Under the Shadow of Smoke

Two weeks ago, Sinéad and I were hiking in the mountains of southern Utah when we noticed a large dark cloud in the distance.

There wasn't another cloud in the sky.

Our eyes were burning and our throats were dry. We knew it was a fire. The details came later, when we caught up with the news.

The smoke was coming from the Cottonwood Fire near Beaver, Utah, about fifty miles away. It had already burned a vast area and was still out of control.

That column of smoke brought back a memory I had not thought about for many years.

In 2003, my son and I were driving home from a camping trip in the California desert. It wasn't long before we realised we were heading towards one of the biggest wildfires in California's history.

At first there was smoke.

Then flames.

Walls of fire climbed the hillsides. Aircraft passed overhead, dropping long red lines of fire retardant. Police sirens wailed around us. Traffic slowed, moved again, then slowed once more.

At times, it looked as though the fire was on both sides of the freeway.

Still, we kept driving.

I stayed in touch with Sinéad by phone. She was worried, but she trusted me to do the right thing. We wanted to get home. So we pressed on, taking detours whenever we had to keep clear of the flames.

Somehow, late that evening, we made it home.

There was relief in the house that night.

The next day work was cancelled. We were told to stay indoors. Even inside the house we could smell the fire. Outside, it was difficult to breathe. The California sun had faded behind an unnatural steel-grey sky.

A few miles inland, friends' homes were burning.

Ours did not. The fire never reached the coast where we live.

Others were not so fortunate.

Some people died trying to defend their homes. Others became trapped in cars on narrow roads while trying to escape. Wildcat Canyon and Harbison Canyon became names that people in San Diego County would never forget.

A few months later, when we started hiking again, the landscape had changed.

Many of our favourite trails remained closed.

Those that reopened felt strangely unfamiliar. Hills once covered with trees and brush lay bare and black. Beautiful forests had become rows of charred stumps. Ash crunched beneath our boots.

But it is the silence I remember most.

No birdsong.

No coyotes calling in the distance.

No lizard darting across the trail.

Nothing but the sound of our own footsteps.

It was impossible not to wonder about the deer, the cougars, the bobcats, the foxes, the snakes and all the other creatures that had called those hills home.

Nature returned, but slowly.

First came tiny green shoots through the ash. Then wildflowers. Then scrub. Finally the trees. Each year another small piece of the old landscape returned.

It took well over a decade for nature to recover fully, and even then the scars of the fires remained.

For many families, recovery took just as long.

Several people we knew lost their homes. Although the fires lasted only weeks, rebuilding homes and lives took far longer. Insurance took time. Government assistance took time. People rented rooms, stayed with relatives, filled out forms, waited, and slowly tried to put their lives back together.

At the time, I thought I had witnessed a disaster I would never see again in my lifetime.

I was wrong.

Standing beneath that cloud of smoke in Utah, I realised something had changed.

Wildfires no longer felt like rare events.

The same thing was happening across Europe.

France.

Spain.

Portugal.

Greece.

Families leaving villages carrying little more than they could hold.

Firefighters crossing national borders to help one another.

Tour de France spectators kept away because fire had reached the route.

Residents of Thessaloniki closing their windows against toxic smoke.

Countries on fire.

In August we are due to attend a family wedding in Portugal.

Along with confirming our flights and hotel, we'll be keeping a close eye on the weather and the wildfire risk.

I do not know what the landscapes of Utah, California, Portugal or Greece will look like twenty years from now.

I hope the beauty of nature will still be there.

The trees.

The birds.

The landscapes.

Not the smoke.

As we drove away from Utah, the smoke still hung over the mountains behind us.