Blackened-Out
By Benjamin Catton. This story was collected as part of a 2023 open call for submissions. It is one of 17 stories that were selected to be published.
Wildfire smoke pushed us into the basement. We played Nintendo 64 from our bean bag chairs, and our parents didn’t shout at us to go outside. It was a hazard to our health. The windows were closed in mid-August heat. We didn’t have A/C, but at least the basement was cool. I recall the awe of those first, thick-smoke sunsets. You could actually stare at the sun! It was a Japanese flag. It was 2000 in Missoula and I was thirteen.
The next summer my Boy Scout Troop backpacked across the Anaconda-Pintler Range. It was a landscape of soot. A million tree spines stood like nude, charcoal pencils. Everything was glossy black. We spent seven nights out. When no parents were around, a few friends and I rolled a boulder from a steep, burnt ridgetop. Teenage curiosity.
“Look out BELOW!!!” The tire-sized boulder leapt and kicked like a bull trying to shake a rider as it tore down the steep slope. Miniature explosions of black dust burst from each point of contact it made with the mountain side. It hit one of the charcoal trees and blew a hole through the side of it. The brittle tree skeleton shuddered then toppled. We screamed and pumped our fists in delight. We launched dozens more boulders, assaulting the scorched earth.
The land was beginning to heal, and it was generous. I’ll probably never eat as many morels in my life. They were ever-present gifts to be found under the thousands of blackened yule logs. We paired them with trout.
The final day of our hike was to be a twenty-miler so that we’d qualify ourselves for a merit badge. The shiny, friable, shadowless expanse became a waterless hellscape when we missed a trail junction and added a half-dozen bonus miles onto our twenty miles. An intrepid mom became woozy with heat exhaustion. We exited the wilderness sooty as chimney sweepers and nearly as parched as the land itself.
I’ve orbited in and out of Missoula throughout my adult life, but after starting my own family, my wife and I decided to put roots down here once again. We moved back in June 2021, and the smoke settled into the valley shortly after we did. We found ourselves locked inside with the windows closed. Had we blacked-out this obvious environmental factor in deciding to move home? We constantly checked the weather to see what the air quality index indicated for the safety of our infant daughter. Can we go outside? Will she have asthma if we raise her here? we wondered in fear.
When it’s time, I hope to take her backpacking through the Pintlers. With any luck we’ll have a morel and trout dinner. Hopefully her lungs will be strong and clean. The land can heal, but we must strive for a culture that gives it a chance. A culture that gives our children a chance.
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Benjamin Catton is a high school teacher of English and Spanish. He is a born and raised Missoulian who graduated from UM, but who has spent most of his adult life out of the state. Benjamin moved back to Montana in June 2021 and is now raising his own family where three rivers meet.