BILLINGS — Much of Montana might be covered in smoke and haze due to the wildfires in Idaho, but it’s something the state has seen all summer. According to a study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, wildfire season in Montana has grown longer, contributing to more days with lower air quality.

For Billings resident Holly Caufield, the hazy air meant a change in plans.

“We were going to go paddleboarding, but it was kind of gross and hazy, so we decided, I don’t know, it was just kind of depressing,” said Caufield at the Billings Rims Monday.

Mother Nature had different plans, which meant Caufield opted to walk her dog Maze on the Rims.

“Just kind of depressing. Gross, muggy, kind of makes us tired. Headaches,” Caufield said.

That’s true for people across much of the state with the smoke affecting communities from Missoula to Miles City.

“In the central part of the state, it’s at the unhealthy level right now… right now we’ve just moved into, we’re approaching unhealthy levels in the Billings area,” said Billings National Weather Service meteorologist John Wetenkamp.

Wetenkamp said longer fire seasons mean hazier skies in Big Sky Country.

“There’s been an uptick in fire activity, so yeah, most likely we’re experiencing more days of poor air quality than we have, historically, just do the uptick in wildfires,” Wetenkamp said.

Alina Hauter/MTN News

According to a study recently conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, fire seasons have grown significantly longer with the length of fire weather season increasing 18.7% from 1979 to 2013.

Some forests in Montana have seen fire season lengthen by 36 days on average each year. In Eastern Montana, including the site of this year’s massive Remington Fire, fire season is 42 days longer compared to 30 years ago.

“A lot of that has to do with changes in precipitation patterns, warmer temperatures, and also just us as a society becoming more vulnerable to wildfire and wildfire impacts as the population increases in some of the more fire-prone areas,” said Wetenkamp.

More fire means more smoke, and in the case of Caufield, more headaches, even though her dogs might not mind.

“They like it, they enjoy it, I don’t think it really bothers them,” Caufield said.

GREAT FALLS — If you decide to be a travel vlogger, you have to do something to set you apart from the hundreds of others. If you’re Paul, that means leaning into your Scottish lineage.

“I thought, well, that would make me a little bit different to the other 10,000 people,” said Paul, the content creator behind Paul Wheel Drive on Youtube.

So for nearly four years, Paul has been wearing a kilt.

“Just gives me a bit of an idea, people who are trying to follow me on YouTube,” Paul said. “…Oh, yeah. He’s the guy with the kilt.”

Paul is a van life vlogger, which is exactly what it sounds like. He films his life living out of a 2003 Volkswagen Winnebago Rialta.

“It is my accommodation, my home, my recluse, the whole thing,” Paul said.

Paul has traveled around the world twice, and four years ago decided to drive around Australia, creating YouTube videos to help people learn tips and tricks when traveling on the road. Every video ends with the same information:

“How much in fuel, how much in accommodation, how long it took me to get there and how far it really was,” Paul said.

After three years touring Australia, Paul got a six-month Visa and decided to help Americans out.

“I really didn’t find much in the way of tourist offices. Not in California anyway,” Paul said, “So I thought, ‘Well, that definitely reminds me why I came here, to make up what I had made in Australia for Americans.’”

If you’ve ever wanted to strike out and do some van living on your own, let the man with the kilt show you how. It’s not always pretty, but that isn’t the point.

“The real joy of travel isn’t being at a place, although, you know, there’s obviously benefits of it,” Paul said. “It’s just the travel itself.”

Even if that means living in a 22-foot, 20-year old RV that Paul finds is plenty big enough.

“I think it’d be fine for two [people], but I’ve never really had two to be traveling with,” Paul said. “But, like, for one it’s just perfect.”

If you want to try this for yourself, Paul says to rent the house and the equipment, and if you are with a partner, prepare for a somewhat rude awakening.

He noted, “Now, they might have been married for 20 years and think they know each other really, really well, but suddenly when you’re in this room, it’s just like, ‘Get out of here, get out.’”

It’s not financially viable. It’s not especially luxurious, but it will give you memories and experiences that last a lifetime and are priceless.

Click here to check out Paul’s channel on Youtube.

By Jim Harmon

Autumn is my favorite season, except . . .

Except for what follows: WINTER!

Wouldn’t it be splendid if fall lasted a full six months, then transitioned effortlessly into spring?

The poets know of what I speak.

Julie L. O’Connor’s “The Artistry Of Nature: A Poem On The Colors Of Fall” best sums it up for me:

“There’s a crispness in the air that greets the morning sun,
a feeling of anticipation, a new day has begun.
Harvest days are ending, winter is drawing near,
yet in between is surely the most special time of year.”

John Keats’ love letter “To Autumn” is another nod to the best season of the year:

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run.”

What a wonderful description of the season: “the maturing sun.”

The angle of the sun is best in autumn, warm yet not hot. I could stretch out in a lawn chair and spend every fall afternoon in the sun.

Then there’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73:

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

In fall, Shakespeare saw a reflection of himself – no longer a “fair youth.”

“You can see in me a reflection of the autumnal and wintry time of year, when yellow leaves, or none, or few, hang upon the trees; the branches of such trees are like the choirs in monasteries, since they were once home to ‘sweet birds’ who sang, but are now bare.”

As I am but a couple of years short of four score, I can relate.

Carl Sandburg’s “Theme in Yellow” captures well the sense of autumn, with a sense of humor, assuming the body of a pumpkin:

“I spot the hills with yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October, when dusk is fallen,
Children join hands, and circle round me
Singing ghost songs, and love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern, With terrible teeth
And the children know I am fooling.”

I suspect poet Robert Gibb, like me, enjoyed sitting in a lawn chair every fall afternoon, soaking in the southern sun, writing “For the Chipmunk in My Yard:”

“I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over.”

Ah, yes . . . autumn is such a wonderful time.

Given the season that follows, I’ll soon be in my cozy cave, hibernating, except when my lovely wife awakens me – but just long enough to send in my column.

Jim Harmon is a longtime Missoula news broadcaster, now retired, who writes a weekly history column for Missoula Current. You can contact Jim at fuzzyfossil187@gmail.com. His best-selling book, “The Sneakin’est Man That Ever Was,” a collection of 46 vignettes of Western Montana history, is available at harmonshistories.com.