Smog City

I was with Lisa in Manhattan for the past few days visiting my Dad. On the way back I had a window seat. I noted on the LCD panel that the plane was cruising at around 25,000 feet over Utah and Nevada. As I looked down at the incredibly blasted, crisp landscape I noticed that I could see the tiniest specks of white crawling along the roads. Basically, my eye could resolve cars as a discontinuity against the generally black tarmac etched on the brown landscape. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such crispness from an airplane — there was zero moisture. I felt like an eagle soaring and I could see forever.

Then I noticed as we dropped to 12,000 feet over the Oakland hills that I was beginning to resolve actual outlines of ground vehicles and buildings. And then a strange thing happened. As we flew over a depression in one of the hills it appeared to be fuzzy – it reminded me of the morning shots of Martian valleys from orbit as some of them filled with vapour or fog.

As we passed over more fuzzy depressions I was thinking about Mars, idly, when suddenly it seemed as if my eyes had lost focus. I realized that the plane had descended into the smog bank that hangs over the Bay Area, especially during these times of extreme blocking highs and soaring temperatures. What I had been seeing from on high were isolated pockets of smoggy air washed up high into the hills on a wind tide, then left behind as the main smog line receded. Instead of rock pools, I was seeing smog pools.

As the plane descended through the last few thousand feet, and later as we got the BART back into San Francisco, I was able to notice the inch or so of grimy, discoloured yellow-brown smog that hangs, perpetually it seems, around the horizon. In its own way it’s a beautiful sight, hanging like a thick shroud, seemingly more substantial than mere air. Definitely an awe-inspiring testament to people’s ability to change our environment. In the end, though, I prefer to see forever.