Fire Season

As I sit here preparing my Friday Finds post at my loft desk this afternoon, branches from the 90' tall Locust Tree in my backyard are falling past the window out of the corner of my eye, and I can hear others hitting the roof above me. We're having another hot dry gusty summer wind storm that's ripping the branches off my trees and trashing my yard. 

And Idaho is on fire. 

Literally, on fire. 

National Interagency Fire Center Boise, Idaho

This is a map of all the wildfires burning in the U.S. yesterday, and all those black circles clustered up in the left hand corner are the wildfires burning in Idaho. Pretty scary map. The National Interagency Fire Center is based in Boise for a reason; we have a lot of fires in this area every year. But this is a lot, even for here. 

So this wind storm is bad news for more than just my trees. 

The big slow booming tanker planes fly low over our house from the Fire Center near the airport south of town heading to the forests and mountains all around us. The valley is white with smoke, and it smells like a campfire outside. 

A very huge campfire. 

A campfire the size of Idaho.