The end of a busy work week was blessed with a magnificent painting of light and color in the day’s end sky.  It’s hard not to feel grateful to just be alive and breathing in the world when presented with such a scene.

The feeling followed me home like a faithful dog.

And then the crisp fragrance of autumn leaves and clean night air was assaulted by the repugnant stench of woodsmoke.  Not the aromatic scent of apple wood or hickory, dried and cured for crackling action in a fine fire, but the rather more nasty and poisonous spew from too green oak and other loathsome fuels.

A poisonous tradition holds sway here in the heart of Penns Woods among burners and firemakers — so much so that elected officials who’ve long banned the burning of trash and brush and other waste as noxious and unnecessary are unable to address the friendship fire which is equally noxious and arguably less necessary than the others.

Harris Township so far doesn’t have the courage to address what they consider a nuisance to be dealt with by the police rather than by ordinance leaving the poor police department holding the sticky end of the lollipop with no real criteria to assess a “nuisance”.  Talking to one of the township supervisors at election night this past Tuesday about this issue his response was, “People love their fires…”.

Yes they do.

“I have a right to burn a fire!” is a familiar refrain I’ve heard many times expressed with upright patriotic fire.  Less often do I hear “I have a right to breathe clean air!”.

Whose rights win in that argument?  Burn but don’t let your smoke leave your property?  Hold your breathe until the fire goes out?

The argument reminds me of the ongoing argument concerning loud exhaust systems on motorcycles — my right to bolt on loud pipes (and save lives) versus my right to enjoy a little peace and quiet in an increasingly noisy world.

With both situations there seems little intelligent dialogue and instead more self centered, self interested actions based in childish “I want what I want and it’s a free country and don’t tread on me because it’s my land.”  Or something like that.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter.  We’ll all die of something anyways and maybe the particulate ridden cancer swollen smoke won’t trigger enough mutation to cause lung cancer or the asthma won’t be bad enough to kill you.  And the carbon pouring into the air because I want a fireplace or wood burner or friendship fire doesn’t matter because climate change is a hoax much like the Apollo moon landings and Elvis’s death.

The sky is still beautiful.  The air still stinks.