This is an early morning photograph, downtown, not this year.

It was frightening to fly back from Wisconsin last week and have the plane descend into smoke in Seattle. The smoke from fires in British Columbia and Washington blanketed the city. I am used to descending into cloud, but smoke looks brown and was neither opaque nor transparent. Haze.

I missed the worst air, but the smoke still bothers me. One afternoon my receptionist and I both were having trouble with eye irritation from the bad air. My clinic is in a 1950s building and closing all the windows and doors is hot! No air conditioning.

I am hoping that we make changes to slow and mitigate climate change and global warming: I don’t want the world on fire!

How many summers will it take? My guess is three consecutive summers….