Good Morning

The Writer, Vernon Wade

Vernon Wade is a poet, author and freelancer. He has been published in The Gorge Literary Journal, Dualsport Rider Magazine, Hack’d Magazine, The Sidecarist, ROB Magazine and The Hood River News.

The world fills him with wonder. When he looks at the sky he is lifted into flights of fancy, when he stares at the earth he is drawn beneath its surface. He is delighted to find the macrocosm and the microcosm equally mesmerizing.

8/13/26 6:45 56F (13.3C) AQI 84 smokey, no wind.

Smoke has returned to the valley. I can see it, I can smell it and I can taste it.

Just out of sight, beating propellers announce the passage of aircraft, probably water bombers behind the ridge.

There was a fire in the Gorge at Gorton Creek reported yesterday.

A cluster of fires southwest of Timothy Lake is growing, and there is a fire in Estacada.

The Grasshopper fire has grown to 80000 acres and slipped to 20% containment.

Friend and Dufur are threatened. Some houses have been lost.

Our fire season is directly linked to increasingly hot, dry summers

We’ve had a hundred years of warnings about pollution linked global warming.

Even faced with a decade of increased average summer temperatures and drought that has become a seasonal feature, there are people who cannot connect the dots.

Their red hats match the color of the morning sun struggling to shine through the wildfire haze.

Good morning.