I can’t tell you exactly when I started to notice how our summers have changed, but it was likely while fishing a bunch in that summer of 2021, while wrapping up the trend of social distancing, which looking back here in the more crotchety years of late middle age, was pretty nice. Since that time, there have been few weeks between June 1 and Sept. 1 that the slightest hint of dystopia in the sky and the smell of burning in the air hasn’t impacted or been the backdrop for something I’ve done outdoors, be it boating, fishing, running or hiking.

Some days, the smoke that has become more prevalent over the past five summers is noticeable, and at times downright intolerable, and I’m a relatively healthy individual. I’ve watched a wave of it roll down the river valley while out on the pontoon with my family like a cloud of choking fog from some spooky movie; and once it enveloped us, it made our eyes water and throats clench in a matter of minutes, requiring an about-face and return to the marina. I also woke up the morning of a year-end run to find an AQI of 200 scrub my plans for the event, as a simple warm-up of walking the dogs in the white blanket which had settled in around the neighborhood made my nose drip like it was mid-January.

Other days, the summer smoke isn’t as noticeable, but it hangs in the air, wisps of odor dipping down from the main flow held aloft. Like the soft hint of a night spent around the campfire stored in the neck of a favorite sweatshirt at the lake cabin, only this odor’s suggestion is of things going on in our world that aren’t as enjoyable as melting marshmallows on a stick. Consecutive weeks of all-day orange sunlight, filtered through a gray high-level haze have become almost commonplace the past five summers, to the point where we marvel at the beauty of some incredible sunsets playing out on western shores as we catch fish during the evening, but behind the captured photos of amazing purples, reds and oranges, a more sinister situation lurks.

For a while the source of our smokey skies was only in northern Canada, as large swaths of dry forest subject to a changing climate and a more arid pattern were set alight by lightning strikes, rogue sparks from a camper chain drug across pavement, or the foolish flick of a cigarette butt. Far away places like Yellowknife snagged minor notice in newspaper and online headlines. Since then, however, the sources of our seasonal smoke have been closer to home with major fires burning now near Winnipeg, in northeastern Minnesota earlier this spring, and western North Dakota last fall. Their occurrence is evidence that no place is untouchable by wildfires, and their impact on our daily lives is growing with each passing season.

One can deny the idea that climate change is man made. Simply don’t look up, nor look at the thousands of legitimate studies published by universities, government agencies, and non-government organizations, evidencing a rapid increase in temperatures, and wild swings in weather patterns since 1900. But if you look around the next time you’re on the boat or hiking your favorite hill, you will likely see those suggestions in the sky that things are indeed changing. Patterns have shifted, and our smokey summers are a signal that something is going on, and it isn’t good. Admittedly, wildfires have in the past been vital sources of habitat adjustment and re-creation, even welcome in small areas; but events on this scale and fires of the sizes we are seeing with a smokey reach stretching for thousands of miles, are unprecedented in modern times. While the influence on our natural world by these events may be cosmetic in nature for most, and traumatic for some closer to the burn areas, the impact on our daily lives and our time outdoors is becoming more and more negative across the continent as a result.

What are the long-term effects for our hunting and angling from these fires? That remains to be seen. Does less direct sunlight impact water temperature and young-of-the-year recruitment or location of gamefish from season-to-season? Does the smokey haze significantly limit photosynthesis in an environment, disrupting the food webs which feed pheasant chicks, ducklings, and other game species? These are questions science is suddenly trying to answer in an environment set ablaze with concern by the growing phenomenon of massive, continuous summer wildfires impacting the micro- and macro-environmental factors around us.

One thing is for certain, though, the change is here, the impact is immediate with each breath we take, and each experience that is altered by the smoke which has signaled a new type of summer we have experienced over the last five years, and likely will in the future … of our outdoors.