JASPER – I just finished work around 6 p.m. Monday.
My partner, Tessa Nunn, and I took a drive to Cottonwood Slough, a typically quiet place where one can quickly escape for some peace. Tessa is an exceptional painter, and she had already finished her work on a commission – a book cover – for the day.
This drive was something that, in previous months, we had taken to as a daily practice to help me decompress from work.
The visits to the Slough also gave our beautiful cat, Princess, a chance to walk around in nature. Even though Princess passed a few months ago, we were still taking this drive. We often took her ashes in a spice jar with us.
The heat wave of the previous several days stopped us from it, however – it was too bloody hot outside. Since Monday was the last day the heat would be 30 Celsius, we decided to take the drive again.
Smoke had come through Jasper that day, drifting from wildfires in northern Alberta, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories, as I learned from checking a satellite map on the internet.
It wasn’t so bad we couldn’t be outside though. Tessa is highly sensitive to environmental contaminants, chemicals, and particles. She was studying for her Masters in Fine Art in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. She not only witnessed the events, she spent the remainder of her school year in the proximity of Ground Zero as all of the fallout and turmoil mingled in the very air she breathed. She lost her hearing from it.
At Cottonwood Slough, we sat on a patch of moss for half-an-hour or so before moseying back to the truck. We heard distant thunder and thought how nice it would be to get some precipitation. There had been lots of rain, it seemed, from spring to mid-June, but the last weeks were dry. It was now far too hot and far too dry.
I told Tessa there were two illegal campfires in Jasper National Park over the weekend, despite the hazardous conditions and the very well-publicized complete fire ban.
Driving back home, we saw a fire truck lighting up from the fire station, and a firefighter getting into his white Jasper Fire Department pick-up truck. Tessa and I looked at each other, figuring it for another accident on the highway, and sending our best wishes no one was seriously hurt.
At home, we ate our supper on our patio, enjoying the lateness as the sun started to drift lower, allowing the shade of the mountains to settle some coolness down. Not much of it came but a gust of wind shook past, rattling tree branches, blowing already dead, dry leaves adrift.
A bug landed on my plate and I moved my thumb to brush it off.
It wasn’t a bug. A streak of black smudged my skin.
A bit of ash fell on my plate.
I figured a neighbour was having a fire in his firepit.
Clearing up the dishes inside, our attentions were quickly drawn to a growing line of traffic coming into town. Our flat is on Connaught Drive on the 800 block, a 700-metre stretch straight down the road to the western connection with Highway 16.
That traffic was setting up a line to go into the gas station, two blocks in the other direction.
The wind must have knocked down some trees at a campsite, I figured. I stood at the fence line to get a photo, thinking that a story would probably come of it for the Fitzhugh.
Some passing Danish tourists asked me if I knew what was going on. They walked off in the direction of the Mount Robson Inn and the Maligne Lodge, the last hotels before heading out of town. I went back to the front door, thinking I should check the internet.
This is the first part of Hayes' personal account of being evacuated from Jasper. The next part will soon be published.
