Fire Season Read Online Free Page B

flow to the Rio Grande and eventually on to the Gulf of Mexico, while the waters to the west join the Gila River on its 650-mile journey to the Colorado at Yuma, Arizona—a journey it rarely completes, thanks to thirsty Arizonans.
    Even to drive the circumference of country I can see from here by daylight would take two full days—plus an international border crossing. It is a world of astonishing diversity and no small human presence. To the east the lights of Truth or Consequences twinkle like radioactive dust; in the southeast, just beyond the horizon, El Paso and Juarez glow like the rising of a midnight sun. Along an arc to my south are the lights of other, far smaller towns, lights that remind me I sit at the juncture of more than one transition zone, not just the meeting of different biomes but the wildland-urban interface.
    The town lights are quaint and even rather beautiful at this remove, but the wildlands are what draw my eye whenever I climb the tower at night. In a quadrant from due west to due north there is no evidence of human presence, not one light to be seen—a million uninhabited acres. A line running northwest of where I sit would not cross another human dwelling for nearly a hundred miles, a thought that never fails to move me.
    I say move me, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the feeling. In fact, if I’m to be honest about it, on this my first night back in the tower I find myself hopping around like some juiced-up Beat poet, but instead of shouting Zen poetry and gentle nonsense I start hollering profanities, turning this way and that trying to take it all in but it’s just so huge there ain’t no way. How can I explain this outburst, other than to say no disrespect to the faithful intended? I grew up Catholic, after all. Curse words and states of intense feeling have always seemed to me a natural match.
    Satisfied with the extent of my elbow room, I drop back through the trapdoor, shimmy down the steps, hurry back to the warmth of the cabin. I feed the potbellied stove with pine I split last August. For an hour or more I lie awake in the dark, listening to the howl of the wind in the trees, resisting an urge to call the dog back to the bed and thereby spoil her beyond reckoning.
    I t’s a lot of work setting up to be lazy.
    For seven months I surrender the cabin to the creatures, if they can get in. This winter they’ve been aided by a citizen user of the national lands who decided to break a window in the side door, for reasons unknown and unknowable. (Five miles afoot seems a long trip to commit a petty act of vandalism.) Every surface is covered in dust from the winter winds working their way through the crevices, blowing in through the window. Not even the dishes in the cupboards are spared a fine grit. All must be washed; I heat some water in a basin for just this purpose. While I wait for it to warm I cover the window with plastic sheeting and duct tape, measure it for a Plexiglas replacement to be hauled up later.
    Next all evidence of the rodents must be expunged, especially the smell. I pry the dead deer mice off the floor and throw them in the fire. Dustpans full of moths meet the same fate. The pack rats have made nests in the bedroom cabinets, filthy conglomerations of pine needles, plastic spoons, Band-Aids, pages torn from magazines, random playing cards. These too I burn. The rats have the unfortunate habit of urinating in the corners and defecating where they sleep, filling the cabin’s atmosphere with a bitter, ammoniac stench—redolent of certain New York streets I have known. To ward off hantavirus I spray the floor with a solution of water and bleach, then mop with water and pine-scented soap, and finally mop once more with just water.
    Once the place is somewhat livable I figure I’d better test my radio, let the below world in on the fact that I’ve arrived here safely. Not that anyone’s all that concerned. Once we’re sent up our hills, we lookouts are