tissue as well as the bloodstream. This afternoon, the recorded concentration of PM2.5 in New York City’s air was more than 10 times the guideline set by the World Health Organization – and I was biking around in this in New Jersey at the same time? Thankfully not for very long!
Some time ago, I read an interesting (and concerning) story that many population shifts and decisions on where to move in the next twenty years – and where people choose to retire in the future – might be based on how climate change has affected various parts of the world. In the last year or so, I’ve flirted with some ideas of eventually moving to New Mexico, as I love Santa Fe as well as Taos, but the idea of air quality there already being affected at times by California wildfires (and sometimes Colorado wildfires), had me thinking that maybe staying on the East Coast would be a better bet … never imagining that Canadian wildfires could affect my local area (New York and New Jersey) and the air quality to this extent.
I realize almost none of this blog post (other than the A.I. art) has anything to do with art and creativity, but it was certainly a surreal day that changed my understanding that living here can be affected by wildfires in the same way that one hears about in the American west. Thankfully, there’s been a strong wind most of the day and the air is much better tonight.