“Health officials recommend that everyone stay inside with windows and doors shut, avoid doing strenuous activity and taking the dog for long walks.”
I read this aloud to Stealth and Winter Boots (his friend visiting for a couple weeks) on top of a viewpoint on a New Jersey mountain. The sun was a small dot struggling to shine through the thick haze. We could smell fire in the air.
“Go outside and be healthy,” Stealth laughed. We watched the mountain horizon flicker in and out of the haze for a moment longer before hurrying down the viewpoint stairs. It was cold when the sun’s rays couldn’t get through.
We first saw the haze at the Catfish Fire Tower, the first manned fire tower I’ve ever seen. As we entered the clearing, an old red fire truck was parked next to the tower, the tail gate down with water and cups set there for hikers. An older gentleman’s head popped out of the window above an American flag.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Come on up to the deck and look around!” A radio crackled. “We’re busy with all the wildfires going on, but you’re welcome up here!” The radio crackled again and his head disappeared back inside.
We dropped our packs at the bottom of the steps and made our way up. As we passed tree level, the gusty wind rolled over us, howling through the steps. A haze was just starting to creep in over the mountains’ edges, slightly blurring together the sky. The fire fighter manning the station told us about the area, about fighting fires every summer, the way the different states worked together, about smelling the smoke from 9/11 there.
The radio crackled again as a marshall on the ground reported back that a small, local fire had been neutralized. “Wind Gap, PA, is on fire right now,” he told us. I started. We’d been in Wind Gap just a couple days ago. “And this haze is from Canada.”
We watched it a little longer, marvelling at how far the smoke had traveled, unaware of how bad it would actually get.
That night, we stayed at a small campground next to a spring, Winter Boots’ first night on trail. The next morning, we woke up to overcast skies. “Is this still the haze?” I asked. We watched the white sky, smelled the slightly thickening air. As we hiked across the day, the haze closed in on us, blotting out the ridgelines in the distance and hovering closer and closer.
Wednesday we woke up to the apocalypse. The smoke continued to thicken over the night, so that when we awoke, the sun was barely visible through the haze. We packed up quietly, small gazes flicking back to the sky as the red orb made its way upwards. It never got bigger, the heat that was supposed to come that day never came.
The sunlight burned red. Through the haze, you could see the small red dot struggling across the sky. At noon, it felt like the sun was disappearing; my body was shutting down for night. Any spot in the trees where the sunlight would peer through was red patches. The colors of everything was wrong, so wrong somehow, and yet you couldn’t really put your finger on what it was exactly. The fires were so far away and yet we could smell the burning, felt like we were walking through the stark red of fire.
We ran into someone doing trail magic at the top of one of the mountains. There they offered us cold drinks and burgers and masks for the smoke, and we sat and ate with our coats on because of how cold it was.
Being a farm girl, I’ve always been closely aware of how the weather affects every day life. A summer of little rain means struggling pasture and not much hay. A summer too wet means mud and drowned crops. A summer just right means a good winter.
Being a hiker makes the surrounding weather patterns even more extreme. A warm winter means no snow, which means no melting liquid in the spring, which means underfilled springs to collect water from. A dry summer means hot days and long water carries between reliable water sources.
It also means seeing directly and daily the impact being made to our forests and mountain ranges. Coming out of Palmerton, we walked through an exposed ridgeline, the heat pounding down on our backs. A young forest was growing, thin trees shooting up amid the dead, rotten corpses of thick, tall trees. It used to be a hemlock forest until the hemlock wooly adelgid killed them. From the Catfish Fire Tower, we could see the wave of dying ash trees suffering from Emerald Ash. Along the trail, silk worms clog up trees and wild mustard is rampantly spreading. We’ve walked past ponds completely dry, dusty streams with crusted moss, eked out water from slow-flowing pipes.
It’s an El Nino year, a dry year, and as I hike, I can feel the nature around me groaning, watch the dust rise with each footstep, feel the heat baking me as I walk.
Walking so close to nature brings to light so many issues otherwise easy to overlook. Trash scattered along a road, the disappearance of certain plants, erosion crumbling a pathway. There are some who work so hard to maintain the beauty of the world around them (thank you, trail maintainers)… but there are so many who have so little care.
I wish more people walked in nature, heard the birds fluttering between the branches, watched the porcupine waddle across the trail. I wish more people slowed down and looked, understood and cared. I wish more people had this same chance I do, this chance to be immersed fully in nature, as closely affected by each day as are the animals, insects, and birds.
Maybe if more people had this chance, they would care deeper about the incredible world around us and about protecting it for themselves and their children.
It took a couple of days but the smoke finally cleared. We picked up Church Mouse again, and crossed the border from New Jersey into New York. We’ve now hiked over 1,400 miles and three months.
Slowly, the end is drawing near. We’re nearly two-thirds done, which I can’t believe. But, there are still plenty of miles left to go and adventures to be had. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
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