View From On High*

*Well, 32,000 feet more or less.

The August and September smoke and haze, mostly from Idaho I surmise,
lifted the first three of our four days in Missoula, but on Monday, it was back;
here, just a few miles away from the airport, you can just barely make out
Horseback Ridge, where we lived for ten years, and Black Mountain; Lolo
Peak, the big mountain in the area, was completely smoked over from the
wildfires

Skimming over the haze and clouds southwest of Missoula

Wildfires still blazing in Idaho

Ditto

Ditto again; all the dead-fall in these forests, and in Montana and in parts of
adjoining states, is kiln-dried, and has been for years now, with drought and
increasing summer temperatures; and then there's the beetle infestation...

Over California now; square-top cloud