It is 500,000 degrees in western Colorado now.

And maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but as far as I am concerned, anything over 95 might as well be 500,000 anyway. We keep having highs of 100. What IS that? Humans are supposed to survive in that? Rangers are supposed to wear wool pants and flat hats in that? I step outside and I feel like someone has settled me into a thick wool Snuggie and placed me beside a roaring fire. Even the breeze is hot. There are fires all over in Colorado and the air is thick with smoke and dust.

Luckily our houses in the park come equipped with “swamp coolers,” which is a real thing, I assure you Michiganders. They add humidity to your house, which is why no one in Michigan would want one. They essentially take advantage of the fact that “evaporation is a cooling process,” (which is a sentence that my tenth grade science teacher made us repeat over and over and over again, for some reason. There are cooler science facts out there. I do not know why that was so important to her.) This means that the swamp cooler is consuming water the entire time it’s on, which is super great when you’re in a desert and water is a precious and finite resource. Ours works exceptionally well, albeit also producing a musty, moldy couch sort of odor when you turn it on.  There is no way to control its settings – it’s either on or off, it’s not attached to a thermostat or anything like that. This means that when I fall asleep with it on, my house is literally fifty-three degrees when I wake up and I’m shivering underneath my down comforter, whilst just outside the pavement is literally melting.

BUT! In the evenings it is very nice. The temperatures drop to the high-seventies/low-eighties and the breeze picks up. This is when my neighbors and I go exploring, play cards, shoot hoops, climb rocks. And here I am on a rock, alive for another sunset.