Sunrise Through the Smoke of Distant Fires

There have been major fires out west in California, Oregon, and Washington, and in the past few days, the smoke from those fires arrived in Pennsylvania. Experts say it is very high up, 30,000 feet or more, where the airplanes fly. So we cannot smell the smoke and it is (so they say) not affecting our air quality. But the sky here has been hazy instead of that classic September shade of bluebird-blue.

When I got up in the morning and took the cat out for a few minutes on the front porch, I spied the bright orange sun rising across the road. In short order, I placed the cat back inside, grabbed my camera, and RAN to get some photos of the rising sun.

It was very strange looking, a bright orange orb, with a red line around it. I snapped off multiple shots, each one looking stranger than the next. Eventually, it all started to fade as it rose into the haze, and I left off at that point and headed back home.

Now, Pennsylvania is very far away from the West Coast. From what I have read, their fires were started by a number of means: the most infamous, a gender reveal party with pyrotechnics gone awry, but the most common being a car sending soot into dry vegetation, utility equipment sparking fires in remote areas, falling trees knocking down power lines, and dry lightning storms.

It was extremely hot and dry here in Pennsylvania for several months this past summer, so we have had some share of that sort of weather ourselves. The ultra-dry conditions we've been experiencing, and those in California, caused by extreme heat, have been linked to climate change. In a recent news story, the California governor warned, “California is America in fast forward; What we’re experiencing right now is coming to communities all across the country.”

I am no fan of climate change, or of fires that won't go out, and that send their smoke across a continent, and then even across an ocean, and on to Europe (yes, the smoke is expected to arrive on Europe's doorstep by this coming weekend). In case you had not noticed, this big blue marble we are floating on in space is one world, interconnected.

I admit that the atmospheric haze did make for some interesting photo ops, though, especially at sunrise and sunset. So here I stand, in Pennsylvania, photographing the bright orange sunrise through the smoke of distant fires we did not set.

The soundtrack is this one: Billy Joel, with We Didn't Start the Fire.