For the second day in a row, we started Happy Hour early, at a cozy lakeside café nestled among the pines and close to our cabin. Carol wimped in with an order for iced tea, which did have the salutary effect of eliciting from our waiter the only live bear story we were to experience during our Lake Tahoe getaway.

   When we asked why they were sending all the way down to the pierside bar for the iced tea, the waiter explained a bear had ransacked the cafe’s soda dispenser the week before. The dispenser was located about twenty or so feet from where we sat, so given the distance, time of night and day of the week I figured we were sitting within three degrees of separation of a possible bear attack. A bit of a stretch, to be sure, but it would have to do.

   Before the trip I had contemplated obtaining bear spray for our safety, having seen its efficacy during the January 6 insurrection. I figured if it can overcome a phalanx of armed police protecting the nation’s Capitol, it would surely do the trick against any insurrection of our cabin. (I wasn’t sure, however, if there was one formulation for bears and another, say industrial strength, for use in a seditious riot.) In the end, we decided not to buy, relying instead on basic survival skills regardless of the kind of animals storming either a cabin in the woods or a seat of government. What kind of survival skills might be required when a planet begins to attack its inhabitants is something else entirely, however.

   On our third day in Tahoe, the cerulean skies and cobalt blue of the lake disappeared behind an opaque, milky dishwater of fire smoke that blanketed Lake Tahoe, even blotting out the surrounding mountains. On the way home, we drove through an apocalyptic haze that turned the glaring afternoon sun a soft orange, then an ominous red until finally disappearing altogether. The entire sequence took about two hours to get through.

   Iceland remains sparsely populated, because so much of it is uninhabitable by nature’s own hand. We’ve taken over from nature now, and are beginning to create Icelands of our own device here in our own country.

   Scientists say that our modern forest fires are burning with a size and intensity that may prevent nature’s own survival skills from restoring the habitats that have burned. Flora and fauna, to say nothing of the bears, won’t have a home to return to in their lifetimes, so say the experts (but we don’t want to hear from the experts, now do we?)

   Iceland remains sparsely populated, because so much of it is uninhabitable by nature’s own hand. We’ve taken over from nature now, and are beginning to create Icelands of our own device here in our own country. It’s not nature’s way, and we’re proving to be no substitute for nature’s way either.

   So what’s the role of the modern traveler? Do we observe and report with a view toward helping us change our ruinous ways? Or do we observe and record what may not be with us much longer?

   I rather liked the bear-destroying-the-soda-machine story. At least it proved they are still alive and kicking.