Blaze atop Swallow Hill Lookout
a Firehawks romance story
by M. L. Buchman
1
The “airshow” was spectacular, from a distance. Marta Chavez scanned the horizon every fifteen minutes like a responsible fire lookout. But she spent the rest of her time watching the firefight over at Gray Wolf Summit, about twenty miles to the northeast of her tower. They were deep in the Lolo wilderness, rougher than Colorado, and only Alaska was more wild.
First the smokies had spilled out of the sky, their parachutes blooming and dancing about in the fire-driven winds. Then the new four-jet BAe 146 tanker had arrived on the fire, dropping great swaths of dark red retardant. A half dozen helos zipped through the air: a trio of the big converted Black Hawk helicopters called Firehawks that were at least as impressive as the BAe 146, and a second trio of little MD500s that flitted about the sky.
She always loved watching the MD500s. They only carried a little water, a hundred and thirty gallons versus the thousand of the Firehawk or the three thousand dropped by the BAe, but they could slip right up to a spot fire, blast it out of existence, and dance out of the way with a tight pirouette. It always reminded her of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina, dashed by the advent of breasts at the age of thirteen. Ballerinas were supposed to be willowy—even better if you were short and willowy.
Marta was tall and had ended up…very not willowy. Her mama had always said it was God’s will; personally, Marta felt gypped.
So she’d gone out for track instead and that had led to cross-country, which was nuts for a woman with curves, but a doubled-up sports bra had cured the worst of that—still her chest hurt like the Madonna after some of the bigger runs.
Ultimately, running along the forest trails and logging roads of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho had led to a summer job as a fire lookout. Now she could watch helicopters dance so lightly on the winds that they reminded her that she wasn’t so graceful. But still she couldn’t stop watching them; her arms ached from holding the binoculars aloft even though her elbows were propped on the edge of her cabin’s table.
It was the eighth fire she’d found already this summer, which earned her the dubious honor of being the number one spotter this season. She was just glad that none of them had been anywhere near her. The airshow must have really rattled Gray Wolf’s cage as this fire burned right at the base of his lookout tower’s mountain; which explained why she’d spotted it first—he’d had no view straight down off his cliff. They had it contained now; ground crews would be in to kill it in the morning. He’d never been threatened, but it could have gone bad.
Marta scanned the thickly-clad conifer mountains of the Lolo National Forest. Her first year she’d thought of it in mountains: Goat, White, Cougar. Now in her second season she knew it by the dark slashes of recent fires or the bright green of new growth after last season’s: Colgate, Crazy Creek, Loco, and all the rest.
She finished the round, her last of the day, and called it in, “Swallow Hill reporting, no fires except Wolf’s Den. Out of service.”
“Roger that, Swallow Hill. Well done today.” She liked Vic, the U.S. Forest Service ranger in charge of this sector. He always had something nice to say. She’d carried quite a fantasy about him during the first season…until she’d found out he was forty with a gut and married. But he had one of those deep, smooth voices.
Just like Helo 41. She could listen to Tyler Walker, 41’s lone pilot, report vectors and drops of his MD500 all day—he had a liquid Colorado accent, overly polite with just the sweetest hint of cowboy. But quite why a girl from Coeur d’Alene would swoon over such a thing—she’d never even been to Colorado. Didn’t even know what he looked like, but she did enjoy listening to that voice of his.
Even though the official day of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. was over for the lookouts, she kept both her radio and her scanner on as she made dinner. On the radio she heard Gray Wolf still working the communications with the ground crew. In the deep canyons of the Lolo, it was common that one ground crew couldn’t talk to another, so the lookout tower would act as a relay.
She took her water jug down to the cistern and filled it up. The rainwater off her lookout tower roof had been collected throughout the winter into a concrete cistern built beneath her lookout tower on Swallow Hill. Hill—that just wasn’t right. Swallow Hill might not be one of the big peaks—Cougar ruled the area up at almost nine thousand feet—but at seventy-five hundred, her “Hill” should have been respected as a mountain. She often felt sorry for it.
“We’ll show ‘em, girl,” she patted the rock at the base of the steps before climbing back up toward the lookout’s cabin.
The lookout tower itself was new, as far as lookout towers went. Most had been built by the Depression-era crews almost a century ago. Swallow Hill had been burned over in the sixties and had to be replaced. Rather than the elegance of one of the CCC’s massive wooden structures, her tower was five stories of steel lattice. It had been built tall so that the view would be clear when the timber regrew. Fifty years after the burnover and the tallest trees were still only a dozen feet high. Most of the upper slope was lush alpine meadow. It gave her an amazing view from her twelve-foot square cab at the top.
A hundred and forty-four square feet of pure functionality. A two-foot wide “deck” wrapped all of the way around so that she could open and close the big shutters at the beginning and end of the season, and could clean the wrap-around glass windows in between.
Everything in its place, because if it wasn’t, she’d trip on it. Dad’s fifth-wheel camper was bigger than this place, and that was before he opened the slide-outs. The cab’s center was dominated by the two-foot diameter disk of the Osborne Fire Finder to let her pinpoint a blaze. Around the perimeter was a chair, a cot, and a strip of counter that was desk, workbench, and kitchen. The cooler sat underneath the counter along with her pack and all of her dry groceries. Finding a spot for both her running shoes and her boots had been a problem until she’d decided to always keep one or the other on while she was awake.
She liked the contrast to her own room in her parents’ home. She was only in Coeur d’Alene for the month between the fire and ski seasons, plus two days off every other week. But it was her childhood room. A dense clutter of kid projects, high school trophies, and a ton of crap she always meant to shed but could never quite bring herself to do, crowded the room impossibly. The only way to make her bed at home was to be on it.
Here she was neat as a pin; a different person. Here she wasn’t six inches taller than any of her siblings. Here every guy on the block didn’t know her, cat calling every time she went out for a run. Swallow Hill Lookout was just the watching and the silence. A golden eagle circled high on the wind above the cab; silent and shining in the low sunlight. A swallow swooped busily in and out of the swallow box she’d packed in this spring and attached to the steel trestle. It was ridiculous to have no swallows on Swallow Hill, and they hadn’t nested among the sparse trees last season.
She’d been very cheered when the pair of swallows had claimed the box and begun nest building in it. The first tiny cheep sounding from the box’s small round hole had been an almost transcendental experience. She’d rushed up and down the five-story trestle between every fifteen minute scan of the horizon…and barely been able to walk the next day her legs were so sore.
The young had only fledged yesterday, making the terrifyingly heroic flight from bird box to the opposite side of the trestle, and then back to the bird box. By evening parents and children were soaring wild loops around the lookout tower clearing the air of any bugs foolish enough to brave th
e cool evening. The golden eagle had surveyed the quick and tiny swallows, as well as Marta herself, carefully. Apparently deciding that neither of them would make a tasty meal, she’d soared off seeking lusher pickings.
Marta waved at the flitting swallows then ducked into the cab and began boiling the water on her small gas stove. She was a third-generation Idahoan of Mexican descent with a taste for Italian food that she cultivated at her uncle’s knee; Mama’s much younger brother was often more her big brother than the two that Mama had provided her with. That was before Uncle Manuel had moved to Seattle to become a big time chef with an elegantly slender Italian wife. Graziella’s problem was that she was so nice that Marta couldn’t even hold being willowy against her. They’d become like sisters—which Marta had always wanted—both were dusky skinned…and that was the only part of their features that were in common.
While the water boiled, which took a while at this altitude, she flicked on the radio scanner, and began chopping sun-dried tomatoes and olives. The scanner gave her the bigger picture of what was happening in the area. Her radio was tuned only to the primary Forest Service frequency, but a lot went on among the heights of the Lolo National Forest and the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness.
Last summer Tess Weaver and Jack Parker had done a whole courtship thing on a higher frequency. It had started out as radio chess, something that Marta was good enough at that she could generally follow their games without a board. When their conversations had shifted to more personal matters, she’d tuned off their frequency to give them a little privacy.
This season it was Tom up on Gray Wolf and some wildlife biologist following wolves. The discussions about wolves had been fascinating, but then they too had gotten all mushy and personal, and she’d taken to skipping their “private” frequency. Because of that she’d missed most of a rather dangerous rescue this afternoon when they’d had to use a helicopter to short-haul the biologist to safety.
There was no privacy on mountain radio, but each lookout extended the courtesy of pretending not to listen. Otherwise it became a very long and lonely season. Marta often traded recipes with Angeline up on Old Crag and with Jack on Cougar because Tess couldn’t cook soup.
Marta tossed in the pasta, then diced in what she could salvage of her carrots and rather sad small zucchini. It was getting close to her bi-weekly resupply trip off the mountain and, with no refrigeration, veggies were scarce at the moment.
The airwaves were quiet tonight, except for the last of the airshow still going on around Gray Wolf Summit. They were down to the Incident Air Commander flying an airplane well above the fire for a good view and the big Firehawks laying down the main strikes. Tyler ducked his MD500 in and out of the fray with smooth precision.
She always waited for those moments. He never replied to a drop command with a simple, “Roger.” That would be too impolite for his breeding and his sense of humor.
“That little ol’ spot? Why it’s hardly a fire a-tall. You sure I should be snuffing her out? If I do, she’ll never grow up all tall and proper like.”
She could feel the ICA rolling his eyes somewhere far above. “Just hit the damn thing, Tyler.”
“Yes sir. Your order is this flyboy’s command. Just checking was all.” And then he’d hammer it with perfect precision and turn back for the next load of water or retardant.
With her luck, he probably looked like a toad. Not that she’d ever meet him. Still, didn’t hurt a girl to dream a little bit.
She served up her bowl of pasta and blanched veggies, sprinkled on the olives and sun-dried tomatoes, drizzling it with the oil from the tomatoes, and shaved the last of her precious Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese on it. She raised a small glass of red wine to the west in a salute to her uncle and the fair Graziella. It was just box wine, but it was the best she could offer—glass bottles weighed far too much to pack in both directions as Swallow Hill Lookout was six steep miles beyond the closest parking spot.
2
“No, Mom. I like my job,” Marta growled at the first squirrel to peek around a young spruce tree to see who was starting up the long trail to the peak of Swallow Hill.
“I like my winter job too,” she told an overly curious robin. Ski season she worked at the Silver Mountain Resort as a waitress. “Free lift tickets and next season they’ll let me try out for ski patrol.” Which would pay worse due to lack of tips, but irritate her much less. “I know it’s not Schweitzer,” the premier resort of Northern Idaho.
The robin flew off deciding that she didn’t want anything to do with this half-mad lunatic. It happened to Marta every time she came off the mountain during the season. She reverted into some form of her normal self that she wasn’t real happy with. And Mama had been on a roll because “that Janson girl just married your old flame the Malcolm boy.”
“She’s welcome to him,” Marta told a garter snake, a big one almost two feet long. It scowled at her from its sunny rock where the trail turned to avoid an old slide that had taken down several alders and a six-inch maple. The alders, typically were doing well, the maple was turning back into mulch. The “Malcolm boy” had been good enough in bed, an event she had made sure Mama never knew about, but about as mentally exciting as watching paint dry, which fit for a housepainter. Of course “that Janson girl” hadn’t been the brightest color in the palette either, so maybe it worked for her.
“I know I won’t meet a man on the tops of mountains,” she shouted at the snake when he flicked out a long red and black-tipped tongue at her. As she was neither a predator nor rational, he returned to enjoying his sun-warmed rock.
It was a problem, but it wasn’t one she was terribly worried about. No one came up Swallow Hill. If she had five visitors a summer it was a big deal. And the guys she met waitressing at the ski resort up on Silver Mountain, well, even she wasn’t that kind of desperate. Maybe if she worked her way up to Schweitzer or Sun Valley, but those were coveted spots on the ski patrol circuit and she’d bet the men-type opportunities weren’t any more fruitful in those places even if by all rights they should be.
“But, Marta-cara, we worry about you soooo much!” Marta mimicked Mama’s voice to a turkey vulture that carved the air at the first vista lookout, an hour up the trail.
Since when had her Mexican family become so Italian?
Again Uncle Manuel’s fault. She’d been raised in a lingual hash of Mexican, Italian, and English. No wonder nobody understood her when she got angry—other than her own family, of course.
At the halfway point up the trail, she needed a break and dropped the heavy pack loaded with her next two weeks of supplies. She heard the bright tink and cursed. At the very bottom of her pack she’d tucked two jars of the spaghetti sauce that she and Mama had put up last fall. Still not really understanding Marta’s isolation, Mama had insisted that Marta should have something homemade to serve if a nice man came by. The glass had broken against a rock when she’d unthinkingly dropped her pack. There was no point in digging the mess out now. She’d been right, glass was too heavy, but she’d been in such a hurry to get out of the house that she hadn’t taken the time to empty the jars into baggies.
By the time she reached the summit, she had chaffed shoulders, a sore back, and the bottom corner of her pack and the right hip of her shorts were both stained tomato red.
3
Detrick met her at the bottom of the lookout stairs with his pack already on. He headed down the mountain with barely a, “No fires. See you in twelve days.” He was hustling down to be with his new girlfriend, whom she wished luck. Dating a lookout substitute meant that you saw him only briefly every three days, because the rest of the summer he was cycling up and down to various towers.
He wasn’t her type anyway. He reminded her of all of the jocks who used to try and grope her in school. He seemed nice enough in the moments they traded places, and didn’t stare at her chest—too much. He also left the cab as neat
as he found it, which she appreciated but he never slowed down enough for her to thank him.
She did her first scan to confirm Detrick’s assessment and then unloaded her pack. At least only one jar was broken.
Then she felt an itch.
It was the itch that her Uncle Manuel had tried to teach her, “It is when what is missing is too subtle. You can no longer taste that you need more thyme or oregano, but you know that the balance, it isn’t right. Then you must become very careful. A mistake now and the whole sauce must go down the drain. But still the sauce is incomplete and must be finished. Slow down and listen. You will feel an itch, a tiny push from some part of you that knows about food and flavors. What it tells you, that will be the right answer.”
She felt one of those.
Marta slowed down, waited, putting everything away. Produce in the cooler, dry goods and cans on the shelves. Two new books, one only a little stained with red sauce, on the tiny shelf above her desk.
Out of the soggy shorts and into clean ones.
Then, rather than standing at the Osborne Fire Finder, she stepped out onto the narrow porch with her binoculars. She started the circuit at Gray Wolf Summit to the northeast because it was one of the clearest landmarks in the area. From the burn at the base of the summit, she swept slow arcs; first along the horizon, then lower and lower until she was looking down the cliff of Swallow Hill’s north and east face.
Then she moved to the north side of the tower and did the same thing. She always went around it “contrariwise.” Her dad said that she did everything backwards because she was left-handed. What had been an idle joke had turned into an act of defiance and finally a force of habit. She’d learned that doing things “contrariwise” let her see things that she wouldn’t otherwise if she was being “normal.”
She was around to the south side of Swallow Hill when she spotted the faint puff of smoke. It disappeared almost the instant that she saw it, because young fires could do that.
Blaze Atop Swallow Hill Lookout Page 1