Summer in the American West. The time of flip-flops, river rafting, mountain fishing and Frisbee on the beach. But increasingly, also a time of stepping into our backyards and lifting our noses to sniff for smoke.

For watching the flags atop the bank or outside City Hall to see how hard the wind is blowing. Or if we’re especially unlucky — and we’ve been unlucky a lot in the last decade — for packing precious bits and pieces of our lives into boxes and stacking them beside the front door, ready to load into the car should word come down that wildfires are closing in; that it’s time to evacuate.

Indeed some of us are right now in the worst of it all over again: In Breckenridge, Colo. In California’s …