The virus is indoors; the fires are outdoors. There are few places left to go. Caption in a New Yorker article by Anna Wiener entitled An Apocalyptic August in California

OK, two days – maybe three or four – but it seems like a very long week. First it was the heat, then the lightning, the fires, and, finally, the smoke. We went through a sort of twisted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Discomforts might be more accurate, discomfort, fearful awe, self-satisfied caution turning to stark fear as the reality became clearer, then discomfort again, and, as the toxic smoke settled in, deep fear to go along with the discomfort.

We are safe now, it is cooling off, the day before yesterday’s forecast of lightning didn’t materialize, the fire, slowly being contained, is burning south, Cal Fire says no new evacuations, and the smoke level is acceptable if not good.

Everyday last week – well, up to Thursday, at least – our little world got hotter, topping out at slightly over 100°F on Thursday before it started to cool slightly. We don’t have air conditioning relying on the old fashioned but effective method of closing all the doors and windows during the heat of the day and, as the world cools in the evening, opening everything up, turning on the fans, and leting the house cool. The hottest the house got during the day was 86° which is not great but not terrible.

Then came the lightning storm in the pre-dawn morning, lighting up the sky. We are not really used to lightning although I have been in two lightning storms. Once, while camping at Shadow Lake in the Sierras and the second time on a hilltop overlooking the Yellow Sea, while stationed in Korea. At Shadow Lake, the lightning was so close we could hear it hitting the rocks around us (which was surprising because we had dropped down to Shadow at about 8800, from Thousand Island Lake which was a thousand feet higher, because of the storm). In Korea, the lightning was so close, it hit our communications antenna. In both cases, the lightning was close enough that we could smell the ozone. This storm seemed pretty benign by comparison, but the fire it caused wasn’t.

The lightning set several fires south of us which soon coalesced into the CZU Lightning Complex. The next night – or maybe it was two nights later, or three, it all seems like one long horrible memory without time stamps – we started to smell smoke when we went to bed, so we buttoned up the house and sweltered. But by noon the next day, the smoke was gone, the temperature dropped a little, and everything seemed right again. Then the smoke really rolled in and we sheltered in place, sweltering, sweating, worrying. According to PurpleAir – a great website if you are at all interested in the quality of the air you are breathing – the sensor on the street next to us, where we often go for our morning walks, was measuring in the low 600s. As a disturbing aside, Aston Pereira said that he had been following PurpleAir for years and didn’t think the measuring equipment even went that high. End aside. Back at the fire site, it has consumed 538 structures and damaged 43 more, killing seven people. As of this morning, the fire is 19% contained.

Still, while the fires are still raging, the air is clearer now, here, at least. Our fear has settled into a dull worry; worry that this is just the start and it will continue to get worse, next year and the year after that, as we do nothing to address the Climate Crisis, worry that California, our poor, beautiful, state is being destroyed, worry that the government of our country is unraveling, worry that apocalypses are real.

On the theory that, maybe, just maybe, humor is the best tonic, I’ll end this with a New Yorker joke.