Wednesday, December 7, 2016

I've seen fire and I've seen rain.

Last week, I left my office around noon to run an errand. It was unseasonably warm, so I was startled to see that it was snowing. I reflexively held up my hand to catch the snowflakes and saw that it was actually ash falling steadily from the sky. This photo was the soot-covered hood of a white car parked next to me. The wildfires in the Smokies were rapidly spreading due to the drought.
The sky was, literally, brown. I did not alter this photo in any way.  In the end, almost two thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, 14 people died and another hundred or so were injured. Some 17,000 acres burned, in all.

On the day when it finally started raining, while our beautiful temperate rainforest was still ablaze, there were flash flood and tornado warnings for the surrounding area. And this is just my neck of the woods - I know that tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, floods, droughts, blizzards and ice storms have amped up everywhere. What are we doing to our world?

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