The past few days, the air in Tucson has been hazy with smoke. Hazy from a fire burning roughly 200 miles away. Today, the air had cleared a little, because the wind was blowing away from us, back into New Mexico, instead of towards us.
Tonight, the wind shifted again, and though the sky remains clear, when we stepped out of a friend’s house right as the last light was leaving the sky, the air held a distinct smoky wildfire scent.
Some time later, the risen full moon still has a faint yellow edge.
200 miles. That’s as if a fire burning in Washington, DC were large enough and powerful enough to be smelled in New York City, when the wind was right.
Thinking about that gives a deeper feel for just how large this fire really is.
It’s also an eerie reminder of just how interconnected the Southwest really is, for all the jagged mountain ranges that break up this land, setting places apart.