doug — off the record

We saw it coming on the news.

Wildfires in Minnesota and Northern Ontario were burning out of control and the smoke was headed south. We’re presently dog sitting but didn’t hesitate to take him for a stroll at the beach Wednesday evening. There was nothing in the air and we were on the look out doing our best to stay on top of things. Maybe, maybe it might just miss us.

Hah! No such luck.

We woke Thursday morning to the reality that it wasn’t going to pass us by. It was indeed here. I looked out the bedroom window and everything was yellow / orange. A look out the front window and it looked like the heaviest of fog ever. One breath from an open door revealed the reality.

One of the realities of dog sitting is that you do need to go outside first thing in the morning. Bless his little heart that we didn’t have to go very far before we could turn around and go back inside. The whole breathing experience was like camping and, no matter where you moved, the smoke followed.

Now, this task would be inserted before my normal routine of a walk down the road. It was immediately clear that that routine wasn’t happening today.

In addition to dog sitting, we’re also house sitting so a trip out there to ensure that all was well was going to be the major morning event! As my wife and I made the trip through town, we both immediately noticed that there was NOBODY out walking on the sidewalks and there were no cyclists where there always used to be all kinds of exercisers.

To be honest, we could probably have omitted the trip but we’re both the type of people that won’t leave the house before the toilet has finished refilling the tank or double checking that all the doors are locked before leaving the house. I had plans to do some pool vacuuming and even brought along some masks.

It didn’t matter where you turned for news and information; the smoke was the top story.

I’ll admit to being a news junky so I did spend a bunch of time poking around and reading way too much information. It was all so scary.

Of course, there’s no shortage of resources and they were very easy to find. I found out that there actually was a resource called Air Quality Health Index from Air Quality Ontario that provided updates and gives a look around the province.

To read that Detroit has the worst air quality in the world slaps another bit of reality to your face.

As I sit here keying this, my legs are remind me that I missed my mid-day walk or bike ride. The after supper walk isn’t happening either. I wonder if my watch will make a call to see if I’m still OK. Even in the worst of the winter storms I will find a way to hit 10 000 steps.

It’s not just my life. One of the things that our town does over the summer is close the streets downtown to traffic and have various celebrations. They call it Open Air Amherstburg and it, as well as all town events, are cancelled. On social media, there are places that are always open than are closing for the rest of the week.

I’m sitting here looking out the patio doors and see the siding is still a bizarre looking colour as I have to look through a yellow atmosphere.

To make things event more stagnant, there seems to be absolutely no wind to help the cause. All spring, we seemed to be in a constant wind storm.

So, now the question becomes, when will it all end?

Any bets?