Dating : North

I wake to the sound of calm, rippling waters slapping the rocks butted up against the lake banks.

Small specks of condensation dot the roof of my tent, but the air is thin and dry, the plant life sparse. A thriving forest transforming into a dying desert. Nothing like the Upper Midwest I’d known.

I cough blood. My throat feels scraped by pulverized charcoal. It hasn’t felt like this since Montana.

They said go east, so I went east. But it pushed in from the coast, attacked like a plague, an unstoppable swath of destruction.

We never saw it coming.

I pack my tent and stumble down the shoreline, and dip my cupped hands into the water. White bits of ash float along the surface.

Weightless flakes of white carbon land on my shoulders.

The murderous roar rises from the west.

It’ll find me here, too.

I stole a canoe from a store five miles south. It lay upside down in the parking lot, splashed with dry blood along its side. A rotting corpse spattered with bullet holes sheltered beneath it.

I push the canoe into the lake.

My movements are slow, painful, listless. My fingers lose the edge as the canoe floats into deeper waters.

I hurl myself onboard before it drifts away. The soft rock of the hull cradles me, easing my tense, feeble breaths.

The dampened gray skies drop soft, quiet flakes upon my face and fill my mouth with ash. I expel a brown crimson mush onto the canoe floor as a bloody paste cakes my lips.

The heat cranks up fast.
The faint remaining moisture fades away.
The roar rumbles through my head.

I grab the paddle, close my eyes, and focus on the slow, smooth resistance of the oar as it draws through the water. For a moment, I forget what’s coming for me.

Then I smell smoke.

I left Montana moments before The Great Fire swept across the state in a day. I never knew fire could run like this. No one did.

Heavy and thick, the smoke overtakes the lake and hides the inlet where a river resides that will drop me off somewhere in Canada.

I pull a photo of my son from my breast pocket, kiss his forehead, and put him away.

Rest up. I’ll see you soon.

The Great Fire rushes the shoreline, stretching its arms out along the banks like an overpowering army flanking its opponent to finish the battle. Or the war.

It dances along the banks, surrounding me on all sides, illuminating the inlet through the haze.

The sound of rippling water returns, brushing up against the rocks, holding back the raging inferno.

Between desperate gasps of thick, charred smoke, I cough pitch-black blood.

I quicken my strokes and paddle north.