Fire Season by Philip Connors

briefly, sixty feet above the peak and soaring like a bird. I begin to wonder if I’m hallucinating. I know for sure I’m vibrating, along with the floor and the walls of my tower; I feel as if I’m standing on a dance floor built on springs.
    The radio squawks. I have to turn it up to hear it.
    “Dispatch, Snow Peak.”
    “Snow Peak, dispatch.”
    “A weather update for you. I have winds of fifty-five to sixty-five, gusts to eighty, out of the southwest. Steady like that for the last half hour.”
    “Copy that. Thanks for the update. Dispatch clear, sixteen to twenty.”
    Snow Peak is usually windiest, being 800 feet taller than its nearest competitor—my peak—for tallest lookout on the Gila. My gusts reach only seventy-two miles per hour, with a steady breeze at forty-five to fifty. I try my damnedest, but—curled in the fetal position on my cot, listening to the snap and howl of the guy wires that anchor my tower in bedrock—I can’t find much consolation in knowing it could be worse.
    Some nights 6:00 p.m. comes and I find myself reluctant to leave my room with a view. This time of year the hammered mesa tops glow pale blond in the low-angled light, and glades of aspen can be seen greening up here and there in a kind of mosaic where the old McKnight Fire burned, each dense cluster at a slightly different pace—one vegetation type, a dozen different shades of green. Under the evening sun they have a fluffy look to them. But on windy days such as this I bail a few minutes early, pack a sandwich and a bottle of water for the trail. The roar has driven me to a deep disquiet. I need to get off the mountain.
    Of all my evening destinations, the pond may be my favorite. Tucked out of the prevailing winds in a kind of alcove, a mile and a half below the peak, it holds water most of the year and is visited by elk, deer, bear, and turkeys; their tracks are often visible in the mud. Alice loves it here too. Usually she opts for a soak in the pond’s fetid water—unless she finds a pile of bear scat to flop in first, in which case she rolls around on her back, kicking her legs in the air as she smears herself in the stink. Few things make her happier than finding something dead or dungish in which to roll. The reek of it is a kind of talisman for her. It says, Beware, all ye who travel here: I am as mean and nasty as I smell.
    Around the pond this time of year, the spearlike leaves of Iris missouriensis —commonly known as the Western blue flag—poke through the mud, straining toward the sunlight. The most drought-resistant of wild irises, it sings the song of springtime in the high country. Out of the hundreds of flowers forming pregnant buds, precisely one has burst, exposing three delicate petals traced with threadlike purple veins. I sit cross-legged next to it and rest awhile. High on the cliffs above me I can hear the wind roar, but here in my watery bower all is calm. For the first time all day I’m able to hear myself think, were I to have a thought. The wind has left me hollowed out, though. I haven’t spoken a word since I called in the weather ten hours ago.
    H uman contact here is the more cherished for its rarity, and my favorite encounters have been with that peculiar subspecies known as the thru-hiker. Their aim: 3,000 miles on foot in five months, a hike along the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) from the Mexican border to Glacier National Park before the snow flies in October. Twenty miles a day, every day. I know them instantly by their fancy walking sticks, their sunburnt skin and general air of dinginess, and the scratches on their shins if they’re wearing shorts, which come from having bushwhacked through the thorny brush to my south. By the time they arrive on my peak they’ve walked a hundred miles on a shortcut from the Mexican border, headed for a junction with the Continental Divide just northwest of me. The actual divide runs north out of the bootheel of New Mexico, but that way lies