The Fire Lookout – Part 1: Above the Trees

The thunderstorm arrived from the west, black and rolling, as Rachel crested the last switchback.

She was thirty-two, a long-distance hiker three weeks into a solo walk of the divide, and she had just seen a small glass-walled hut on the summit ahead, perched on stilts. A man stood on the catwalk, binoculars in hand. Lightning split the sky.

"Get inside!" he shouted.

She ran. He caught her pack and hauled her up the ladder. The wind slammed the door behind them.

The cabin was a single room, glass on four sides, with a bed, a stove, a map table and an Osborne firefinder. Rain hammered the windows. Thunder shook the stilts.

"Wade," said the man, breathless. He was thirty-six, rangy, in a faded flannel shirt, with a trimmed beard and a startled expression. "Sorry. I haven't had company in a while. Six weeks."

"Rachel." She dropped her pack, shivering. "Thank you."

He wrapped a wool blanket round her shoulders and put the kettle on, hands slightly unsure, as if he had forgotten how to host.

"You watch for fires," she said.

"Smoke. Mostly. Radio it in." He gestured out at the valley. "It's a good job. Quiet."

"Too quiet?"

"Some days." He glanced at her. "Not today."

The storm raged for hours. The lookout swayed gently, a ship in a sea of cloud. They drank tea and shared a tin of chili and talked until midnight, and Rachel realised she had stopped counting the miles.

"Can I ask you something?" said Wade.

"Yes."

"Will you stay till morning?"

"I can't walk in this."

"I mean after. A day or two."

"Green?" she said, a word from her mother.

"Green," said Wade, and smiled. "Very green."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Clear Sky.