masks, pt. i

One summer when I was a kid, the wildfires drove everyone out of our hometown. It felt so sudden: one day everything was fine, I was out playing in the fields of sagebrush and tumbleweeds with my friends, and then I came home and my father made me put on a mask and my mother thrust a bag of my things into my arms. "We have to leave," she told me, and we did. We drove for what seemed an eternity (all trips last forever when you're a child), stopping at the occasional rest area on the way out.

My memory of the trip, as childhood memories often are, is hazy, a series of images and feelings: everyone wearing masks at the rest area; the sky filled with smoke; a sickly sun shining through the haze; my eyes burning; my parents chastising me when I fidgeted with the mask. We stayed at a motel in a town I don't remember, somewhere that was supposed to be safe from the fires for the time being--I remember that very clearly, my father on the phone with someone, saying in hushed tones, "We're safe here for the time being."

That night when they had both gone to sleep, I stole the room key and went outside without the mask on and just walked around--some foolish gesture of defiance, I suppose, or maybe just restlessness and a longing to still be spending my summer under the sky. I could feel the smoke in the air almost immediately, making my lungs hurt and my breathing shallow.

We drove on from there, further from the smoke, until we stopped seeing people in masks and the sun shone bright and clear, and the confusion and uncertainty faded into a dull tedium. But that sensation of not being able to trust the air stuck with me long after the smoke had cleared.