smoke, spacetime, and something else

We were supposed to go to Yosemite.

We—the four of us—Mom, Dad, my brother, and I, hopped a plane to California to spend two weeks on the West Coast. The grand rental car road trip through several national parks and a couple other famous sites. But mostly Yosemite. That was the highlight.

And then the fires forced the park to close. So we rearranged some things and thought maybe at the end of the week. Maybe we’ll still get the weekend.

No dice.

We booked a tiny Best Western just off the highway in middle of nowhere Nevada.

The road we were going to take to get there, just cutting across a small corner of the park, a kind ranger informed us, was closed. So we drove the long way.

We saw some of the fire. We don’t know which fire it was, if it was new or one of the existing ones, but there were flames and thick smoke glowing orange rising from the valley along the road.

Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and now it’s in the line of fire. There’s a metaphor here, about beauty from ashes, or the way fire clears and rejuvenates the forest.

Crater Lake National Park. The clearest, bluest lake in the world. You could hardly see it at all through the smoke, much less any sort of color. If you stand outside long enough, it starts burning in the back of your throat and stinging your eyes, like a campfire you can’t move away from. And you can’t see the lake.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, prestigious and established, a company that I’d give anything to work for, smoked out. Tours cancelled. Shows moved from giant outdoor theaters to the local high school, stripped of set and lighting and some neat effects.

Even on the highway, smoke hangs in the air like fog or haze, slowly wearing at your eyes and keeping visibility low. When you open the door to pump gas or run to the bathroom, you instantly smell the smoke. The locals and some anxious tourists wear masks like it were flu season.

It’s hung heavy on our whole trip. My mom has nicknamed it “the summer of almosts.”

We almost went to Yosemite. We almost saw Crater Lake. We almost saw the play outside.

Somewhere along the way, the smoke gave way to – or mingled with? – sea fog and our drive down the winding, rocky California coast was mostly views of thick white air with the occasional silhouette of a cliff. We almost saw the coast, even.

And we didn’t get to go to Yosemite. That was kind of the point of the trip.

But at the end of the day, I’m not sure it matters. For every would-be Yosemite, there was a greasy pizza in a restaurant in a town without cell service. For all the pictures of mountains and trees we sat on the couch, stayed up too late, and watched The Goldbergs. We helped each other out. We listened to the news in the car. We ate in tiny local diners where the waitresses knew the patrons and called me sweetheart. We laid on the pavement on an empty street at midnight to watch meteor showers. We went to the movies and ate too much popcorn. We laughed at and with each other.

The summer of almosts, for all it wasn’t, was an epic summer roadtrip with my family.

Maybe that’s classic optimism, looking on the bright side of a fire ravaging north California and ruining all our plans.

But it’s humbling, too. A very simple reminder that the little things matter too.

Relatedly, I took a class earlier this summer, back when I was still at school for the semester. It was an astronomy course, an easy way to knock out a science credit between rehearsals and shows.

It wasn’t that easy. I was expecting something like, “the Sun is a star. The planets orbit the Sun.” Instead, I spent several evenings reading about spacetime and quantum gravity and how really, we are all free-floating through space, following the curve created by objects around us. Black holes warp space and essentially stop time. There’s something breathtaking about the scope of it all. How everything is really just a bunch of excited vibrating particles, same in a pulsating, radioactive rock a million light years away as in my body. How maybe there is no way to determine whether we’re under the influence of a gravitational field or an accelerated frame of reference, but the speed of light is always the same (hence, relativity, as described by everyone’s favorite Albert Einstein). There are explanations for the idiosyncrasies of the sun and the moon and the slight discoloration of planets. We are an average planet orbiting an average star in an average solar system in an average galaxy.

Space is huge and sweeping and nearly infinite as we know it. Billions and billions of stars and planets and galaxies and a thousand things to know about them. We think dark matter exists but the only proof we have for it is its gravitational effect on the galaxy.

It makes me feel small, and grateful to be alive. In the scheme of things I don’t matter much at all.

Except for the fact that the very same God who designed the carbon-oxygen-nitrogen soup that keeps us breathing and timed out the orbit of comets sees me. There’s the verse about the sparrows – there are so many things in whole endless universe that have to be ordered and precise and still he cares about me.

He watches us theorize and build satellites and rovers and he created the space we’re exploring. He knows the stars by name. And yet he loves us.

It took almost failing a test on spacetime for me to think about that, just like it took toxic levels of smoke to make me remember that big, picturesque moments do not a vacation make.

Because the trip was awesome. We got to see unobstructed sequoia and redwood trees, visit Alcatraz and ride roller coasters.

We did get to see the cliffs of the coast along Highway 101. Love’s Labour’s Lost, an overlooked gem of a play, was hilarious and excellent even in a small high school auditorium.

I passed Astronomy, and by the end, appreciated Jesus more than I did when I started, even though I didn’t like the professor and her exams.

I spent time with some of my dearest friends and favorite people. Mostly in my living room or on random park benches by small creeks. It wasn’t grand by most definitions, but it was some of the best time of the summer. The sweetest moments were quiet ones.

I saw fireworks from above on an airplane, like ripples of light in a sea of black.

Small moments in rehearsal watching the show being built, writers writing, facilitating the buzz and crackle of talented and intelligent people making something people are going to see and respond to are more meaningful than shows sometimes.

It’s a new school year. I’ve lived here for a year now, I have friends I love and a routine that feels natural. I’m a little bit more surefooted when it comes to navigating college and adulthood and life. A little less bewildered and overwhelmed. There are big moments coming, I know. Things to look forward to and to celebrate.

But there are also small things tucked into harder things. Blessings in disguises, maybe you could call them. Like a smoked out vacation with some really sweet family bonding, or an awful class reminding you of the greatness of our God. Those are things worth looking for too. And when you – I – find them, paying a little more attention to them. Taking the good with the bad. However you want to say it.

Maybe you can dismiss this as just optimism, but I don’t think this is about a glass being half-full. That’s not my natural disposition. This summer has been a lesson in knowing that there is always a glass. And is holding water. That’s the thing to remember. Despite smoke, or ridiculously specific exam questions, or whatever else is thrown at us. There are still good things.