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Chris La Tray's avatar

This is beautiful, Annie. Thank you. It reminds me of when summer was my favorite season as well. I don't know when it changed to fall and winter. I remember summer seeming endless, and as a 4-H kid, the Big Ending was always the Western Montana Fair, when I would see kids I only saw then, and could run wildly unattended for the better part of a week. I never went to summer camp—the wide open fields around my house, and stands of pines, and irrigation water that would rise in the low places and form small ponds and swamps—those were my camp, and I would go completely feral in my solitude. So I was shaped by those experiences, and sleeping outside, and looking for Sputnik among the stars, and wondering about UFOs and cattle mutilations and all those great things from the 70s. On a summer day in 1977 my cousin and I saw three movies in one day—jumping the ropes between auditoriums at the end of each film—at the old tri-plex theater on Brooks: Viva Knievel, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Star Wars. Much as I loved Star Wars (everyone did) it was Dr. Moreau I loved most. I've written about this before and probably will again ... but I had plastic vampire teeth left over from Halloween, and I would run around in the wilds around the house with my two big dogs, imagining myself to be some half man/half beast superhero for the rest of the summer.

We've been lucky here in Missoula the last couple years, for the most part, as far as smoke goes, but we seem to be paying the price this year.

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Laura's avatar

I read this in bed this morning, and ended up sobbing in the bathroom while brushing my teeth. The climate grief is real.

I grew up in western New York and now live in southern California. Fall was always my favorite season, the bite of cold in the air, the changing colors, all thing spooky, the way it leads into the coziness and twinkle lights of the holidays, and of course the new beginning represented by a new school year. Fall is always the season of new beginnings for me to this day, even though we don't even really have fall where I live now. We have fire season and heat and dryness. My favorite SoCal season is spring, everything is green and cool and we earned it by putting up with the oppressive heat of the previous summer and the longer and longer fire season. A few weeks ago, I went for a hike during what should have still been spring. We got up to the top of a ridgeline and looked back at where we had started, only to see smoke billowing up just beyond the next ridge where we'd parked. And that is how I went for my first trail run. I made it back to my car and got out of there, but dang, things are not supposed to be on fire this early. It's not the fact of the fires. It's the ever increasing severity and destruction, and the fact that we can't seem to do anything about it, whether it's getting off of fossil fuels or simply providing adequate funding and support for firefighting efforts.

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