Day of the Red Sky

Just after the first wave of COVID-19, I awoke one morning to question, “is this the apocalypse?” Upon waking on August 25, 2020, I leered outside to wonder what I was seeing. Despite it being 7:30 am, the sky looked stormy and oddly purple. I said to myself, “red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” expecting a storm, but my weather app suggested otherwise. I continued my routine including the now familiar improvised virtual online course schedule. But the sky never resolved. Instead, it transformed into a beautiful but threatening shade of blood orange, triggered by an unusual phenomenon of smoke from the northern California wildfires above Karl, the fog. At 11:15, I put on my N95 mask and walked up from my student housing on 3rd street to the Parnassus campus to get a view of the city. The stark fluorescent lights of campus looked blue on the light of the red sky, and I captured this photo to never forget the image. Though, who could forget this?