This is M.Pierre's life kit. I'm Julia Simon.

Recently, I was driving north through California, a drive I've probably made close to 100 times,

and the hills that used to be green were dry.

There was no doubt in my mind what was coming. Not long after my drive, those hills caught fire.

Those hills, who knows when they'll be green again? And those fires won't be the last.

There are words for these feelings that hit me.

Ego, I'm sorry. Climbing anxiety, climate grief.

Being in touch with the reality of this is it.

It's not a game.

That's Phoenix Smith. They also live in California in Oakland.

And last September, they and millions of people woke up to an orange sky.

My phone was just blowing up. My friends and people were calling me afraid.

Like, how do I deal with this Phoenix?

As wildfire smoke made the Bay Area look like Mars, for many of Phoenix's friends, the feelings came on heart.

And so the cycle of grief where it can be denial, like first, and then you may have some fear,

and then anger, and then sadness.

I would say the people that I connected with that day all went through that in a very quick time.

They went through the whole cycle.

This is the part of the story where I list all the climate crises out there, heat waves, hurricanes, floods.

And this is the moment when you hear all that, and maybe you start feeling that clenching in your chest,

or like me, you start biting your lip way too hard till it's sore.

There's the fogginess, the brain fogginess, the muscle tension.

...