Road trip in the time of plague and fire

Early June, we just had to get outside: the weather fine, the parks just one state away open for camping. And now we’re out here again: a car spewing PM 2.5 like any other affordable vehicle, tracing down the 101 while fires rage and, after six or seven months of quarantine, still skirting six-foot circles around masked strangers.

These are times I hope to keep as only a legend from memory: remember that one year when the world went mad? It has to be either that, or the very beginning of a curve on which we all learn to get much more communitarian and creative.