Forest Fire Season and Shelves

That little red dot in the middle of the picture is the sun. It’s about as good of a shot of a celestial body as I ever manage, but it really doesn’t do it justice. You just cant see how eerie it is to live in a huge cloud of smoke.

It’s forest fire season here. Normally we get a bit of haze and the scent of campfire nine days old crops up randomly around town, but that’s about it. Now and then the smoke gets pretty thick. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been bounding between normal, and thick.

Yesterday, for example, we got a light sprinkle of rain, and a sun that looks like a shiny new penny. It’s a distinctive look that I have only ever seen when the forest fires are bad.

The smoke jumpers in Montana have been doing a great job. So far every flair up has been stomped out almost immediately. The smoke isn’t coming from local fires. It’s coming from Idaho. If past precedent holds, we can expect the skies to stay hazy until the first snow.

I’ve seen some white stuff come down, but so far it’s only been ash. Probably about Halloween it’ll get cold enough.

Meanwhile, I’m so proud of myself. I finally got around to making replacement shelves for the curio cabinet. It only took me a year to get around to it.