Wishing for Winter

It’s not often that Montanans look forward to winter.

Usually there’s no need to look forward to it because it’s always just behind the bend.  A popular Montana idiom is that we ordinarily enjoy about 9 months of winter and 3 months of bad skiing.  This year has been anything but ordinary though, and it has many of us wishing for an early snow.  Spring, summer, and fall are generally our reprieve—this year, it’s just the opposite.

Our entire state has been on fire for months along with several of our neighboring states like Colorado, Washington, and Idaho, to name a few.  Residents have lost homes, and many families are still on emergency evacuation notice.  For those of us who own livestock and horses, evacuation is a particularly threatening thought. An immediate evacuation order can sometimes mean one frantic trailer load of animals at maximum, when several loads would be needed to bring them all to safety.  Luckily, community is a vital aspect of everyday living in rural areas of Montana, and neighbors living in unaffected areas are often willing to offer temporary sanctuary for animals endangered by the wildfire.

In Montana alone, there have been about 7 million tonsof emissions from the wildfires this season.  When there’s not a major local fire pumping ash and soot into our crystal blue skies, wind patterns push smoke in from other states.  The thick layer of smoke and soot is creating an extremely eerie and ominous-looking effect of an artificial horizon above the mountains that the now crimson sun sets into.  The unique environmental conditions these fires are creating make for some pretty spectacular photos, but most of us can’t wait for our bitterly cold, spellbindingly beautiful, and generally smoke-free Montana winter.

We’ll skip the autumn leaves and the pumpkins this time in return for some more breathable air.