Today we watched the beginning of a wildfire. We were in Boulder with a friend, bumming around after breakfast together. Do you want to see where I used to hang out in high school, she asked? Sure, we replied, and she took us up a winding road to a rocky outcrop overlooking the city. At the viewpoint the wind whipped fiercely. We could see in the distance the monstrous plumes from the Cameron Peak fire. We’ve been living in that hellscape, I bemoaned. Anchored like barnacles among the crags were a giggly group college-aged girls shotgunning White Claws—one at a time, so they could film each other against the tarnished landscape. On the other side of the lookout were a bride and groom with their wedding party in full regalia. The bride teetered in the gusts of winds, her carefully coiffed hair pummeling the sides of her face. She looked determined to be happy.

Just then emerged an angry dark gray puff only a few hillsides over, followed by another and another. Could the fire really be that close, we wondered? It wasn’t the Cameron Peak fire at all, but a new one recklessly devouring the foothills. Driving home that afternoon we could see the flames greedily licking their way to the farmland below. At home, we learned that evacuations were beginning just three miles west of us. Of course, wildfires are certainly not something to be delighted about. But for now, we are safe, and that is not nothing.

Did you know that you could wash pillows? Until recently, I, embarrassingly, didn’t. I’ll spare you a description of the dismal state beneath our pillowcases, but suffice to say what was flat and faded is now white and fluffy. That is all.

Rituals are the fabric of life, don’t you think? Here, let me explain. I have that universally human curse of craving control over things that can’t possibly be controlled. Take, for instance, the weather (let’s not even open the can of words that is the current dismal state of the world). Last I checked, the weather doesn’t give a damn about what I want to wear that day or whether I’m ready for the season to change. 

So, if not control, then coping. What more are rituals than self-concocted antidotes to the unpredictability of each day? I have very little idea of where I’ll be or how our world will look in six months, but I do know this: in the morning I will rise, take the dog for a walk, make coffee and breakfast, read, then get ready while listening to a podcast. Noteworthy though this routine may not be, here is what cannot be underestimated: the comfort found in doing a series of things without thinking. With winter drawing nigh, I realized the other day the need for another simple routine to bookend the day. It could be anything, really, but tonight taking a walk, then fixing a cocktail, lighting candles, and sitting down with a novel for the length of a record felt absolutely soul-nourishing. Control over the looming of winter I have not, but an antidote I have.

In the evening we took a walk. It’d been warm enough to strip down to a t-shirt in the thick of the day, but then the sky grew dark with wildfire smoke. I didn’t know until recently the bone-chilling feeling of a landscape shrouded in an angry, ashy plume. The light was fast-fading and we stepped outside with the dog, buttery orange leaves all in a fluster. Many of our neighbors have tacked up Halloween lights (think Christmas lights but in colors far more garish), and the sidewalks were flushed with the bulbs’ eerie, shimmering hue. With every step the cushion of leaves seemed to grow thicker underfoot. We were out in that small sliver of twilight when it’s dark enough to click on a lamp but light enough to leave open the blinds. You, a passerby on the sidewalk, are privileged to a delicious glimpse of all the little things your neighbors do to pass the time. Jacob says I’m creepy, but I firmly place myself in the category of Miranda July: “All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.” Then the wind picked up and we scurried home, closed the blinds, and devised our own way to pass the time.*

*ramen and Stranger Things, of course, what else were you thinking?