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Elizabeth Burness (Mitchell)
Dear Classmates,
Today, as yesterday, our air quality in the Salt Lake Valley is “unhealthy.” Not just “unhealthy for sensitive groups” but “unhealthy” because of the smoke blowing in from California fires. Utah has fires too, but the smoke in our valley now is from the west. I think of all those particulates filtering the sun to a pinkish-yellow glow as microscopic bits of great coastal redwood trees in Big Basin and oak trees and grasses from Sonoma and Vacaville, not to mention the homes and structures destroyed. It grieves me. Like you, I keenly feel the loss of these quintessential California landscapes and habitats. I have memories of summer weeks in the Santa Cruz mountains and bike rides in Sonoma County where my parents lived in their later years. These places will recover, some in our lifetimes, some not. And they may not recover as we remember them because of climate change altering all of our landscapes. Writing to you through the “class of ’71” is a way of sharing the grief I feel and letting you know that there are others around the country who feel these losses.
I wish you all safety and health.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Mitchell (Burness)
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