WHERE HAS ALL THE GOOD AIR GONE?
Rex Burress
Even though the air quality around Oroville, CA was “moderate” most of the summer even though smokey fires raged around the state in 2015, moderate is not as good as “good.” Moderate is better than “unhealthy,” but even so, there is enough particulate matter in the sky to produce a haze on the far horizon and some scratch in your eye.
“Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it,” and about everyone checks the daily weather forecast whether on the electronics or in the newspaper. On August 14, the sky seemed bluer and the air better than I had seen for a long time at Oroville. You could actually see Table Mountain without it being veiled in haze. Yet, the newspaper report indicated “today's air quality forecast” as being moderate for Chico, 25 miles from Oroville.
People look at the top line of temperatures first, but how often do you check out the fine print? Listed are such incidentals as “almanac, precipitation, extremes, lake levels, river levels, solunar table, sky watch, allergy report, AND, air quality forecast.” [Readings taken at the Enterprise-Record building in Chico through 5 p.m. yesterday.] Reading those statistics is as captivating as reading the baseball box scores...if you're a phenologist or a Giants fan.
Because of the one-day lag in the forecast, I rushed out at 5 a.m. on Saturday, August 15, to get the paper in order to see what happened on Friday the 14th. The first glance, of course, was the top line of 97 degrees for Saturday after Friday's high of 89. Then I could see that the whole United States map was redder [hotter]. But the air quality was still the same for Chico; moderate. What the brackets mean is: 0-50: Good, 51-100: Moderate, 101-150: Unhealthy for sensitive people, 151+: Unhealthy for all. When will we again see Butte County air that is Good below 50 ?
I also noticed that Death Valley, USA, was at 121 degrees, the hottest global reading, but the coldest was at Summit Station, Greenland, at minus three degrees! Trivia weather extremes.
When I came west from Missouri in 1957, I stopped overnight in Los Angeles on my way to Oakland. The air was so smoggy I gasped, and I seemed to be nearly asphyxiated before I could escape. It was better in the Bay Area, but still not as fresh as in the Midwest, even though MO air is spiked with summer heat and humidity, and so cold in the winter that your breath turns to frost.
Part of the key to good health is good air and good water. Where do you find good these days?
Generally, the Sierra foothills would seem like the best bet to rise above the Valley and Bay polluted places, and there have been times at Oakland summer camp near Quincy, CA when I have awakened to what seemed like the freshest, most invigorating air on earth. The pines and the rushing rapids of the Feather River watershed contribute to that mountain atmosphere, although a fire in the Feather River Canyon contaminated the camp in 2008, and many wooded retreats throughout the west have been invaded by smoke in the dreadful drought fires of 2015.
I have known some especially good atmospheric moments in idyllic locations. One that is memorably special hugs a cliff-side wooded shelf in a Mayamacas Mountain canyon west of St. Helena, CA. Among the redwoods, firs, and a grove of madrone trees, there is a gushing spring of sparkling cool water that is truly a fountain of life, and the clear air hovering in the heights fills your lungs with leaf-filtered freshness. When you find such a place, sit down and take your shoes off, breathe deeply, listen to the silence, and watch the wonders of life unfold around you. You have found paradise.
“Earth's crammed full of heaven, and every common bush is afire with God,
but only they who see take off their shoes; the rest walk around picking blackberries.”
--Elizabeth Browning
"Where have all the flowers gone,/long time ago..."
--Pete Seeger