My friend Linda Raven Moore lives up Weaverville way. For those of you not in the know, Weaverville’s in the mountains west of Redding. It’s the county seat of Trinity County, which is the most rural county in the state. A large chunk of Trinity County is the Trinity Alps Wilderness, a stretch of land that has been left to be natural — there aren’t even roads through it. (All firefighting in the Wilderness has to be done by hand tools, that’s how strict they are about it.)

Needless to say, Trinity County is on fire at the moment. This is about what it looked like a day or so ago:

picture courtesy Linda Raven Moore

Linda’s got more pictures at her blog entries on the subject: Smoky Weaverville and Smoky Ride. They’re worth the time to look at all her pictures.

Actually, Linda’s blogs are worth the time in general. She’s got four of them: Raven’s Roads, her travel blog, Raven’s Rides, her motorcycle blog, Raven’s RV, about life in a motor home, and Raven’s Range, the general catchall blog. She’s a good writer, and a master of the photoessay. Check it out!

(In comments, my friend David says that things are clearing out a bit. It’s more smoky in Sacramento today. I’m staying in as much as possible.)

It’s ugly out there. This is a picture I just took about fifteen minutes ago, as the sun was going down here in Antelope, which is roughly twenty miles northeast of Sacramento proper. (I’m near Roseville, for those familiar with Sactown geography.)

The air’s been nasty all day. Every night, we hope it’ll get better as it clears enough to see stars in the sky. But the daytimes are just nasty. I had to take my mom into Roseville this afternoon, and our car doesn’t have air conditioning. My lungs are still feeling it. Every time I step out into the murky, ugly air, it starts to hurt to breathe. And I’m not in any sensitive group.

I’m in Sacramento. I can only imagine how bad it is in my old stomping grounds up in Redding, where there’s fires burning all around. I have vague memories of 1987, and stepping outside to see a blood red sun hanging in the air. My dad still has pictures somewhere.

Never expected I’d be snapping my own in Sactown, though.

A thousand fires. My lovely state is burning. And more dry lightning predicted.

And it’s only June.

That’s the scariest part.

(More sunset pictures on Flicker here.)