AQI

I have endured days of excessive heat, and I have lived through winters when temperatures never seemed to get out of the single digits. I have also enjoyed (“enjoyed” is the right word) blizzards that put down two feet of snow in a 24-hour period. Never, under any of those conditions, did I feel trapped in my house. I feel trapped now, and the reason, as everyone in the eastern third of the United States knows, is poor air quality caused by the fires in Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

I don’t really understand the air quality index (AQI), but I know that anything under 50 is considered safe. La Crosse’s number usually is less than 20, but this July, depending on the specific day, it has been anywhere from 50 to 160. La Crosse has actually been lucky in terms of air quality. On July 16, the number in Milwaukee exceeded 600, and this is on an AQI scale that only goes up to 500. When I tried to find out how a number could exceed the maximum, I discovered that the Environmental Protection Agency only measures up to 500 and then reports anything higher as “beyond index.” (I could be wrong, but the White House might be using a similar method to report Trump’s weight.)

I had a plan for the month of August, and that plan was to avoid anything that felt like an obligation. After returning from our trip to Maine, I was going to limit my activities to writing on my front porch, playing guitar, riding my bike, paddling, fishing, gardening, and taking evening walks with Manyu. Currently none of those pursuits, with the exception of the guitar, are advisable.

I shouldn’t be complaining about smoky air when there are people who are dealing directly with the fires. The news, at least the news coming from the mainstream national press, focuses on the smoke and tells me very little about the fires themselves. I have a personal interest in the wildfires either side of the Minnesota/Ontario border, and even they are being covered only by regional Twin Cities newspapers and tv stations.

So I, along with the rest of the Midwest, have hunkered down. My house has central air, and I will run it for as long as I need to. Even on bad days, nothing is so bad that I can’t step outside for short periods. I just shouldn’t assert myself physically. Exercising indoors during the summer is a poor substitute for long bike rides along the river, but I’ll be heading to the Y as soon as I finish a draft of this blog entry. I am going to relax this August – just not quite in the way that I had in mind.

(Two days after writing this blog, air quality in La Crosse temporarily improved, and I was able to ride my bicycle for a few days. The opportunity to exercise outdoors has alleviated my sense of confinement, but I don’t want to change anything I’ve written here. “Trapped” captured my sentiments when I wrote it, and I’ll probably feel that way again when the higher numbers return.)