Firewatch
Notes from Kettle Point Lookout — 1998
A winter in town, and the summer of the Blacktail Fire

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Sunday, December 27, 1998

Rudy said it at Thanksgiving with his mouth full of pie: "Nygaard, you're going to die up on that rock someday and the boy will read about it in the newspaper. Write the damn letter." Bea didn't even tell him to watch his language.

So I have been trying. I've written it six times since then. Each time I read it over in the morning and tear it up. The first one was all excuses. The second was all apology, which is a different kind of excuse. The fourth one was about the weather. The sixth I got onto the second page before I started explaining myself again, and into the stove it went.

I don't have his address. I'll have to write his mother first and ask her for it. I haven't written to Gail in thirteen years either. So that's two letters.

Christmas at Rudy and Bea's this year. I went. The same little granddaughter who asked last year why I don't have a wife asked this year why I don't have any grandchildren. I told her I didn't know. That's true. For all I know, I have one.

Sunday, October 4, 1998

Down for the winter. The season ended on the 29th with snow coming in sideways, and I was glad to see it. I closed the tower with cold hands and walked out.

I counted in the notebook. This summer I reported forty-one smokes. Most of them were nothing, a single tree that burned itself out, a campfire somebody left. One of them was the Blacktail.

A reader in Pennsylvania wrote and asked whether I feel responsible for the fires I find. The answer is no. But I feel responsible for the ones I might have missed. I think every lookout does. You lie awake with it.

Tuesday, September 8, 1998

Back on the tower since August 24th. It rained on the 22nd, a slow, gray, all-day rain, the first in seven weeks, and the fire lay down like a tired dog. It isn't out. It won't be out till the snow. But it's done running.

The country to the southeast is black now, twenty-two thousand acres of it. Some of it burned hot and some didn't; there are green islands in it where the fire skipped. In the black you can already see a haze of green where the grass is coming back. There'll be beargrass up next spring as thick as a lawn. Fire isn't the end of anything up here. I've always known that. It's another thing to watch it from the same window every morning.

Tonight on the transistor, Mark McGwire hit his sixty-second home run. When it went out somebody keyed the mike on the district channel and let out a whoop, and nobody said a word about radio discipline. Not even me.

Sunday, August 16, 1998 (in town)

They pulled me off the mountain on Wednesday. The fire got into the head of the basin below the tower, and the fire boss decided a sixty-year-old lookout wasn't worth the risk. I pointed out that I'm fifty-nine. A helicopter came in and I rode out with my notebook and my coffee can and nothing else. The crew cut the brush back from the tower and wet it all down, and they tell me it's still standing.

Town is full of smoke. The sun comes up red and stays red all day. People keep their kids indoors. The motels are full of fire crews sleeping in shifts.

I feel useless down here. I've spent my whole life going toward fires. Now I sit on the porch and wait for a helicopter pilot to tell me I can go back to my room.

Sunday, August 9, 1998

Erik is thirty today.

The fire is fifteen thousand acres. It made a run Thursday that took it over Blacktail Ridge and into the next drainage, and last night it was close enough that I could hear it: a sound like wind when there isn't any wind.

I wrote "Happy birthday, son" on a page of the notebook. Then I tore the page out. Then I taped it back in. That's where it is. I don't know what I thought I was doing.

Sunday, July 26, 1998

The Blacktail Fire is over four thousand acres and growing. A fire camp has come up on the river flat below, tents and trucks and a helicopter base. At night I can see the lights of the camp on one side, and on the other side the fire itself, moving along the ridges like a slow town.

They sent jumpers the first evening. I watched the plane go over and I knew the load; I trained half of them. One of them, Colin Aldrich, was a rookie my last year. He raised me on the radio yesterday just to say hello and asked if I missed it. I told him no. Then I sat down and watched his fire for an hour.

I'm on the radio all day now, relaying for crews who can't reach dispatch from down in the canyons. My voice is going. I drink honey in hot water, which my mother swore by.

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

A thunderstorm came over from the southwest about two in the afternoon. Mostly dry. The rain hung under the clouds in gray curtains that dried up before they got to the ground. I sat on the lightning stool, a wooden stool with glass insulators on its feet, which is the rule when the strikes are close. I counted twenty-six ground strikes I could put on the map.

At 4:15 a smoke came up in Blacktail Creek, nine miles southeast. Not a thin one. It came up dark and fast and leaned over in the wind. I called it in, and I knew from the color of it that it wasn't going to be a two-man fire.

By dark there was fire on the ridge. From here it looks like somebody spilled coals on a black blanket. The dispatcher's voice didn't change at all. That is her gift.

Tuesday, June 30, 1998 (notebook)

Up on Kettle Point for a second summer. It was a big snow year, and the trail was drifted shut until last week, so I opened the tower eight days late. The second year you don't have to learn the country. It's all right where I left it. That is more of a comfort than I can say.

The mice moved into the mattress this time. Loyd packed a new one up lashed across a mule like a dead man. He says the mules didn't care for it. Mules have opinions.

The country is drying out fast. All that snow grew a lot of grass, and grass dries. The old-timers at dispatch say a wet spring makes a bad August. We'll see.

Sunday, April 19, 1998

Snow going off the south slopes. Robins in Mrs. Ostrander's yard. I've been reading my old jump logbooks, which I shouldn't do.

Every jump is in there: the date, the fire number, the spot, the wind, who jumped with me. In the margins I wrote other things sometimes. July 1971: broke left leg, tree landing, Moose Creek. That was the only summer I was home the whole summer. Erik was almost three. I sat on the porch with my leg in a cast and he brought me every rock in the yard, one at a time, and set them on my good knee. Gail said later it was the best summer we ever had. She said it like an accusation, and she was right to.

August 9, 1979, Erik's eleventh birthday, the logbook says I jumped a two-man fire on a ridge near the Montana line and we were out three days. I don't remember that fire at all. I remember that I didn't call.

Saturday, March 14, 1998

Fifty-nine today. Rudy and Bea took me to the steakhouse, and Rudy got the waitresses to sing. I have forgiven him about halfway.

Some of you have written to ask about the son I mentioned last summer, and whether I've tried to find him. Thank you for asking kindly. The short answer is no.

The long answer is in a shoebox. I took it out again last night. There's a picture of Erik at six, standing on the tarmac at the jump base in a flight helmet that comes down over his nose, grinning like he'd won something. Gail took it. That was the summer he wanted to be a smokejumper. By twelve he wanted to be anything else. I can't blame him. What he saw of it mostly was an empty chair at supper.

Monday, January 12, 1998

New year, and a new color on the page. Tess showed me how. She says plain white is for people who haven't figured it out yet. I asked her for something like the sky over the tower at six in the morning, and this is as close as we could get.

Winter is long in this town. The café opens at six and I'm there at six. I read the paper front to back, obituaries too, which is how you know you're getting old. Then I walk to the library, and then I walk home. On Thursdays I shovel Mrs. Ostrander's walk whether it snowed or not, because she likes the sound of it.

I worked out that in thirty-five years I never spent a whole winter anywhere without a reason to leave in the spring. I still have one: the tower. I mailed my application the day after New Year's. The ranger says they'll take me back. Not many people want to live alone on a rock for three months. I'm one of the few with the qualifications, which is to say, nobody to miss me.