12. In the mist of smoke from fires 
We saw them arrive by river. We camped on the edge of the Mistassini, where small gorges and end up where the islands begin. The great river had made thinner, finer, too, because of too mild a winter and spring too hot and too dry. You could see off the dust from the trucks of wood.
Latest logs that are descent while yards are closed and that the threat of a ban of up to wood hangs over our heads.
That night in camp, there was something in the air, something weird. It was not the absence of the campfire, not because of high flammability, or the virtual absence of flies and mosquitoes usually so fierce in the late spring.
come a time when the Engoulvent, then that light from the setting sun was glancing over, we saw the river covered with a mist almost invisible, imperceptible through the lens of a camera. Nothing to do with the mist that brings the dew, this one was dry and smelled the hot ashes. She was transported by winds from the north following the riverbeds. She spoke of the great fires.
Earlier, a few hundred kilometers, burning abandoned by firefighters awoke under the effect of wind. It was enough of a breeze to embers hidden under a strain is resuscitated. For large fires leave.
Hard to believe as the forest is green in spring. However, the fog from the north demonstrated. The lights are there. South-west, too, like the Smoky Lake, in the reservoir area Grouin, which burn no less than 70 000 hectares.
If it were not for the haze, we could guess that most southerly of firefighters struggling to new fronts, sawing, bûchent, dig the earth in the hum of Canadairs to cut off the fire.
(image: SOPFEU)
***
Added September: Lake Fire Smooky will eventually devastated almost 150,000 acres and not until mid-September that SOPFEU could announce that he had been extinguished after three months of work.
