Journal: News & Comment

Takin' it back

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UPDATE: Alastair reports that it's a fire at Burns Bog in Delta, which would explain it. Here's a photo, a map of the area it's happening, and more from Flickr. Dang.

Today, after I came home with the kids from the mall, my wife and I were briefly out on our back porch. I sniffed the air.

"Hmm," I said, "smells like leaf burning day."

There are only two problems with that:

1. It's not yet autumn, and the leaves haven't fallen.
2. Municipalities in Greater Vancouver have prohibited domestic burning of leaves for more than 20 years.

I'm not sure what the source of the smell was, but leaf burning is distinctive. It had been so long since I had smelled it that both my wife and I immediately recalled our childhoods in the '70s, when there were prescribed days for leaf burning in the fall—days on which the sky was often blue with haze, and acridly sweet.

Good thing I didn't have asthma, I guess. It was nice to have a pleasant memory today, rather than an unpleasant one.

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