1. Coral
CORAL
I’ve been awake since four-thirty a.m. and I’ve hiked eleven miles on a protein bar and a thermos of coffee that gave up being hot somewhere around mile six.
My GPS has been arguing with the canyon topography since noon.
The smoke on the eastern ridge is three times heavier than the morning forecast suggested.
And I’m absolutely one hundred percent fine.
I pause at the tree line and pull out my field notebook to add to my tally.
Gray wolf tracks —confirmed, at least three individuals— running northeast along the creek bed before the trail went cold in the shale.
The corridor’s active. The pack’s using it exactly the way the migration data predicted.
Which means if this fire gets any ideas about pushing west we’ve got a problem that goes way beyond acreage lost.
I’ve been fighting for this corridor for two years.
Grants, proposals, territorial surveys, three separate presentations to the Montana Department of Fish and Wildlife that went nowhere until they didn’t.
The Black Timber Peak wildlife corridor is forty-six miles of connected habitat that lets species move between the northern and southern ranges without hitting a highway, a fence line, or a subdivision.
Gray wolves. Elk. Black bear. Wolverine.
It’s a living highway and almost nobody knows it exists.
My job is to make sure it stays that way.
I look up at the smoke again. It’s laying heavy on the eastern ridge, that flat-bottomed spreading kind that means it’s not a campfire and it’s not a single source.
Something’s caught and the wind’s doing it no favors.
I need current data. The direction, rate of spread, what the air tankers are doing.
But I need it from someone who’s actually watching it in real time not pulling from a report that’s two hours old.
That’s when I see the tower.
I almost missed it. It’s set back from the ridge in a stand of old growth that screens it from the south approach which is probably intentional.
A hundred and twenty feet of steel and timber rising out of the pines like someone planted it there and waited for the forest to decide whether to accept it.
There’s a cab at the top. It’s small, square, windows on all four sides catching the last of the evening light.
A Firehawk tower.
Perfect.
I adjust my pack, pick up my field case and head toward it.
Not because I’m in trouble. I want to be clear about that, at least to myself.
But whoever’s up there has eyes on that eastern ridge and I need what they know.
This is a professional decision. A logical, strategic, completely non-desperate professional decision.
The base of the tower’s tidier than I expected. Equipment stored properly, no debris, a small weather station mounted to the northeast leg with instruments that look recent. Whoever runs this tower takes it seriously. I tip my head back and look all the way up.
A long way up.
I’m not afraid of heights. I’ve rappelled into river canyons to tag nesting falcons and climbed radio towers to check telemetry equipment.
But there’s something about a fire tower ladder that’s in a category of its own.
Straight vertical, open air, nothing between you and the ground but your grip and your nerve.
I grab the first rung.
By the time I’m halfway up my thighs are reminding me about those eleven miles but I don’t stop.
I’ve got a system. Keep eyes up, steady my pace, and definitely don’t think about what’s below.
The wind picks up around the seventy-foot mark and the tower sways just slightly, this easy almost rhythmic movement that you either get used to or you don’t last long up here.
The catwalk at the top is narrow. I step off the ladder and take one second —just one— to look out at the view before I knock.
Oh.
Okay.
So that’s why people do this.
The sun’s going down behind the western peaks and the whole mountain range is lit up amber and copper and deep gold, the pines below rolling out in every direction like something that has no business being real.
The smoke on the eastern ridge catches the light and turns it almost beautiful which feels wrong given what it probably means for the corridor but I can’t help it.
I let myself have the one second. Then I knock.
Nothing.
I knock again, three solid raps on the door frame.
The door opens and I get a quick impression of height, a grey thermal and a jaw that hasn’t seen a razor in at least a week before my eyes get to his and stay there.
They’re the particular shade of brown that reads almost gold in certain light and right now the right light’s everywhere and they’re looking at me like I just paddled into his wave without asking.
Which…
It’s fair.
I did just climb his tower without asking.
“Hey,” I say because I’m a professional and that’s how professionals start conversations.
“I’m Coral Hanscom, I’m a wildlife conservationist working the corridor survey in this grid.
I saw the smoke on the eastern ridge and I need current spread data.
Do you have the last two hours of movement logged? ”
He leans against the door frame. Takes his time looking at me the way you look at something you’re not sure you trust yet.
“How’d you find this tower?” he says. “It’s not on the public trail maps.”
“Topographic survey records. I pulled them when I got the survey permit for this grid.” I hold up my field case. “I’ve got my credentials if you want them. MDFWT contractor ID, survey permit number and a letter of cooperation from the Black Timber Peak ranger district if that helps.”
He looks at the case. Looks at me. Looks back at the ridge.
“It’s moving north-northeast,” he says. “Faster than the forecast. Has been for the last three hours.”
My stomach drops straight to the forest floor.
North-northeast is the corridor. North-northeast is exactly where those wolf tracks were heading.
“How fast?” I ask.
He holds the door open and steps back into the cab.
I take that as an invitation, or at least as close to one as I’m probably going to get, and follow him inside.