A Smoke Filled Summer

August 2018 Northwest Coast

I am starting a series of blogs here on how nature is changing due to our interference in the natural systems of this planet. I have followed climate change and population pressures on the delicately balanced ecosytems that make up the living skin of our planet for a long time. We are now heading into a very different world, one that will change more and more rapidly. A major extinction has already begun, but I will not focus on that. The landscape is my focus and what we are doing to it. There is always beauty out there, even if it is a scary kind of beautiful.      

Suave Island, just down river from Portland, OR.

Fires were burning in British Columbia, Northern California, and various places East of us as well. It was smaokey like this most days. You could smell the smoke from hundreds of miles away. 

High in the Olympics the air was even thicker with smoke. This made for amazing evening shots from Deer Park.

Looking East towards the mainland and eventually Seatle.

On the far west coast of the peninsula down in the valley of the Qweets River the smoke mixed with the coastal fog for days on end.

It was absolutely other worldly for most of the time I was there. These were very destructive fires. I feel this is part of our new norm in this rapidly changing climate that we have brought about.

The sunrises and sunsets were soft deep murky colors.

more on this subject to come.......