12. Trav
TRAV
I wake up at five-forty-three a.m. and for the first time in months I don’t reach for the radio first.
I lie still and listen to Coral breathe.
She’s out cold. That stone-dead field sleep she mentioned on night one in the tower, the kind that comes from years of early mornings and hard trail miles and brains that know how to shut all the way off when the work’s done.
Her hair’s spread out across the pillow the same way it was that first morning, her field notebook on the floor where it slid off the bed at some point in the night.
Her hand’s open and relaxed on the blanket between us like she decided even in sleep that she wasn’t going anywhere.
I look at the ceiling.
Outside the mountain’s doing its pre-dawn thing.
It’s a held-breath quality the hour before first light when everything goes absolutely still like the whole range is recalibrating for the day ahead.
I know this hour better than any other. I’ve logged it four hundred and something times from the tower window.
I know exactly what the eastern ridge looks like right now without looking at it, know where the shadows sit and how the cold pools in the drainages and which birds start first when the light begins to come.
I know this mountain the way I know my own hands.
What I don’t know is how to do what I’m about to do.
I look at Coral.
Here’s the thing about eleven months alone in a tower. You get very clear on what you think. No noise, no interference, no one else’s frequency cutting through yours. Just you and the wind data and the logbook and the 6:47 sunset and a lot of uninterrupted time to know your own mind.
My mind has been extremely clear since approximately the moment she grabbed the first rung of my ladder.
I just haven’t said it out loud yet.
The ridge station’s cold in the pre-dawn and I get up carefully, right side first, left shoulder last, and I put the water on and pull on my jacket and stand at the north window with my hands around a mug and look at the stars going out one at a time as the sky begins to lighten in the east.
The corridor’s out there in the dark. Intact.
The wolves are south of the pinch point and moving.
Marshmallow the tree is standing on the south face of peak eight being exactly as stubborn as his namesake.
The retardant line on the northern flank is doing its job in the dark the same as it did at dusk.
Everything I came up here to protect is still standing.
Including me.
I hear her wake up the same way I heard it the first morning.
It’s not gradual, just suddenly awake and ready to go.
She grabs the field notebook off the floor and it’s open before she’s fully sitting up.
I don’t turn around. I give her the thirty seconds to orient.
Then I pour the second mug and bring it to her and she takes it with both hands and looks up at me with those clear dark eyes that have been reading me accurately since day one.
They don’t show any signs of stopping.
“Tower’s still standing,” I say. “Checked the base frequency at oh-four-hundred. Fire held behind the retardant line overnight. Humidity recovery came in at oh-one-thirty to help out.”
She takes a sip of coffee. “Marshmallow, the tree?”
“Still standing.”
Something in her face settles. “Good. And signs of the bear?”
“Not yet, but I’ll bet he’s out there and he’s going to demand a bag of the fluffy treat for his pain and suffering.”
She giggle. “I kinda want to meet him.”
“No you don’t. He’s fluffy, but not nice.”
I sit on the edge of the bed facing her and she looks at me over her mug with that clear-eyed assessment and waits because she’s learned that I get there, I just get there in my own time.
“I’ve been up in that tower for over two years,” I say.
“That’s a long time to be there.”
“And before that I was a Hotshot for four years. And before that I was in Malibu pretending I was going to surf professionally until I was thirty and then figure out the rest.” I look at my mug.
“I’ve been moving toward something my whole life and I could never quite tell what it was.
The waves, the fire, the tower. I thought the tower was it.
I thought that was the thing I’d been heading for. ”
She doesn’t say anything. Just waits with wide eyes and a tipped head.
“I think the tower was the place I needed to be so I’d be ready for the actual thing. Which sounds insane given that the actual thing showed up covered in trail mud with a survey permit and extremely good binoculars.”
The corner of her mouth moves. “Chronically good binoculars,” she says.
“I love you,” I say quickly before I chicken out.
And I never chicken out. But this time it’s a potential. Those three words are something I’ve never done—said—felt—before.
The almost-smile stays exactly where it is. Her eyes are steady… dark… completely still. She’s not managing something or measuring it, just letting it be what it is.
“I know it’s been four days,” I say now with a little anxiety.
“I know that’s— I know how that sounds. But I’ve had eleven months of no interference and a very clear signal and I know my own mind Coral and my mind is—” I stop.
Run a hand through my hair. “I’m not great with words. I’m better with wind data.”
“You’re doing fine,” she says gently, taking a drink of her coffee.
“My wind data says I love you,” I say. “My spread projection says I’ve been heading toward you since before I knew you existed.
My logbook says—” I stop again. Look at her.
“I named a bear and a tree after my grandfather because I’m not great with names but I’d like to get better.
I’d like to have more things worth naming. ”
She sets her mug down on the floor beside the notebook.
Then she takes my mug out of my hands and sets it down too and she takes both my hands in hers and holds them the way she held her coffee mug on night one in the tower. It’s with both hands, completely, like it matters that nothing gets dropped.
“Travis Morton,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I drove six hours from Missoula to do a survey I’ve done three times.” She looks at our hands. “I’ve never stayed more than two nights in a field station on this route. I camp, I survey, I move on.” She looks up. “I don’t climb uninvited ladders.”
“You climbed mine.”
“I climbed yours.” She holds my gaze. “I told myself it was for the smoke data.”
“Was it?”
“For the first thirty seconds of the climb, yes.” The almost-smile becomes the real one, the full one that fills up the whole room. “After that I have no credible explanation why I stayed.”
I look at her. At this woman who is six years of field work and wolf tracks and three MDFWT presentations and a corridor that’s going to be protected on paper before the end of the month. She’s the most accurate reader of wind and people and situations I’ve ever met.
“I love you too,” she says. “For whatever that’s worth at four days and a wildfire.”
“It’s worth a lot,” I say. “It’s worth everything actually.”
She leans forward and puts her forehead against mine and I close my eyes and we sit there in the pre-dawn cold of the ridge station with our hands tangled together between us and the mountain going from dark to the first grey edge of light outside the window.
“So,” she says quietly. “Two days on the ground in Black Timber Peak while the tower gets its damage assessment.”
“At least two days.”
“And then you go back up.”
“And then I go back up.” I open my eyes and look at her. “And you go back to Missoula and write up your field notes and cross-reference your pack confirmation data and draft your habitat connectivity assessment.”
“That’s about three weeks of desk work.”
“Six hours,” I say.
“Six hours,” she agrees.
“I’ve got a resupply helicopter coming Fridays.”
“I know. You mentioned that.” She squeezes my hands. “I’ve got a truck and a flexible schedule and forty-six miles of corridor that’s going to need ongoing monitoring through the winter.”
I look at her. “How ongoing?”
“Monthly at minimum. Possibly more depending on the pack’s movement patterns.
” She’s got that straight shooter look that means she’s not building to anything, just saying the thing.
“The Black Timber Peak corridor is going to be the most significant gray wolf habitat confirmation in Montana in twenty-three years. I’m going to be monitoring it for a long time Trav. ”
“How long?”
“Indefinitely,” she says simply. “Or until the pack stops using it.”
“Gray wolves mate for life,” I say. “And they return to routes that work.”
She looks at me. I look back.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “They do.”
Outside the first light’s coming up over the eastern ridge and hitting the retardant line and turning it from dark rust to something almost gold in the early sun.
I’ve spent my whole life moving toward something.
Turns out it was a ladder.
Turns out it was the person at the bottom of it who’d already decided something before she grabbed the first rung.
Turns out it was this ridge station at first light with cold coffee and a field notebook on the floor and a wildlife conservationist who drove six hours for a corridor survey and stayed four days for something else entirely. She’s already looking at me like she’s thinking about the drive back.
Not away.
Back.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back.
“You want breakfast?”
She looks at me for a long moment with those dark eyes and that straight-shooter certainty and the full smile that does what it always does to the temperature in whatever room we’re in.
“Yeah,” she says. “I want breakfast.”
So I go make breakfast.
She picks her field notebook up off the floor and starts writing and I stand at the ridge station stove making powdered eggs from the emergency pantry and watching the light come up gold over the eastern ridge and I think about eleven months of 6:47 sunsets and how I thought that was the best view on the mountain.
I was wrong.
This is the best view on the mountain.
This specific one, right here, in a ridge station kitchen at first light with a wildlife conservationist writing wolf track data in a field notebook and her coffee going cold because she forgot about it again.
I’ll remind her.
That’s what I’m here for.