Blue Skies

Sometimes the future is right in your backyard. The unusual hot, dry temperatures are causing havoc with the idyllic definition of summer here. Instead of the azure bright blue skies that the heat tended to bring us here in Western Washington, there is a pallid, sickly grey haze as a stark reminder of the wildfires burning in British Colombia, just a few hours north of us. The sun's light stares veiled and searing back at our parched grass and a noiseless breeze twirls down leaves of the deciduous trees that land in our pool, yellow and brittle as was it end October. Seasons now seem to come early, late, anyway, except the way they used to. Last night, at eleven o'clock, it was still 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Olympia. We ran the window fans all night to try to cool the house back down to 70 degrees by morning. It was instead 72 still at 6:30 a.m.
I have noticed an unsettling paucity of bees since the heatwave kicked in. The birds are silent, even at dawn. It feels like I am in a science - fiction scene, except it is real, each and every day. This is the driest spell for this time of the year here with more than 55 days without rain, and the hottest since 1951. It is hotter here in Olympia than it was in Texas this week. Adding to the unnerving weather patterns, where a friend of mine told me it was 37 degrees Celsius in Geneva today and the ferocious wildfire season my friends in Algeria are telling me about, there is the unhinging of the global political climate as well. It is like a Peter Sellers  movie, except the leaders are not imaginary Dr. Strangelove characters, but flesh and blood politicians who are drunk on ego and power, ready to destroy the world on a whim.
No wonder I enjoy my projects on writing about nature photography so much. Writing articles about  treasure troves of natural undisturbed beauty in North Africa is a welcome relief from all the madness that we have to swallow on a daily basis as so much bleak and polluted brain food.  We are all in this together. It is very unfortunate and let us hope it does not become tragically so, that a lot of our powerful world leaders want us to believe we should all hate each other, so they can line their coffers to overflow in the name of greed and corruption. Blue skies, nothing but blue skies, paint over dust and despair. I went inside and played the ELO soundtrack that has the song " Mr, Blue Sky ". It was a feeling of looking backwards into the future. I checked on my favorite Morning Glory flower, the bright lavender Blue Himalayan, and touched its sky blue petals. " Hey, there, Mr. Blue Sky, everybody is watching you "... once upon a time, in summers without burning skies.