My city is shrouded too, but it isn't fog. The smoke of eight hundred fires is covering our town, turning the light thick and orange. This isn't right. I know the fire-light, where you step outside and your town has turned to sepia and the smell of smoke sets off your body's alarms until you remember that it is fall and time for the mountains to burn. You look at the sky to be sure. If it is completely yellow, the fires are far. If it is blue and you see a plume, then you should probably try to locate a nearby fire. Or you can tell by the smell, because the wildfires smell like sage and oak and cedar burning. If you're downwind and close, ash wafts through to smudge your books. We're not close, it is just that the hundreds of miles of the Central Valley have filled with smoke. In June! This is terrible! Only June! The fires shouldn't start until August or September.
But Spring was dry, so our soils are parched and the winter grass is tinder already. Lightning struck us. My state is burning. My town is full of smoke. My eyes sting.