2. Trav
TRAV
Okay so here’s the thing.
I’ve been up in this tower for eleven months and in that time exactly zero people have climbed my ladder uninvited, checked my credentials request without flinching and then followed me inside like they own the place.
Marshmallow the bear had more hesitation and Marshmallow doesn’t have opposable thumbs.
She’s standing in the middle of my cab looking at my equipment setup like she’s cataloguing it and I’m standing here trying to remember the protocol for unannounced visitors because I’m pretty sure it exists and I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be following it right now.
“You’re solo?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“In this grid? With that smoke?”
She looks at me with the particular tolerance and maybe annoyance of someone who’s answered a version of this question before and found it frustrating every single time. “I’m a trained field researcher. I’ve been working solo surveys in active fire zones for six years.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t.” I move to the radio console and pull up the last three hours of spread data on the eastern ridge. “I said you’re solo in this grid with that smoke. Those are facts not a judgment call.”
She sets her field case on the floor and not on my table, I notice, which tells me she’s been in other people’s workspaces before and knows the rules.
She comes to stand beside me at the console.
She smells like pine sap and fresh air and eleven miles of hard trail and I take exactly one second to clock that before I get back to the data.
“There.” I point to the spread line on the monitor.
“Sparked around fourteen hundred on the eastern ridge. Wind’s been pushing it north-northeast at roughly a quarter mile per hour.
It’s not racing but it’s steady and the humidity’s been dropping all afternoon so if the wind shifts tonight it could move faster. ”
She leans in and studies the monitor with the focused attention of someone who knows how to read this kind of data. Not a civilian look. A professional look. I’ll give her that.
“What’s the containment status?” she asks.
“Two air tankers made drops at fifteen thirty and seventeen hundred. Bought some time on the southern flank but the northern edge is still moving.” I pull up the aerial grid. “It’s here.” I tap the screen. “Your corridor starts here.”
She goes silent in a way that’s different from regular silent. It’s the quiet of someone doing math they don’t like the answer to.
“That’s four miles,” she says.
“Three and a half at the current rate of spread. Give or take.”
She straightens up and pulls out her phone. No signal. I could’ve told her that, it’s been two bars on a good day up here since September and today’s not a good day. But she’s already switching to her satellite communicator and typing fast.
I watch her for a second longer than I need to and then turn back to the console.
“You can use the landline to call out if you need to,” I say. “It’s more reliable.”
She looks up. Something shifts in her face, just slightly, like she wasn’t expecting that. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I key the radio and do my evening check-in with base. Short, factual, same as always. When I’m done I turn back around and she’s at the south window with her binoculars out looking at the ridge.
Her binoculars are good. Better than standard issue field equipment. The case she’s carrying is beat up in the way that means it’s been everywhere. She’s not a desk researcher who came out for a week. She’s been in the thick of it and that impresses me… just a little.
I pull two mugs off the shelf and put water on the burner because it’s getting dark and it’s getting cold and whatever else she is she’s been on the trail since before sunrise and she’s not going anywhere tonight whether either of us likes it or not.
“You take anything in your coffee?” I ask.
She lowers the binoculars and looks at me over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t.” I set the mugs down. “Sugar. Powdered creamer. That’s what I’ve got.”
“Black’s fine.”
Of course it is.
I make the coffee and set one mug on the far end of the console within her reach without making a thing of it.
She picks it up and wraps both hands around it and for just a second the professional composure drops a little and she’s just a person who’s been cold and tired for a long time and really needed something hot.
I look away.
“So,” I say. “Wildlife corridor. What are you tracking?”
She takes a sip of the coffee before she answers.
“Gray wolves primarily. There’s a pack that’s been using the corridor as a migration route south.
We confirmed it six weeks ago. There are three adults and at minimum one juvenile based on the track measurements.
” She pulls out her field notebook and flips it open on the console between us.
Track sketches, measurements, location markers, all of it clean and precise.
“If the fire pushes through the northern section before they move it cuts off their route. They’ll try to go around and around means highway 89. ”
I know what highway 89 means for wolves. I’ve been on this mountain long enough to know.
“How far south do they need to get?” I ask.
“Past the lower canyon junction. Once they’re through there they’ve got connected habitat all the way to the southern range.” She taps a point on her notebook map. “They were here this afternoon. Moving northeast which is the right direction but they’re not through yet.”
I look at the spread data on my monitor. Look at her map. Do my own math.
It’s tight. It’s not impossible but it’s tight and it’s going to depend on tonight’s wind and whether those air tankers can get back up at first light.
“I’ll make some calls,” I say.
She looks at me. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” I pick up the landline. “But the corridor’s in my watch grid and those wolves are in my corridor so that makes them my problem too.
” I dial the base line before she can say anything else.
“Hey Darden it’s Trav. What’s the air tanker schedule looking like for first light on the eastern ridge? ”
I can feel her watching me while I talk. I keep my eyes on the window.
When I hang up I’ve got a tentative first-light drop confirmed on the northern flank pending wind assessment at oh-five-hundred. It’s not a guarantee but it’s something.
I turn around and she’s looking at me with an expression I can’t quite get a read on.
“Thank you,” she says and this time it doesn’t have the I-don’t-need-anything edge on it.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say again. “Wind assessment’s at five a.m. and tonight’s forecast is not my favorite.”
She nods and looks back at the ridge. The last light’s completely gone now and the smoke’s invisible in the dark except for the faint orange glow where the fire’s still burning on the eastern face.
“I’ll take the floor,” she says. “If that’s okay. I’ve got a sleeping pad in my pack.”
“There’s a cot.” I nod toward the back corner where I keep the fold-out for the rare occasions base sends someone up for a check. “It’s not exactly a four-star but it’s off the floor.”
She looks at the cot. Looks at me. “Where do you sleep?”
I tap the wide built-in bench along the north wall that I’ve had a sleeping bag on for eleven months. “I’m good.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue about it and I give her a look that says we can skip that part and she closes it again.
Smart woman.
She pulls the cot out from the corner and sets it up with the efficiency of someone who’s done it a hundred times in worse places. Sleeping pad down, bag unrolled, pack propped against the wall. Done in under two minutes.
I watch the ridge and drink my coffee.
“Morton,” I say.
She pauses. “What?”
“Trav Morton. Since we’re sharing a cab tonight.” I don’t look away from the window. “Figured you should know who you’re sleeping twelve feet away from.”
There’s a beat of silence. I don’t see it but I can hear it in her voice, it’s something that might be the beginning of a smile.
“Coral Hanscom,” she says. “Though I already told you that.”
“You told me your full name and your contractor ID and your permit number.” I take a sip of coffee. “That’s not the same thing.”
She doesn’t answer right away. The radio crackles with Nash’s late check-in and I respond and when I’m done the cab’s quiet again except for the wind picking up outside.
“No,” she says finally. “I guess it’s not.”
I keep my eyes on the ridge.
The fire glows orange in the dark three and a half miles away and the wind’s coming up from the south and I’ve got a wildlife conservationist with good binoculars and wolf tracks in her notebook sleeping twelve feet away from me and tomorrow morning at five a.m. we’ll find out which way this thing goes.
I’ve had worse Tuesdays.