The Most Depressing Season Has Started

In a state known for weather extremes, it’s the most dreary that I most dislike.

While a week of sub-zero temperatures quickly grows old, and summer heat waves are hotter and last longer than ever before, both pale in comparison to the depressing downer of smoke season.

Typically, we don’t have to deal with smoke in Montana until later in the summer when the forests dry and start to burn. It’s all preventable, we’re told, if only the forests were better maintained. One former president, in a stroke of genius, even suggested the forests be raked to prevent such conflagrations.

He probably wasn’...