14 May 2020

For the past few days, Perth has been dealing with quite a lot of smoke haze, from controlled burns of bush areas of our state. We’ve had a strong smokey smell which doesn’t make for pleasant sleeping at night and has us all wishing strongly that the Fremantle Doctor (south-westerly wind) would arrive and blow it all back to where it came from.

This morning as I was walking with a coffee, my grandson and my dog – my top three – I struggled to see the city… which is 2km away, through the dense smoke.

But it hadn’t stopped all the people out enjoying our otherwise beautiful late spring weather. There were joggers, cyclists, groups of mums and small children hovering around the coffee/breakfast van, dog walkers, dog and grandchildren walkers, and a lot of activity. All of us spent time peering into the distance where we knew the city was, and a good majority of us took photos.

Don’t you think we have a similar obscured vision situation in our lives at the moment, with the pandemic situation and physical distancing regulations?

The world as we knew it is there, just not clearly visible as yet. We know when the wind changes direction, things will come into focus for us. But at the moment, our view of life is obscured.

But, like the people enjoying the Swan River environment in the smokey morning, life still happens. We can still communicate with our loved ones and we can still live our lives, just with a hazy view.

We know the normal world is there. The wind will change one day and it’ll be back.

Until then, carry on walking and drinking coffee, and weeing on things that smell interesting.