Dear Friend,

"I was having a moment," a friend told me this week about something that happened during a workshop she was co-leading this past week. Someone had said something that had triggered her.

“So my co-facilitator gave me the head nod, as in, go step outside and take a breath," (sounds like a good move, I thought to myself; we all have those moments!) "and then I stepped out of the building and stepped into the wildfire smoke and I just about gagged!"

Hardly the breath of fresh air she was hoping for.

In case you didn't know, in these last few days, from Minnesota and Wisconsin to New York and Maryland, much of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic in the U.S. is experiencing hazardous air quality due to the wildfires burning in Canada and northern Minnesota. The fires keep spreading - as fires, much exacerbated by climate change - tend to do these days. On Thursday, Chicago saw some of the worst air quality in the world - the Air Quality Index (something I never really paid attention to growing up and which is now essential to my sense of self) exceeded 400... far above 'hazardous'.

I've had variations of my friend's experience so often I've lost count: when my desire to go to my place of solace (nature) turns out to be nearly inaccessible or at least potentially hazardous to my health because of wildfire smoke.

I keep wanting a word for this particular feeling: when the external pollution is so bad that the sources of life herself - rivers and springs and fresh air - are dangerous. The trapped feeling of 'oh no, not here, too'.

Not that there is anything new about sacred spaces in nature becoming inaccessible to the people who treasure and depend upon them for spiritual nurturance. In and of itself, that is not a climate change phenomenon. It's at least as old as colonization.

Still, like so many aspects of a changing climate, this kind of wildfire smoke really sucks. Wildfire smoke stings the lungs, the eyes, and the skin. Tiny particles can get lodged inside your body and cause all sorts of respiratory problems. Headaches are common. Birds and animals suffer too. And it is so eerie - the haze, the yellow-red sun, the strange light.

Rain helps; shifts in atmospheric temperature help; the fires stopping helps. It would help if we stopped the conditions that cause climate change and exacerbate severe wildfires in the first place. (ie - over-dependence on fossil fuels that is exacerbated by governments subsidizing the coal and oil industries, etc.) And stop land management practices that also exacerbate wildfires. That would help. Maybe not this weekend, but certainly over the next few decades.

That's not happening at anywhere close to the needed scale (though thank you to all of you who are working on this - I know many of you have been 'on it' for years).

Instead we are getting more fires. And thus smoke.

*****

Where do you go for solace/relief/re-sourcing when the sacred lake, well, river, hill, and air itself has become so damaged that it is unsafe?

When the sacred temple of nature (the sacred grove; the courtyard in the middle of the city) has itself become polluted?

That's the thing: The smoke is everywhere. There's nowhere else to go.

Sure, you can stay inside. If being inside is available and/or safe. If your livelihood permits it. Which is only a few people. Having A/C can help - though the long-term effects of A/C also exacerbate climate change. Some people might be able to leave the 'really bad' areas, or find 'less bad' spots, if they have the money/time/priviledge to do so.

I appreciate that climate change shows us how interconnected we all are. How important our relationships with one another and the planet are. How we can only get through and create other solutions together. How we only have one planet (surely that is part of what space exploration teaches us - how beautiful and valuable this precious blue spaceship that we are on actually is.....). What happens in Canada impacts what's happening thousands of miles down-air-stream.

And that very interconnection is also what I hate about climate change. It sucks, not being able to breathe fresh air.

Especially when I know what I know. What you know. That we had all sorts of warnings. Especially from the scientific community: That this was the predicted outcome that didn't have to happen. That it's only going to get worse. That a bunch of idiots with an absurd amount of power are refusing to take any responsibility for anything and are making the whole situation much worse.

*****

The irony - soooo much irony - that the primary public health recommendation for wildfire smoke is to stay at home, don't open your windows - sequester yourself. It's too dangerous out there.

Sure, this experience evokes pandemic times: the (it feels sudden) return of people wandering around with N95 masks; the quieter streets; the encouragement towards isolation.

But I've also been more present to how this is also part of the very mentality that got us here in the first place: that we humans are separate from nature. Instead of what's actually been known as true for millennia: that we are all kin. Connection - inter-dependence; inter-being - that's our true nature. So to speak.

And so now "we" have created the very thing that we were thinking.

You know, when those kinds of positive thinking films such as The Secret talk about how much the Universe is listening to what you think and what you think becomes real, they tend to be pretty individualistic.

They don't talk about how true that can be for a society, too. How about: keep thinking about how separate you are from everything around you, and your whole society will have to hide inside on what was once the beautiful time of year when everyone is outside…..

What would happen if we thought differently?

Another, more sophisticated way of asking this question is: what would happen if we could collectively shift our cosmovision/cosmology? (Notice I did not say 'develop our consciousness'.)

That question is part of what led me to get into this work I refer to as ReMembering and ReEnchanting. Which feels immensely small and imperfect in the face of the bigness before us.... and utterly necessary.

***

In the midst of this wildfire smoke, I had a moment this week when I needed to do some serious prayer.

Serious prayers for me usually (though not always) happen in nature. That has always been my primary sacred ground. Knowing that the smoke usually gets worse in the late afternoon, I chose to do my prayer-walk in the morning. I went on a new path through the woods near the Mahicanatuck (the Hudson River), a path that is part of a bird sanctuary. It was exquisitely beautiful. At one point the path turned towards the river, and I went down to a beautiful beach. Several others were there - maybe they were in prayer, maybe not. From the edge of the water, the smoke around me was striking. It wrenched my heartstrings. Oh, the grief. The grief, the grief.

I stepped into the body of the River That Runs Both Ways - so much warmer than I expected it to be! - and sang to it.

I sang for myself. And I sang for the river, and the air, and the mountains, and the millions of people impacted by this, one of a million tiny moments of suffering in this long arc of unnecessary suffering.

Singing in the smoke hurt my throat.

Still, I sang.

Blessings to you and to your singing and your silences and the many ways air does and does not flow -

Sara Jolena