Wildfire: Days One–Two

Phone, phone, where’s the phone?! Should be on the rickety table next to the wake-up radio, but it isn’t.

But the forest is much thinner, and I can see a chunk of sky, gray and glaring.

Sorry, Mrs. Castine, your son is missing and presumed burnt to a crisp.

Slogging out of the mucky water, I follow along the edge of the swamp.

A road means passing vehicles, maybe even a police car. They’ll be evacuating the whole area, right? Somebody is bound to see me.

Not much of the sky is visible under the canopy of the forest, but I’m pretty sure the sun is lower.

My throat and mouth feel like dry, gritty dirt.

That’s what it feels like, trudging through the forest. Like I’m somewhere between awake and asleep.

So that was the year my father taught me how to cast with a fly rod—I sucked, actually—and build a campfire, and whittle with a jackknife, and how to read a trail map, and a lot of cool, outdoorsy stuff.

When you’re lost in the woods, you have to think and plan, or risk dying of exposure, which can happen if your body temperature gets out of whack, too hot or cold, or if you don’t get enough water.

The old lumber camp is nearly invisible in the fading light. Located not fifty yards from the spring, in a clearing overgrown with bushes, ferns, and skinny saplings that makes everything look blended together.

The warm beam of the flashlight lights up a small, tidy interior. A potbellied cast-iron woodstove with a tin chimney going up through the roof. A little square table with two spindly chairs. A narrow bunk.

Doesn’t matter that the cabin is stifling hot, and smells old and musty, but at least it doesn’t stink of smoke.

An old Jeep, like from the wars in the last century. Dull green in color and as stocky as a bulldog, with thick tires and old leather seats and no doors, and a flat, tilt-down windshield.

Maybe he’s the one who keeps the cabin stocked with provisions.

I toss the crates into the back of the Jeep and slip behind the wheel, hands shaking. Trying to remember what little I know about driving a standard transmission. I know the clutch is important. That’s how you shift gears. But which one is the clutch pedal and which is the brake?

Don’t stall the engine!

My left foot accidently slips off the clutch pedal and WHAM! there’s an awful grinding noise as the Jeep lurches into gear.

The steering wheel bucks in my sweaty hands like a thing alive.

I put the Jeep in neutral and roll to a stop, listening.

My passenger gets so relaxed she almost falls asleep, even though the ride is bumpy. With her head lolling and her eyelids drooping, and her face cleaned of soot, Delphy looks younger.

I’m disappointed it isn’t like the trail maps Dad taught me how to read at Baxter State Park. At first it just looks like a bunch of squiggly green lines. The faded printing identifies it as a topographical survey, but I’m not sure what that means, exactly.

But Delphy leverages herself out of the seat, grabs the stick she’s using for a crutch, and hobbles past the sign.

She hobbles down the steps, looks up at the roofline of the porch and cottage.

“There are a lot of places like this in the backwoods. Hunting cabins and getaway cottages that are too remote for power.”

I go to the opposite end of the porch and fiddle with the radio, turning the hand crank as fast as I can. After thirty cranks, I switch it on. Static. I rotate the dial. More static.

...reporting that more than fifteen thousand acres of dry timberland have been engulfed by wind-driven flames in the last forty-eight hours.

In some areas, a wall of flame has spread a mile in less than an hour, leaving nothing but smoldering ash behind.

It sounds like an out-of-control whoopee cushion, venting loud and long. Like a not-so-distant artillery barrage.

It sounds like an out-of-control whoopee cushion, venting loud and long. Like a not-so-distant artillery barrage.