Thinking about wildfires
Elk in the Bitterroot River Surrounded by Fire | John McColgan, Alaska Fire Service, 2000
Our team is scattered across the country, but we’re all feeling the heat this week, with temperatures ranging from 80° to more than 100° for some.
Amy is seeing haze in Missoula, where summer wildfires are a regular occurrence. Although climate change is making them worse, people in Montana have lived with forest fires for a long time. That’s not necessarily true for people in places like New York, who might have experienced their first taste of wildfire smoke in 2023, or the Bay Area, which made headlines in 2020 for an apocalyptic orange sky caused by fires in Northern California.
With fire—and other aspects of climate change—comes a question: how do we process our first experience with forces that people elsewhere have been dealing with for decades?