In Crater Lake National Park I began hoping that wildfires wouldn’t end our 4000 mile road-trip early. Our five- and three- year olds in the backseat had both noticed the smoke getting thicker outside their windows. My husband and I noticed out of our windows that we were driving past more overflowing fire-camps, trucks full of firefighters, and flashing traffic signs. This is vacation. Relax, I reminded myself. Surely, they wouldn’t have let us into the park if the fires were really bad. Right? Oh good lord, I hope we don’t make the front page of any newspapers tomorrow.  

            Hope requires imagination. I could not hope to escape making news without first imagining a polished and published front page, complete with a photo of our four ash-smeared faces.

            We were lucky and saw zero flames in Crater Lake National Park. We also barely saw the actual lake because of all the smoke, but I won’t complain because we did NOT make news that day. Rather, today I am content to remember what it was like in the summer, driving up to West Rim Drive and peering blindly down into the smoky haze, knowing that far below us lay the world’s clearest lake.  Hidden down in that dark crater, something great was waiting for clearing winds to blow. I hope to see it someday.

            Because…

            …the clearing winds will blow, right? We really need them. Those winds need to clear out more than just the smoke at Crater Lake. There is some big-time clearing needed all over: there is stale air in Washington DC where the patriarchy remains on super-vitamins and on Facebook where the soapboxes are for real. Fresh winds are needed because people can’t afford insulin, or food for their kids, or rent in the bitter-cold winter. The threat of darkness needs to be cleared from the unending threats to our public lands; like my beloved BoundaryWaters Canoe Area Wilderness, where the threat of catastrophic mining grows. Smoke needs to be cleared from suffocating discrimination; racism, sexism, classism, binary-thinking, ageism, and on and on. I hope fresh winds will blow. And I am not alone.

            We all hope for fresh winds, because we have all imagined a better world. You have surely imagined summer’s warmth while the snow falls. You’ve imagined that your kids and their friends might someday be smarter and kinder than you. You’ve imagined a world without homeless men and women holding signs at intersections.  You’ve imagined listening to the news without cringing. We hope for fresh winds, a better world, a light that shines in the darkness. We can almost see it, in our imaginations..  

            It’s dark out there. And we’re all waiting for something great. So let’s wander out there into the dark, freezing- and occasionally smoky- world together, full of hope, our imaginations overflowing.