Friday morning forest fire smoke from as far away as California came to La Conner, merging with Oregon and Washington fire smoke and perhaps dense Pacific Ocean air to make the morning damp, gray and ominous.

Warnings on the radio advised staying inside with windows closed and to avoid strenuous activity. That is the opposite promotion of get in your car, come up for the day, walk the boardwalk and shop and dine in La Conner.

Neither the smoke nor the warnings kept tourists from town last weekend. Streets and sidewalks were crowded Saturday. Sunday most parking spaces on First Street were taken, but fewer people were milling about there or on the boardwalk and at 1 p.m. no one was on the patio at Nell Thorn and only three tables were occupied at the Waterfront Café.

The air quality alert first went through the weekend and then was extended. That is not good promotion for the La Conner economy.

None of us, store owner, student, parent, teacher or retired couple, can continue to live this way, not for a weekend, not for a year, not a decade, not our whole lives, trapped by the pandemic, by forest fire smoke, by climate change, by fear, by the status quo. It is more than a bit of a leap of faith, but this white editor feels a weight of oppression from life this year and wonders if this is perhaps a tiny exposure to what it is like to be Native, to be Black.

This is still the old normal. We will continue to live in the old normal, experiencing perhaps generational fall or spring floods, having the pandemic drag on for years, until we engage with each other, form into a critical mass and dare ask ourselves if we want to drag the old normal with us, a massive chain, as Marley’s ghost did. For us, that chain has links of bad, twentieth century-minded decisions, our unwillingness – more than our inability – to imagine, reach for and develop a new normal.

It is possible for us to create a future where Black, Brown and Native Lives Matter, where carbon emissions are reduced and where our economy is structured around sustainability and not consumer purchases.

Parents and school staff came together this summer and planned the new school year under the banner La Conner Connects. Last Thursday and Friday students registered for classes. They brought their parents and together met with teachers at tables and under tents, checking in with initial consultations. Students received their support packages of a computer and a book bag. Their laptops are loaded with instructions and ready for them to log in to their classes and connect with fellow students and teachers.

We adults, parents or not, need life support packets and to log in with our fellow community members. Since we do not have the resources or structure of a school district to support us, we will have to decide to commit to and then learn to support each other as a time honored method for taking care of ourselves.

La Conner Connects, the school district decided. That slogan is being used to support shopping locally. In the long run, shopping locally is a smaller worry. Will we band together to name and address the bigger concerns we need to solve if we are to one day walk, perhaps literally, into a new normal that is healthy and safe for all of us, Black, Brown, Native and White?

The opportunity is before us daily to make real what we want our kindergartners to learn: share, hold hands, look both ways before crossing the street and stick together.