Passive Smoke, Sharing Tragedy

Later on Sunday the weather changed, and a strong, hot wind blew to near gale force at times, first bringing with it the heat of dry Central Otago, then, by afternoon, the sky thickened, clouds lost their boundaries, touched, joined, and merged into a mantling orange lens. The sun lost its light. Not entirely, but enough to make some of our rooms have a Rembrandt like ambience at 4pm on a summer afternoon. We felt anxious, hot, weighed down by it all, and the temperatures climbed with that ever present gusting wind.

News of killing bush fires in Australia came over the radio through the day. More than 70 dead. A village destroyed. The smoke reaches to us, high in our bit of sky.

We think of our friends and family in Australia, and all those people who we don't know there.