Blue sky to my left, storm clouds on my mind.

[October 4, 2023]

It’s hard to be fussed about the warm weather when I’m sipping an iced americano on a tree-shaded backyard patio, wearing very little clothing, days before Thanksgiving.

I’m a summer child through and through, and like many Torontonians, I’m soaking in every last drop of sunshine and leave-home-without-layers weather before the inevitable dark drag of winter — AKA most of the year.

The number of times “I’m moving to Mexico” has left my lips (mine and everyone else’s) is innumerable, and yet, I stay. Family and friends keep me here, but so does the pure ecstatic joy of our short and sweet summers that only the endurance of 6 months of SADness, painful air, and forced hibernation can induce. 

Mexico is a cotton candy golden hour waves crashing forest stumbling dream. I didn’t move here, but in 2 2-week visits fell completely in love.

It’s also hard to be fussed about these bonus weeks of warm weather, especially when we had precious summer days robbed from us earlier in the season. For those of us living in our Toronto bubble, we could consider ourselves lucky for the relatively low number of days we had to avoid the outdoors. 

In June, we were introduced to the air quality index; a “new” phenomenon to add to our obsessive weather checks. We’ve been warned of staying too long outdoors due to extreme cold and heat, but never in my 30+ years living in this exhaust fume-filled metropolis have I been unable to step outside or walk around the block for a relieving breath of fresh air (with maybe the exception of the garbage strike in 2009).

We now apparently have a “wildfire season” across Canada. Something previously only reserved for the west coast and more densely forested areas has now spread far and wide, coast to coast to coast, rendering our True North weak and trapped. I distinctly remember revelling in the campfire scented air the morning of June 6, until it hit me that it was actually the smell of living, breathing beings — plant and animal — burning prematurely and out of control. 

As many news outlets have dubbed it, Summer 2023 was the “Summer of Climate Reckoning.” While resonant, I resent this phrase that has become easily rolled off reporters’ tongues without sufficient follow up on the true, root causes and solutions to the crisis which has (surprise!) arrived sooner than predicted. 

As the child of two perpetually late parents, I’ve always considered early arrivals inconvenient, but can you blame the crisis for its tactless timing when, collectively (systemically), our convenience-first consumption, excessive travel, wastefulness, planned obsolescence, and the myriad interconnected injustices have practically hand-delivered the invitation? 

With each of the smoky, hazy days this summer, I caught a glimpse of my worst nightmare: not being able to be outside. When I’d imagined the actualization of the climate crisis in Toronto in years past, I pictured extreme, but acute, disasters (not unlike the flooding we just witnessed in NYC, the blistering heat waves in Europe, or the freak out-of-season hail and snowstorms in Texas). 

Admittedly, I was comforted by the geography of Toronto and the assumption that I’d be long gone by the time these events actually drowned the city or made it unliveable. Sure, I imagined that we’d all be confined to space-age, climate-controlled domes — with our increasing reliance on artificial temperature control, online shopping, AI, and social media as replacement for in-person interaction, isn’t that what we’ve been training for this whole century?

And, while I haven’t sat back and relied on this comfort as replacement for individual action and civic engagement (I wash my peanut butter jars for recycling, email my political representatives, join marches and protests, etc.,), I didn’t actually think until this summer that my generation would suffer the consequences. 

This year, smoke threatened to block blue skies, electric sunsets, full moons, and clean, crisp air. Dry conditions forced out a favourite fiery camping pastime — s’mores were only enjoyed sparingly. Yet, the universe gifted us abundant luck in the form of good weather. I was able to experience some truly special places that metaphorically screamed the call of nature’s beauty.

In Killarney Provincial Park, we had five gorgeous, crisply clear days of paddling, portaging, and rock-laying, complemented by nights illuminated by the light of the moon and the calls of loons.

The less-local looming peaks and lakes of the Tatra mountains near Zakopane, Poland, gifted me a rare sense of belonging in the country of my ancestors. 

As often as I could, I embraced moments of stillness to breathe in the spectacular beauty, sparkling sunlight, warming rays, and refreshing breezes lent to us by Mother Nature. Never once forgetting that these gifts are on-loan; they’re temporary, and we’re not entitled to them. As painful as it is, we might not enjoy these natural blessings in the near future. Our never-ending winter may become literal in its gloom and darkness. 

Near Gordon Lightfoot’s birthplace of Orillia, ‘Sundown’ soundtracked west-facing evenings in the shadow of cedars, and star-gazing was a nightly activity.

It’s realizations like this that drive me; that this paradise we call home might cease to invite us to her lakes, forests, mountains, or sandy shores. A world where outside may not be liveable, that might confine us to artificial elements, is not a world I want to exist in.

And that’s just us lucky ones in our Toronto bubble. 

We need to address the root causes of the climate crisis (capitalism, colonialism) so — in addition to protecting the health of our planet — we can continue to:

  • Bathe in the setting sun’s glimmers on the lake at golden hour

  • Watch the blood orange moon rise over the pines

  • Breathe in the scent of real campfire

  • Gaze at glittering stars shooting across an inky sky

  • Listen to and learn the language of loons

  • Feel the sand hold you softly as you bust a move under sky of cotton candy

  • Frolic through sun-streaked fields of wildflowers in the mountains

*this was written on October 4, 2023. Wow, we had no clue what was coming. I believe a free Palestine will liberate us all, including the Earth, from the death grip of destructive colonization.