We landed in Chiang Mai. Nick stood up from his Thai-Airways signature-purple-clad seat, turned his cell phone back on, and announced: “Weird, my phone gives ‘smoke’ as the weather here.” It took ten years to decant, but I now know this comment was a fork in the road, the first crumb leading me, whether I wanted it or not, down a new, meandering trail in the woods. No gingerbread house at the end. The trail is the destination. A trail of enjoyable, forgettable, and unpleasant tastes. A trail of illness.
The weather app should have been our first clue that something was awry. As soon as we stepped off the plane, the smell of burning wood engulfed us. It was March 2015, before North Americans became all too familiar with the hazy skies and sullied air caused by massive forest fires (fig. 1). It was late so we...
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