Fireworks

Midsummer heat with no air conditioning. Cars packed full of paddleboards and floats. Sunscreen slicks trail swimmers through the shallows.

Afternoons are a haze of Canadian wildfire skies, a world seen through gauze, prematurely pink and orange in the evenings.

Summer here starts on the 4th. Tourists descend in minivans pulling trailers far exceeding sane weight capacities. Beaches swell with sunburnt bodies. Every left turn is a trial of patience.

Locals skip the 4th. Skip the crowds, go for the fireworks show across the peninsula, on the 5th. I’m a stranger here myself, but over the hills and through the woods to another beach we go. And on the 5th, a reprieve from the smoke. The skies clear a little. The smoke we smell is from fires you can see and roast marshmallows beside, no more flood tide of bad forestry policy choking the air — at least for a day.

Waning light, cold water. The sun slowly sinks away behind the horizon. Children come in shivering, keep going back out, unable to waste the warmth of summer evenings.