August 6

In Fairbanks, cutting through thick & rolling smoke to find it was raining ash. Again. Unlike the fine silicate powder of the volcanic eruption down in Homer, this was just floating specks of ember, just discernible through the haze. Fairbanks eerily night-black at ten o’clock. Maybe a hundred feet of visibility, fires on every side breathing smoke down into the valley where I had intended to camp & fish, testing a new fly or two. There was a health advisory issued involving a carbon monoxide warning. I had noticed already a sore throat, some discomfort in my eyes, a suggestion of wheeze. Got my groceries & turned back towards Denali, arriving back at one thirty this morning instead, where it has been steadily raining ever since, the air clay-cold, the fireweeds blazing autumnal & the lupine giving out in frail whitening pedals against the lowering temperatures. All of this change, & me in it, some fetch stick floating untended down a silty river. There are times you claw & kick against your fate, rail against it in a rage. There are times you feel its blessing in your marrow, when you bid it stay & welcome. & there are times you tire & weary of wrestling with it & stand gasping for awe, no word to clothe it. It is not enough, but sometimes it is all one can do.

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