Fire in the Sky
Clarksville, MD
2024, Junior, Creative Writing
It was the last day of school, and there was fire in the sky.
It was the day school let out for summer, four quarters worth of pain disappearing into the warm air. It was the day that I would leave for Sweden, and I had two hours before we packed the car and headed to the airport.
The day felt unreal, like a dream, the way the last day of school always did. It had been a whirlwind of yearbook signing and tearful goodbyes from our teachers. I sat through it all numbly, half-mournful, half-excited.
Seventh grade had been by far the best year of middle school so far. I finally had friends, and I had finally gotten comfortable with the school. It all felt new and fresh enough to be exciting, but familiar enough to feel like home.
And next year, I would be in eighth grade, and it would be my last year. I was excited for high school, of course, with the two-floored building and probably some cute boys. Still, I felt like I had just shaken off elementary school, and I was supposed to get over middle school now, too?
On the news, I saw the pictures of the Canadian wildfires. They looked terrible. Gigantic swaths of forest burning. From the air, they looked like tiny patches, maybe as big as my neighborhood.
But people lived there. And so did animals and plants. Now, it was all a big, thick blanket of dust.
I couldn’t fathom that, or even begin to relate. I lived in Maryland, a sleepy little state on the East Coast where nothing ever happened.
All on the news, I had heard of more disasters. Volcanoes in Iceland, floods in Pakistan, heatwaves in China, and everything in between (Ramirez, CNN, 2023). Even close to home, the cherry blossoms in DC had bloomed earlier than ever before recorded (Cherry Blossom Watch, 2023).
I was worried. It felt like the world was ending. It always had, for as long as I had been alive. Climate change, wars, political crises… I had watched the Capitol riots on live TV, after all. But this was different.
For the first time, the fact that the world as we knew it might end when I was alive was as real as the smoky air I breathed in that day. I called it the poisonous air jokingly, and at school, we made jokes about Canada finally sticking it to us Americans. It was our way of rationalizing it, of trying to make it seem normal.
But I had been alive for twelve years at that point, and I had never seen anything like this. From the looks on teachers’ faces as they told us recess would be indoors that day, I knew they hadn’t either. And they had been alive for a lot longer than I had.
The sky had a strange haze to it. I couldn’t put it in writing then, and I can’t now, either. It was like nothing I had ever seen.
Saying goodbye to my friends for the summer and boarding the bus, clutching my heavy viola case, I felt like I was in the opening scene of an post-apocalyptic movie. The scene that was set in the long-ago year of 2023, telling the audience how the world had come to look like the ruins that would be shown next. I breathed into my shirt as much as I could.
Sweden awaited, so after waving goodbye to my friends, I headed home. The smoky gray of the sky loomed overhead. The air hurt my lungs. I don’t know if it really did, or if I imagined it, but in any case, I was glad when I got home.
Immediately, I closed all the windows. Ah. That was much better.
I searched up world news, like I do every day. I like to stay on top of what happens on planet Earth. Burning trees and flooded streets were splattered all over the front page. I scrolled through an article that contained the week in pictures.
All kinds of sickening sights, including a New York City sky that was completely blood red (Gabriel, FOX, 2023). I wasn’t religious and never had been, but it looked something like how I imagined Hell.
I wanted to do something about it. What, was I just supposed to sit by while my planet burned and died? This was where I lived, and where I would live for the rest of my life. Even if Elon Musk did terraform Mars, I knew I could never leave behind the place I was born to rot while I started a new life.
I felt so powerless. What could I do, anyway? I was just a kid. I could barely pass Algebra, let alone save the planet. Then I thought of Greta Thunberg in Sweden, not much older than I was when she started her advocacy, protesting and even getting arrested because she wanted change (Foster, Sebastian, CNN, 2023).
I couldn’t do that. But maybe I could start somewhere.
As I did a final check of all my bags and my mom yelled at me to hurry up before we missed my flight, I stood in my room and glanced back at the window.
There was fire in the sky.
Works Cited
https://cherryblossomwatch.com/2023-cherry-blossoms/#:~:text=Peak%20bloom%20was%20March%2023,cooler%20March%20slowed%20progress%20down.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/world/extreme-weather-events-climate-change/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/uk/greta-thunberg-arrest-london-climate-intl/index.html#:~:text=Greta%20Thunberg%20arrested%20at%20oil%20conference%20in%20London%2C%20eyewitnesses%20tell%20CNN,-By%20Tom%20Foster&text=Greta%20Thunberg%20was%20arrested%20at,on%20Tuesday%2C%20eyewitnesses%20told%20CNN.
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/photos-wildfire-smoke-new-york-city-northeast
Reflection
My own personal experiences with local weather changes last year inspired my work. It was very startling to see and served as a stark reminder of the climate crisis. I've always been an avid reader, and somewhere down the line, I decided I wanted to write the stories I wanted to read, but that no one else would tell. The process of writing makes me really happy, to see something in my mind come to life on paper. The process of writing this piece made me feel rather somber and sad, but also hopeful, since I know something can be done. My message to readers of my writing is that the climate crisis can be fixed, but only if we all do our part and petition our governments to do theirs. In my community, we can take steps to create petitions for climate change action, create education programs to teach others, and engage in community efforts such as creating rain gardens to limit run-off into the local bay.