With growing apprehension, I stared at the wispy, caramel-brown smoke column surging up from deep within the Dragon Mountains. I hoped it was not another arson, like the one we had in these same mountains a few weeks back. Fire investigators had traced that fire’s origins to a campfire deliberately set at the edge of a forest thicket. Upslope winds, or perhaps the arsonist’s own breath, had fanned the flames into the bone-dry forest, burning over two hundred acres of pine, a few squirrels and at least one fawn before it was brought under control.
Today the smoke appeared to be coming from the Rock Creek area, where we worked last week. The forest there was also dry and thick as dog-hair, and the narrow meadow straddling the creek had already turned to straw. Rock Creek itself barely trickled. It wouldn’t produce enough water to put out a campfire, much less a forest fire.
This summer comprised eastern Oregon’s seventh year of drought. Our normally lengthy growing season had consisted of a dozen weeks in early spring and now, in early July, the parched meadows and heavily littered forests had become tinder-dry, primed for a spark. Under conditions like these, a stiff breeze could turn even a tiny blaze into a raging inferno.
I called out to our crew leader, “Hey Debra, it looks like there’s a fire over by Rock Creek.”
“That’s nice,” she said, hunkered over her foot square study plot. Without pausing, she plucked out a grass-like plant from the cracked earth and examined it. I watched her identify the plant, write down its abbreviation on the data sheet she had secured by a clasp on her clipboard, and then calmly reach for another plant.
Irritated with her dismissive attitude, I thought again about how much I didn’t want to deal with Debra on top of all the problems arson and a possible early fire season would entail, and added to it my new burden: Jackie. Jackie had been hired to replace our crew’s soil scientist, Tom. Today was Jackie’s first day and she already seemed to be rubbing everyone the wrong way.
I glanced at the smoke column again, noting how much it had thickened and darkened. The fire was growing. I sniffed. Yes, wood smoke was definitely beginning to overpower the usual fresh pine-scented breeze.
I called out again, louder this time. “Debra, I don’t think we should wait on this fire. If you’re not going to call it in, I will.”
She expelled a long, exaggerated sigh and then squinted up at me. Her stiff, wide-brimmed straw hat hid her slanted, dark brown, East Asian eyes and most of her short, thick black hair. But it didn’t hide her frown.
“All right, Sophia,” she said, speaking with a slight lisp on the letter ‘s.’ She could never pronounce my name quite right. ‘Sophia Davis’ came out ‘Thopia Davith.’
“I get the message,” she continued. “I’ll make sure it gets called it in as soon as I finish this section. It’s almost time for lunch, anyway.”
“Good,” I said, happy to have at least that settled. Bending down to count plants again, I tried to push out the fretting that had been casting a shadow upon my thoughts all day. I was working on a soil-vegetation inventory crew miles away from my two teenage children and a husband who loved to fight fires. What if he was called away to fight this one? How would I manage everything then?
As the familiar feeling of dread crept over me, I told myself to stop it right there. This was just a solitary smoke column, for gosh sakes. And it might be a natural fire, not arson.
I visualized a single lightning strike on the talus slope above the creek, a fire that wouldn’t go anywhere, and I consoled myself with such platitudes as ‘you’re making good money, you can finally be a botanist again, you should be grateful you even have a job.’ Then I forced myself to focus on the reason I was out here to begin with.
On hands and knees now, I baked under the unrelenting sun and swatted at biting insects while classifying, counting and tabulating the meadow vegetation before me. But my task couldn’t keep that growing fire far from my thoughts. When was Debra going to call it in?
Finally, Debra stood up, dropped her equipment into a tidy little pile, and stomped over to me across the brown grass. I sat back on my feet and looked up at her.
With a scowl on her face, she snapped, “Okay, I’m done. As soon as you reach a stopping point, get Tom and Jackie and meet the rest of us at the road for lunch. I’ll tell Luna about the fire on the way up.”
Relieved, I nodded my acknowledgement and took a brief break to watch slender, long-waisted Debra stomp off through vegetation so dry that it crackled with each step.
I soon completed my last entry and laid down my clipboard and pencil. Standing up, I stretched the kinks out of my back. It’s no fun getting old!