In September 2025, when I arrived at Similkameen Artist Residency in British Columbia, the province's mountains were engulfed in wildfires. The Similkameen valley was veiled in a thick, gray haze. The mountain ridges dissolved into smoke The air carried the dry scent of burning pine. Inside my small cabin studio, doors and windows were closed against the outside smoke. Yet within this closed space, I continued my practice of burning incense on Xuan paper, deliberately creating smoke while refusing the smoke outside. This paradox haunted me. The natural smoke from burning forests and the intentional smoke from my incense stick seemed to echo each other across the threshold of the studio walls. The boundary between the natural and the artificial, outside and inside, began to blur. I realized that both forms of smoke shared the same origin: transformation through fire, matter becoming air and ash. The flames consuming the mountain forests and the small flame I held over Xuan paper were part of the same elemental process, yet my relationship to them was entirely different.