For the love of the trees

July 4, 2026

I wake up each day with anticipation. Will the sky be brilliant, sparkling Colorado blue? The sky I remember stirring awe within me when I first came to visit Fort Lewis College in Colorado with my dad in 1993.

We marveled at its consistent beauty. It was striking. The blue, blue sky and the friendly people I met on that college tour helped me make the life-altering decision to move to Colorado for college from Southern California the following year. I’ve lived here ever since. 

The daily ritual of looking out the window, marveling at nature and especially the sky on a bluebird day, fills me with gratitude and a feeling of abundance. Even when I didn’t have so much, I felt the incredible value of nature as an asset to be safeguarded and treasured. I know any of you who have been here more than six years remember this sky, you know this sky, and you desperately miss it. It comes and it goes these days. It goes. Lover, please stay, I pray looking at the blue turn to brown haze again. But, just like a lover who loves us, but has been mistreated year after year after year, it goes. And, she has every right to go. We’ve treated our planet like a garbage dump and elect leaders who dismantle and disregard our hard-fought safeguards for the environment. Why? Do we not love her? Our earth. Our home. 

Since at least 2020, summer in Aspen has become a constant vigil. Will the sky be blue or brown? We wait. We pray. The optimal real estate on my smartphone screen is covered in weather, air quality and fire apps. I hear the “ding” of the Watch Duty App all too often. It triggers a dreadful response. Another fire. How close? How big? Is it contained? Can I host the retreat I’ve planned for 40 caregivers in the wilderness beyond Reudi? Is it safe? Should we all just stay home? Do you have your Go Bag packed? Copies of all your important documents and pictures? Are you insured? Can you even get insurance anymore?

We live amidst brown smoke billowing from fires burning all over the West — from California, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Colorado — our wild places are burning. Our towns and cities burn. Nobody is surprised. This is the “new normal.” 

According to several articles I researched in The Aspen Times, Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism, persistent summer wildfire smoke became a widely accepted “new normal” in Aspen around 2020. That year marked a turning point defined by extreme regional megafires, severe drought and record-breaking smoke waves that have since kept summer skies hazy, creating more “smoke days” than ever.

We know this. We feel this. We live this. All of this is predicted to get worse, not better. Ouch. She walked out on us. She’s given us plenty of chances. Sorry kids.  

One of the talks I attended at Aspen Ideas Festival last week was titled, “Should a River Have Rights?” Maybe there is some hope, however narrow, in our courts coming to defend the Earth? As the current administration dismantles and ignores hard-fought and essential environmental legislation, it seems unlikely, but perhaps if we all wake up to the preciousness of our Colorado blue skies and our wild and free rivers, we will understand that we must only elect people who put all people’s health and the environment first. The rivers and forests and wetlands that sustain life on earth don’t have a voice and they don’t have rights, yet, but they are screaming for us to hear them.

This post originally appeared in my monthly column in The Aspen Times.