Chapter 10
Fire Season Begins
Autumn
I couldn’t sleep well last night, despite a marathon of laundry happening at all hours of the night below my floor.
The laundromat, aptly called “Tumbleweeds,” was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
And while laundry did get done during normal business hours, their peak times were between midnight and six in the morning, as that was when the overnight laundry attendants did the washing, drying, and folding for those who dropped it off to be done for them.
Usually, this meant I got a coma-like sleep every night.
But last night, the air felt hotter than usual.
The scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener fainter than normal.
I turned on my ceiling fan to circulate some air around and discovered it wasn’t working correctly, and my landlord would need to come and fix this.
So, I just lay there all night long. Tossing and turning.
Giving up the idea of sleep around four in the morning, when I decided my time might have been better spent packing up the car.
Taking out the last of the garbage. Brushing my teeth and packing my toothbrush in my small bag of toiletries.
I was tasked to bring a month’s worth of groceries with me.
While I’d have a small propane stove, they said I needed to prioritize water and dehydrated foods that could easily be heated and enjoyed.
The task itself was daunting. Until I actually went to the store, I realized my diet of beef jerky and pumpkin scones wouldn’t even need to change very much.
I just needed to buy shelf-stable treats.
The biggest challenge was figuring out how to bring enough water with me, especially since there was a stovetop percolator for coffee.
Before leaving my apartment, I took one more sweep of the inside. The job posting was sitting on my small, two-seat dining room table. I picked it up and read it again for good measure.
Maple Haven Fire District is looking for a seasonal firewatcher.
The applicant must be able to live in solitude and live on-site in the fire lookout tower.
You will be stationed in the high-country of the Maple Haven wilderness and monitoring fire activity.
No indoor plumbing or Wi-Fi. Satellite phone and radio system.
If you enjoy long-term camping, peacefulness, and working alone, apply today.
The position needs immediate fulfilment.
Sure, the no plumbing thing freaked me out, but I enjoyed camping. I didn’t wear much makeup, if any. I washed my hair every few days, and there was a sun shower at the ground level.
When I had applied for the job, the Maple Haven Fire District team was really excited to hear from me.
Like, really excited. So excited that I was relieved they also weren’t disappointed in me, like everyone else in my life, and I just went for it.
I put the rest of the worries, like running water and connectivity issues, behind me.
I craved solitude. I craved the peacefulness that the job posting promised.
I folded up the newspaper clipping and put it in my small catch-all drawer in the kitchen, thinking I’d save it for nostalgia’s sake.
Suddenly, a burst of anxious laughter built up inside of me; this could go really good or really, really bad.
And without further ado, I left my apartment and locked the door behind me, heading to my car. Heading into the unknown.
*****
My tattered SUV had seen better days. Last week, I had just gotten the 150,000-mile service, new brakes, and a new battery.
And today, it was acting as good as it could about its new adventure; roaring to life as soon as I slid the key into the ignition.
The drive wasn’t as long as I needed it to be—just an hour and a half away.
If it had been longer, I could have gone through an entire playlist of music and listen to at least half of it before tuning it out and dwelling on things I couldn’t control.
If the drive had been longer, I could’ve revisited the fact that I’d hit rock bottom and found my second wind in Jesus.
I needed the drive, the act of the travel of leaving my home, leaving my life behind to rediscover all of these things in myself and in God.
But I fell into the trap of distraction instead, and I didn’t get to any of these places before I pulled up to a Maple Haven Fire District building in the middle of nowhere.
My phone had been out of service for at least a half an hour, maybe longer.
My music hadn’t even been on. Without cell phone reception or Wi-Fi, I hoped that I wouldn’t waste a lot of time dwelling.
I was already off to a bad start, as this car ride was wasted.
Wasted on anxiety. Depression. Shame. All of the things that God promised to take from me if I cast them on Him, and yet, in my self-wallowing, I’d decided it suited me to hold onto them a little longer.
To roll around with them for as long as I felt I deserved to, like a rock tumbler.
If I’d let the pain shape me, let it refine me, maybe I’d have come out smooth and polished and be a woman that Ray could have wanted instead of Suzie.
I shook the thought out of my head, but I didn’t abandon it.
I was here at the base too early. I turned off my headlights, as the sun had already risen over the horizon.
I couldn’t see much in front of me except this small building and a large, towering forest of pine trees.
A squirrel carrying a large nut of some kind fluidly bounced halfway up a tree before stopping to assess what I was doing.
He was just a few yards in front of me, and you could tell by his boisterous demeanor and portly size, he fared very well in the forest. That life here was fulfilling.
That maybe, I, too, could find happiness in the wilderness.
It wasn’t lost on me in these thoughts that while I compared myself to this squirrel, I was nuttier than the acorn in his mouth.
The sound of a truck coming up behind me snapped me out of my daydream.
As it slid into a crudely marked spot next to me, sectioned off by a log, I saw that the vehicle was white with large Maple Haven Fire District logos on the door and truck bed.
This must have been Kerry, as a woman waved to me from the driver's seat, and I jumped out of my Durango.
Kerry was wearing head-to-toe khaki and had a small fire extinguisher on the seat of her truck, as she stepped out, immediately shaking my hand with the energy of the forest tree squirrel. Her poufy brown hair was also squirrel-like, and I found myself jiving with her immediately.
“Kerry Green. So nice to meet you, Autumn.” Her handshake was swift and succinct, spinning on her heels as she waved for me to follow her into the small office building we were parked outside of.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said quickly, as my anxiety started to shift to excitement.
Being out here, in the wilderness, not even two hours from home, and it already felt like another world entirely.
As we entered the log building, I noticed how tight it was sealed up.
While sitting in my car, I could hear the songs of birds, fluttering of wings flying, and even the squirrel whom now, in retrospect, I decided was mocking me—I couldn’t hear a thing inside of these walls.
The thick, white chinking in between the heavy, smooth, rounded logs must have been the reason why.
In actuality, I really knew nothing about the forest or its structures that were kept hidden away in secret, and I felt myself feeling right at home as I stood on the creaking wooden floor.
Kerry walked over to an office area, just past a small reception station, and I followed.
“Ok, so first, we start with your training that you and I discussed. Think of this as a class. I’m going to give you a thorough rundown of your job and this handbook for what to do in all-instances.
This is what we refer to as ‘the fire guidebook.’ There’s probably not a situation possible that hasn’t already happened to someone at some time in history, and it’s been written down in here.
” Her finger tapped the book as she slid into her chair, sitting at a large wooden desk.
“That’s comforting,” I said, taking the thick binder that the sheer size of it let me know quite a few things had happened at the fire lookouts.
Hundreds of scenarios had gone down and needed to be written down for future fire watchers.
As I opened the phone book sized binder, randomly falling in the middle of it, the first scenario my eyes laid upon was if there was a dangerous animal at the base of the lookout when I also needed to be at the base.
My heart palpitated like Granny when she heard I wasn’t getting married to the pre-med pastor’s son.
“I know it seems like a lot right now,” Kerry said, as if she knew exactly what snippet I just happened to read, “but we are always available by radio. You might be completely alone up there, but you always have us down here.” I nodded slowly.
I already felt completely alone. I already felt like things couldn’t get any worse.
This, even with the new threat of wild animals that could stalk me, felt easier than being in my regular day-to-day life.
“Thank you, Kerry.” She nodded at my words, gave me a full three-second interval where I could chew on the idea of loneliness, and continued on.
“Now, down to business. As you may recall, this last winter was devastatingly dry. We normally get much more snow at our elevation. The moisture levels are dire.” I did recall, and it seemed that God was reminding me of this now at every turn.
Though at the time, I relished in how nice it was this last winter to not be dealing with icy roads, but it never occurred to me that this was a bad thing.
In fact, I thought it was a good thing, as I took many trips back and forth to Ray’s grandparents’ ranch in Montana to scope things out.
I didn’t think I encountered a patch of ice or a flake of snow on any of them.
I nodded to Kerry, trying to shift my mindset to sympathize with a situation that, despite hearing it constantly lately, I still knew very little about.
“Naturally, we are expecting extreme fire weather this year. The prescribed burns we’ve had this summer, that are essential to our operation, exhibited unusual behavior.
One in particular went crazy. It was by all accounts, a late July fire.
Not one that would—or ever should—occur in the spring months.
” Adrenaline spiked in my bloodstream. This job might be a little more intense than I had realized.
“That’s where you come in. You will be stationed in the fire lookout…
” Kerry ruffled through papers, before landing on the right page.
“Tower 3. Not surprisingly, we don’t have very many fire lookouts here.
We only have three of them, but that’s 300% more than some of the neighboring states around us.
” As I took in the information, I felt myself slow down.
Take all of this in. I wasn’t sure when I’d see another person again, and this felt..
This felt nice. Talking to someone who didn’t know me from Adam.
Who didn’t know why I was here or everything I’d ever done in my life, for that matter.
I loved living in Wyoming. I had never been to Maple Haven before, and on this trip, I completely skipped it by taking a straight shot through the forest. But I considered the fact that perhaps all I had needed was a change of pace. A change of scenery. That I didn’t need to go completely remote.
“So, unless you have a sweetheart back home that you need to check in with three times a day, I think you’ll do just fine,” Kerry said, with a confident smile. No, I definitely did need to go this remote—this level of solitude was the only way I could truly escape it.
“I’ll be alright,” I said, more of a promise to myself. Kerry nodded, jumped up from her desk, and waved again for me to follow her back outside.
“If you want to move your vehicle back behind this building, in the long-term parking area, I’ll drive you to the lookout where we will hike in and make sure you get settled.”