B Flat

Why does life sometimes speed up to such a frantic pace? If my life was a heart it’d likely need a pacemaker to even it out.

The last few weeks Yellowknife has been allowing residents to slowly trickle back home. The essential people went first to get all the public services running and prepared for the nonessential people. Then others began slowly wending their way home from all corners of the province and wherever else they’d been. It seems every day there are a variety of NWT license-plated vehicles travelling through town. I’m happy for them. Being displaced from your home for 3-5 weeks is neither fun nor for the faint of heart. If you are faint of heart a pacemaker might help, tho.

Last night we had a couple lively old ladies stay night—one 75 and one 81—on their way home to Hay River and Fort Smith. They’d been sharing a hotel room in Grande Prairie for the past five weeks, so were understandably quite excited to be only a few hours from home. It was heartwarming.

Autumn is in full-swing in our part of the earth. This year our Aspen trees are displaying their usual shades of drab brown and golden yellow accompanied by vivid oranges and brilliant reds, so that’s pretty cool. We don’t get reds and oranges every year, except at Christmas—then we get mandarin oranges, and my little girl loves oranges. Perhaps the colour was influenced by the sheer amount of smoke we’ve had this summer? Regardless, it’s beautiful, and observing the kaleidoscopic colours fills my heart with joy.

Speaking of smoke, that’s about all we breathe these days. It rolls in and out like the tides of some clumsily overweight ethereal ocean. Some days it’s clear and beautiful and the next day you can taste the smoke—if you’re a mouth breather, that is. Yesterday afternoon the streetlights were turning on before 5pm because of how thickly the smoke had rolled into town. Heartless old fires, anyway, smoking in areas clearly designated nonsmoking.

And so much ash. Whole pine needles and aspen leaves come floating down, completely charred and turned to white ash, yet all in one piece. We have literal drifts of ash on our driveway and on our vehicles. Maybe everything will grow heartier next year with all this ash.

The reason for the ash. A fire has flared up to the west of us near Rainbow Lake, again, but this time it’s burning towards the main power transmission line that supplies our entire county. Our county is larger than New Brunswick, but our population is only between 20-30,000. If this line burns we could be out of power for 2-3 weeks. Life may only get more exciting in the near future.

We may need some sort of pacemakers to keep life at a livable speed so we can catch our breath if it weren’t so smoky All the Time. My heart burns. Oh wait, that’s my lungs.