Smoky Summer

“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.” -- Blue Oyster Cult

“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” -- Joni Mitchell

“Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.” -- The Hollies

It was the summer of 2020 when Christine bought our first air purifier. We were living Eugene then and I was working at Bike Friday. That year the pollen in the Willamette Valley was particularly bad and my allergies were making me pretty miserable. We were living in a small duplex and Christine rightly figured that an air filter would let us make at least one room into a refuge of clearer air. The filter worked well and later, when the summer wild fires got close to Eugene and the smoke got thick, the filter again proved its worth. On some of the worst smoke days, I bike commuted to work wearing the 3M filter mask that I had, under more normal circumstances, been using to protect my lungs from fumes while brazing.

The fires, the pandemic, and various other factors convinced us that it was time to retire and relocate. In the fall of 2020 we bought the 1910 bungalow in Superior, Wisconsin that we have since dubbed “The Hunker Bunker” and in March of 2021, we moved here.

We fixed the place up, first installing a new roof and planting some flowers and trees, later adding a heat pump and a new furnace. I built a new porch for the house a few years ago. We still have work to do and our future plans include better insulation, new siding, rooftop solar and battery backup. But our Hunker Bunker is a snug refuge for us and Superior, Wisconsin has proven to be a wonderful place for us to live.

Yes, the winters are cold and snowy. We knew that when we moved here. I grew up about 25 miles from here in Cloquet, Minnesota and Christine and I met and fell in love in Duluth, which is just across the bridge from Superior. So we have warm clothes and spikes for our boots and while we might hunker down on the most bitter days, most of the time we get out and about just fine.

As Stroszek learned in the Werner Herzog film in which he is the title character, moving to Wisconsin does not automatically fix all problems. Fires in 2021 again filled the air with smoke and Christine bought some more filters for our place since the Hunker Bunker is quite a bit bigger than the little duplex back in Eugene. And while we got the heat pump primarily because it is more efficient for heating our place (we only use our gas furnace when the outside temps are below 25 degrees Fahrenheit), the heat pump also works as central air conditioning. We never had air conditioning when I was a kid growing up and often the breeze off Lake Superior is all the cooling we need, but the last few summers have had what seems like more than the usual share of brutal days and our heat pump has made the Hunker Bunker into a welcome oasis.

For most of the past week, the air here has been varying degrees of unhealthy and the temps have been high. We have been mostly staying home, reading books and I have been binge watching Werner Herzog movies on Kanopy. Our problems are minor compared to trying to drag a steamship over a mountain. I got my old filter mask out of storage and thanks to a Substack post by Jill Homer, I learned about little powered masks that combine a filter and blower with an N5 mask. Christine and I got a couple of those and they work great.

Willie Nelson said that there is no “normal” and that everybody is somebody else’s weirdo. I have never spent much time worrying about whether or not folks think I’m weird or not, I’m just doing what I can to get through these days. And the days may be getting weirder.

I wrote the other day that it feels like we are all living through the “This is fine” meme. It doesn’t feel fine, but I still think we can hunker down when we need to, get out when we can, and help each other get through this, whatever this is.