From The Atlanta Journal Constitution
By Cynthia Tucker

There is an old spiritual with a line that goes like this:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but the fire next time.

I used to think that was a bit of overwrought lyricism from the minds of a people who read the Bible too literally. Or maybe it was just another expression of humankind’s eternal obsession with fire, bound up with our earliest attempts at community: light, warmth, cooked meat, death, destruction, all associated with flame.

But lately, as my eyes burn and my clothes reek from the smoke of wildfires raging 250 miles away, I’ve begun thinking about the line in that old spiritual differently. Maybe those long-dead lyricists were prescient after all. Maybe we’ve already struck a match to the planet and lit a conflagration that will consume us. We’ve been careless — very careless — with this sphere we call home.

The wildfires have burned for 45 days and consumed more than a half-million acres. Winds blow the smoke right through my bedroom windows, where I awoke one recent morning thinking a house was aflame in my neighborhood.

Last weekend, I didn’t consider jogging or playing tennis or even sitting on my front porch with a glass of lemonade. My eyes water, and my sinus passages ache even when I’m indoors. How utterly miserable it must be for the residents of Waycross and Race Pond and Fargo, who struggle to breathe even as they cope with fear, uncertainty and loss.

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