Last summer was my first in my new apartment. I’d moved into the building in the fall, several weeks into a cool Vancouver November. The trees were bare, and our famous winter rain had set in for its months-long stay, but I stood on my balcony, looking out over the cityscape and mountains behind it, and thought: This will be heaven in summer.

Buildings in the Pacific Northwest are built for cold, despite our relatively mild winters. They’re made of wood and insulated, or of concrete, which retains heat naturally. Mine, a big block complex in a dense urban area, was concrete, completed only a year prior. When the building manager handed me my apartment keys, she explained the heating system. I asked about air conditioning, and she said the building didn’t have it, but that it wouldn’t be a problem. We were in Canada, after all.

Five months later, I received a notification on my phone’s weather app: An extreme heat alert was in effect for British Columbia. A spring heatwave was headed for the province, with temperatures expected over 30 C (86 F), nearly 20 degrees above the seasonal average. On May 14, I awoke in the morning from a fitful sleep and checked my thermostat: 29 C (84 F). An uncomfortable indoor temperature for a Southern Californian, but hell for a Northwesterner. My concrete home had become a sauna. That afternoon, I encountered neighbors in the elevator carrying box fans and portable air conditioners; the higher the floor they were stopping at, the more their agitation level seemed to rise. It unsettled me, but I still believed my building manager: I could survive the summer heat.

I was born in Vancouver in the late 1980s and have lived in the city most of my life. Vancouverites regularly bemoan our dreary climate, but anyone who’s lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough knows what makes living here worth it. When the rain finally lifts and the trees turn green, our corner of the planet transforms into a northern paradise. Summer’s long, light-filled days—even if they have historically lasted only a couple months—are enough to forgive the rest. When a cool ocean breeze blows in at 10 p.m. on a July evening, the sky still filled with color, anything feels possible.

Summer was always my favorite season here. As a child, I anticipated it with mounting excitement each spring, certain of its transformative potential. Summer meant freedom from school and the confines of a world determined by adults; it meant water parks and beaches, crushes and bike rides late into the night.

Two decades later, I feel differently. Like many in the Northwest, I’ve come to dread summer.

Solastalgia is a word many of us have learned, as the places we grew up in and the seasons we spent there have been irrevocably altered by climate change. It’s a word drawn from the past (the Latin solacium—“comfort” or “solace”—and the Greek algos: “pain”) to describe our present. It holds both our current grief for what has been lost and anticipatory grief for a world that will be even more changed.

Where Vancouver summers were once associated with clear afternoons and gentle temperatures—a calling card that made the Pacific Northwest a promising option for climate apocalypse preppers—they’ve become seasons of extreme heat, fires, and smoke. June, July, August, and increasingly even May and September now often bring long, scorching days and the distinctive orange haze of a smoke-blanketed sun.

For many British Columbians, the summer of 2021 was a psychological turning point. Fifteen years ago, I can’t remember a June day in Vancouver reaching anywhere near 30 C; in fact, between 1976 and 2005, the city averaged just one day over 30 C per year. But in late June 2021, British Columbia experienced a heat dome that saw inland temperatures soar to nearly 50 C (122 F), shattering heat records, killing hundreds of people, and sparking fires across the province, one of which destroyed the entire town of Lytton within hours.

In Vancouver, temperatures hovered at nearly 40 C (104 F) for days, with wildfire smoke adding to the suffocating claustrophobia. Public libraries became cooling centers, and stores across the province sold out of air conditioners. Climate data analysis suggested that the event would have been 150 times less likely without human-induced climate change.

Last year, while I baked in my apartment during the May heatwave, parts of British Columbia and neighboring Alberta again burned—an early start to a Western wildfire season that would be Canada’s worst yet. In June, Canada made international headlines when smoke from wildfires in Quebec traveled south, enveloping New York City and large swaths of the Northeast for days. By the fall, flames had scorched 16.5 million hectares.

I couldn’t afford the expensive air-conditioning units my neighbors had purchased, so I spent June, July, and August in a state of chronic sleep deprivation and mental stress. I didn’t realize how much the summer’s heat had affected me until late August, when the smoke started to roll in from British Columbia’s devastating inland fires, forcing me to keep my windows closed and my air filter running to mitigate it.

Being shut in in 30-degree weather undid me. I caved and purchased an air conditioner—on sale, to mark what would usually be the season’s end. I’m glad I did. September in Vancouver was also hot and smoky. Being able to cool down inside my home provided immeasurable relief.

This year, I’m better equipped psychically as well. As Canada emerges from the warmest winter in the country’s history, and drought fuels fires that have already forced thousands to evacuate in the West, I’m planning for the likelihood of days spent indoors, avoiding the heat and smoke. I know I’m privileged to have an escape. Like many Pacific Northwesterners, I’ve had to accept our new reality: Summer is no longer a time of freedom.

My solastalgia encompasses my grief not just for the climate I knew and how it has changed in my lifetime, but how I have changed in tandem. I mourn the Vancouver summers of my childhood but also the version of me that associated summer with pleasure and joy, instead of anxiety and danger.

I hope there will still be days when the sun sinks late over the Pacific on a cool evening and the future feels expansive, but I’ll experience them differently, knowing they’re a reminder of a fading season. The future they conjure will likely bring a different version of summer with it.