Smokey Bear tried to tell us: climate change and Northern Michigan’s July 2026 smokeout
Photo: A great blue heron during a smoky air day at Arcadia Marsh.
By Tim Mulherin
Sun contributor
In 1944, the Smokey Bear public awareness campaign launched with the famous tagline, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” Poorly extinguished campfires, reckless use of fireworks, even smoldering cigarette butts carelessly discarded can ignite a woodland conflagration of immense and tragic proportions.
And then there’s the CO2 emissions tinderbox we’ve created.
According to the Canadian Climate Institute, “The last three fire seasons have been among the 10 worst on record.” Further, the Climate Atlas of Canada reports, “Accelerating climate change, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, makes wildfires bigger, hotter, and more destructive.”
Now it’s all come home—to my home and yours.
Like so many people in Leelanau County, we don’t have air conditioning. Yet. The past several summers have delivered some merciless blasts of heat that have changed my mind. The brief heatwave in mid-July got my sweaty attention. But the immediately following wildfire smoke from Ontario and along the Minnesota Boundary Waters sealed the deal.
Since the summer of 2023, wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada has become a common summertime occurrence in northern Michigan. But not like this.
On Wednesday, July 15, I met a friend for lunch in Manistee. When we entered the restaurant about 1 p.m., it was hazy outside though tolerable. When leaving 90 minutes later, we were greeted by dramatically worsening air quality. The wildfire smoke was palpable: in our suddenly hacking lungs, particle-irritated throats, and burning eyes. The toxic cloud blanketed the area.
I spent the night in Manistee. As I headed back toward Cedar, dense smoke hung over the landscape, a dismal, haunting gray. Everyone drove with their headlights on.
While traveling along M-22, I kept the AC running in my pickup truck. Every time I tried to turn it off, the acrid, smoky smell infiltrated the cabin.
Being human, I tend to illogically insist on my agenda not getting disrupted by any unforeseen factors. So I stubbornly kept to my original plan and visited the Arcadia Marsh Nature Preserve on the way home.
Parking my pickup truck was a breeze: It was the only vehicle there. As I stepped out of the truck, a thick haze obscured the entire 360-degree horizon, with about a mile of visibility.
Succumbing to my flawed sense of judgment, I decided to venture forth. Although I stayed at the preserve for more than an hour, I didn’t cough or feel ill. I attribute this to growing up in a home where both parents smoked three packs of cigarettes daily, filling ashtrays in, of all places, our “living room.”
Arcadia Marsh never disappoints. Yet this time, migrant and resident wildlife allowed me extraordinary closeup views. The striking common yellowthroat warblers, quite uncommon to me, were out in numbers. A trumpeter swan family of five, with three downy gray cygnets, glided warily by me in the Great Lakes coastal marsh. A great blue heron stoically perched nearby on a limb jutting out over the water. A garter snake, its skin a purplish pewter with body-length yellow-gold stripes, made an appearance on the boardwalk.
Despite the smoke, these creatures’ lives went on. Yet I wondered what impact the poor air quality would have on them. And the lone human in their midst.
On Friday when I awoke, I peered out my east-facing bedroom window. Wildfire smoke permeated the surrounding woods. I had to keep our chalet’s doors and windows shut, even though the temps had dropped to what is normally associated with a comfortable northern Michigan summer.
In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen rang the alarm bells about climate change and global warming when he testified before members of Congress. In 2009, Hansen’s book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, was published. The sobering title no doubt scared off many potential readers.
Former Vice President Al Gore’s book and climate documentary of the same name, An Inconvenient Truth, rather inconveniently came out in 2006. Despite its urgent nonpartisan message, a certain political party downplayed its existential warning. Gore was the recipient of a backlash of insults decrying the science behind his assertions. Now, 20 years later…
Despite one’s politics, farmers and orchardists in northern Michigan are altering their agricultural practices out of necessity. Unpredictable springs with seesawing temperatures; violent, crop-damaging storms; and invasive insects such as the spotted winged drosophila, an Asian native that can quickly decimate unprotected cherry orchards (and other thin-skinned, ripening fruits), are all coming to bear on the region. Gore, in his modern-day impression of Paul Revere, was just trying to get our attention.
On Saturday, July 18, I had a meeting in downtown Traverse City. The tourists were out in force. After three days of smoky skies, and no doubt many vacationers being cooped up indoors, the unexpected summertime cabin fever broke. Time to shop.
High winds buffeted the dense crowd while the smoke made an apocalyptic visual and harsh pulmonary statement, reminding me of Hansen’s dire warning.
What also occurred to me was whether northern Michigan tourism would take a hit this year, and in coming years, as Canadian wildfires in the world’s largest intact boreal forest, at 1.3 billion acres, are likely to continue to break out in similar daunting numbers. During the suffocating week of July 12, upwards of 800 reported wildfires raged north of us, with more than 200 burning out of control.
On Sunday, I went to Good Harbor Beach 651 for a morning walk. The AirNow app, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index tracker, showed that the air quality in Cedar had “improved” from “hazardous” to somewhere between the “unhealthy “to “very unhealthy” range. Hooray!
Even though I arrived at 10 a.m., typically too early for most vacationers, the trailhead area, where beachgoers tend to congregate, began to fill up. In the distance, Pyramid Point to the west and Whaleback Hill to the north were veiled in the smoky haze. North Manitou Island was nearly invisible. It was just weird out.
Ignoring countless warnings from climate experts for nearly four decades about what was coming down the pike should we refuse to change our ways has led to our current predicament. Although a painful admittance, let’s accept that it’s going to take decades – or more – to dig our way out. And let’s take to heart what Smokey Bear has been campaigning about for years, yet in a much larger, ecologically responsible context. Only this time, let’s truly do it as we the people.
Enough with the arguing—Cough! Cough!—already.
Tim Mulherin’s This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan is a 2026 Michigan Notable Book. His next book explores wildlife in Michigan and Indiana and the rediscovery of awe.
