I have a morning routine as you likely do: avoid the orange cat trying to get between my feet as I enter the bathroom, turn on coffee, ablutions, dress, turn on endtable light, open sliding door onto the balcony to assess photography potential for sunrise, and pour coffee.
It was when I did the next to last step that I stopped dead in my tracks: why on earth am I smelling something burning? I mean it was a full on slap of smokey air when the door slid open. The orange cat, whose morning routine is to check out the deck, avoided the door entirely this morning.
I had wondered over the past couple of days if the air wasn’t rather hazy or even smokey. The Annapolis-Beltway environs are usually pretty awful for air quality by mid-July but that is a ways off. It’s still fresh in the mornings and we were still in the 70s as of yesterday.
Then I recalled musing about this with my son day before yesterday. He responded immediately: it was the fires in Canada. Oh, right. I do recall seeing something in the Times Tuesday about a fire in Nova Scotia belching a lot of dark smoke. I did not recall the cause of the fire but the photo accompanying the story impressed me.
But that is Canada and severanl hundred miles north of here, the opposite of the direction the Gulf Stream (and probably resulting winds) flow, right? I guess not.
An evoluationary biologist would think in these terms. His field considers systems to include migrations of all sorts of beings and factors as the norm, rather than something we ought stop based on political determinations. His focus is on the systemic interactions and associated affects while mine is on human behaviour; quite different approaches to the same question of what about the smoke.
Indeed, I suspect we want the good biological agents, be they animal or plant, to come to us from Mexico, Canada, Russia, or even Iran. We don’t want the bad stuff, of course, but we really don’t focus on stopping that type of migration all that often. but we don’t want nefarioius stuff coming in Mexican or Canadian water, plants, bugs, or anything else..
Indeed, some things can’t be stopped such as nuclear eminations but those are not biological, of course.
What I find fascinating about my realisation of smoke was how readily we as people most hear a focus on stopping people while forgetting to consider the ongoing dailly reality of additional migrations, be they smoke or water or bugs; we can only address their arrival and plan for the future. Yet for someone with pulmonary problems, this fire in Canada does pose some risks.
We have a number of invasive species, particularly from far continents, which are eating various species to our dismay. I am not clear, however, how carefully we try preventing their arrival. I know we inspect goods arriving in the United States but it’s an incredible amount of trade, thus an unbelievably big task to prevent unwelcome beings. Should we just seal the border to stop all trade instead? Certainly a plausible scenario, I suppose, if we don’t think we can adjust.
One way to consider it is to recognise that we don’t evaluate the risks that migrations beyond humans present nearly as frequently, if at all, as we do those of men and women. Yet, the risks matter differently to each population—animal, plant, or human—in significant ways.
The natural world presents us some interesting lessons. I am considering them anew in light of my realisation this morning.FIN