Smoky Skyline

 

8/6/26 Skyline from Maple Leaf Park
(As easily as I use brightly colored Uglybooks for everyday sketches,
this is one time I wanted white paper. Fortunately, I always have a
Field Notes in my daily-carry.)

It was Day 4 of our smoky skies. Not nearly as bad as some smoke days we’ve had, when I could sketch the red sun with my bare eyes, it was still rated “unhealthy” by my air quality app. Still, like the previous three days, I went out for abbreviated fitness walks, telling myself I wouldn’t prolong exposure by sketching (and yet each time I did).

From Maple Leaf Park, I can usually see the city skyline distinctly, but behind the sickly yellow haze, it looked smudgy. Beyond that smoke, I knew the sky was blue, and it pained me to waste another beautiful day not being able to sketch outdoors.

But I can’t talk about pain. For that, we need to go to Spokane, where 700 homes and other structures have been lost, and 60,000 residents have had to evacuate to escape the blazes. This is no ordinary wildfire with natural causes, however; authorities now believe the source was arson.