Snoqualmie

It may not be the end of days, but you wouldn't know to look at it.

I walked home yesterday watching the northeastern sky: smoky, reddish, impenetrable. Tuesday morning it was only a thin band of dark haze on the horizon, but now it's spread up, up, over the row houses and the smell is crinkling my nose.

One of the Indian architects remarked yesterday, "The Hindus believe that every thirty thousand years the world ends. It's all destroyed, and that's when Siva opens his eye, and then Rama makes it all over again. Millions of times."

Clear blue to the south, dull grey to the east, dirty orange to the north. I won't see that when I go home today, though; from my house the smoke covers every horizon and stretches up with diffuse fingers overhead. Would there be something wrong with saying it seems like a fitting tribute to 40,000 acres of hillside turned into cinders? Hills burn, world appears to be ending. Next at 11.