Smoke Gets in My Eyes

July 20, 2026

Greetings from this side of the glass,

Every once in a while, I am shown how I take something for granted.  Often it is a passing moment, a flicker in my chest, where gratitude usually belongs. 

Sleep, for example, sitting on the edge of the bed at godawful-thirty in the morning, looking at the clock urging it forward or backward.  Or electricity, on those occasions when the power goes out and you can’t keep from flipping the light switch every time you walk into a room.

There have been a few rare health scares, when suddenly the body I have trusted to serve me for all of my life, raises a moment of doubt, and I appreciate again the miracle of my own existence.

But more often, it has been simple reminders to the automatic momentum of living, the flow we have in our lives that makes it easy to forget how complex and fragile this existence is. And then we get a poke, a wake up, a moment.  Typically, these are moments that are introduced by an inconvenience, and only rarely anything near tragedy.  I know how lucky I am, although it is helpful to be reminded. And still the list grows.

 On the long list of things I take for granted, I have now added: Outside.

Maybe ten days ago I went out on the deck in the hour before dawn and watched the stars. The lightning bugs were still dancing around from whatever party they started the night before. I was there long enough to see the flash of a meteor glancing off the edge of our world.

When the sun was up, I laced up and went for a run, a leisurely circle through my little town, absently thinking about a more rigorous training schedule.  I thought about a long hike, maybe a few days in the woods.  No hurry, summer is eternal.

Then the curtain came down.

I was blithely oblivious to the disaster raging north of us.  I woke up one morning and caught the aroma, and thought, “Someone is having a campfire.”  The sky was hazy, and then hazier.  Then suddenly everyone was saying ‘AQI’, a term I had to look up before I embarrassed myself.

In Canada, the fire is so vast that it defies description, or control.  Its size is measured in millions of hectares, which to me sounds like the volume of all the solar systems.  There are days I look outside and wonder, “How can the sky be changed this way? How can the sun be hidden? What is next, gravity?” 

The plume from the fire engulfs the world.  It can be seen from everywhere there are people to see. My corner of existence is filled with smoke, so dense it isn’t safe for us to breathe.  Outside is not an option.

I know that a country is on fire, that homes are being lost, economies affected, lives changed, lives lost.  Where I am, the smoke is harsh, it is changing how we go about our day, but by comparison it is mostly an interruption, an inconvenience.

But I want to go outside.  I want to see summer, to run and bike and hike and just sit outside and taste it, feel the dampness and the warmth. I want to smell the freshness of the dewy mornings. Instead, I have my forehead against the window, the faint smell of the world on fire sifting into my kitchen.

I am like a five-year-old, I know.  I want to go out and play, I don’t want to read a book or drone on the treadmill or clean my room.  I want to tramp in the woods, I want to run the roads between the cornfields, I want to go to the farmer’s market without wearing a mask.  I want to be outside.

That possibility will come again. And with it, I promise, will come the gratitude for the beauty I took for granted.

Hope this finds you breathing deeply,

David

This essay was written by the author and does not include Ai content.

Copyright © 2026 David Smith