The First Week

“The ivory tower sits outside of society,
Upon a knoll.
There was a fire here many years ago,
It helped the forest change.”

Yesterday morning my supervisor called to check up on me. Two days prior, he had flown off in a large, yellow and black helicopter back to High Level, Alberta, leaving me alone at Ponton Tower, a wildfire lookout tower in the boreal forest. He was calling to make sure that I was settling in okay and that I was starting to get comfortable with my job responsibilities as a Lookout Observer for Alberta’s Agriculture and Forestry department. As I began to answer how I was feeling about the work, I looked out my window to see a large black bear next to my porch. As I exclaimed “a bear!”, Neil (my supervisor) asked “is your bear fence on?” to which I responded, “I don’t know.” It was obviously not on. Neil left me to deal with the bear situation and told me to take photos. As the bear wandered around my cabin, chewing on different metallic things and drinking out of the nasty grey water pipe that runs from my sink, I snapped a plethora of photos while my body was full of adrenaline. This was the closest I had ever been to a bear! It was beautiful. Its hair was long and glistening in the sun. At one point, it came up on its hind legs and peered at me through the window. We could have developed a loving, cuddly relationship, I’m sure, but I felt responsible for all of the things that it was trying to eat, so I had to scare it off. I yelled at it like I would a dog, saying “no, don’t you do that”, which half-worked, but when I got the airhorn going it slowly made its way out of the bear fence. The way it jumped through two of the wires of the fence was as majestic as an Olympic high diver, twisting its body to not catch itself on the wires. It had obviously done this before… When it was gone, I quickly switched on the fence and checked it for damage while the bear stared at me and lingered around for a while. Eventually, it wandered off into the woods for its teddy bear’s picnic. 

I have been up here at Ponton Tower for 4 days now. The day before the bear incident, there was a surprise snowstorm, which froze all my pipes. I don’t have running water here so I rely on these large rainwater collectors for all the water to wash dishes. I was provided containers of potable and non-potable water for drinking, cooking and bathing, which will be replenished every three weeks. However, due to the frozen pipes, I didn’t have a working sink for a little over 24 hours. I think the only other time I have experienced this is when I was traveling in India. Adjusting to this on my second day up here was pretty intense but I managed to find a way of washing dishes and finally, when my sink drained itself shortly after the bear incident, I felt a deep gratitude for having a sink, which I don’t think I had ever felt before. It seems like challenges are a beneficial learning tool, who knew?

So why am I here? My role is to climb up a 100-foot tower, multiple times a day (the amount depends on the fire hazard rating - low, moderate, high, extreme) to observe my 40km area of responsibility. As I write this, we are on a moderate hazard level, which means that from 1-7pm I must observe my surroundings every 30 minutes for any signs of smoke. Luckily I haven’t discovered any wildfires yet but from this vantage point I can see definite signs of a rainstorm passing through this area. It’s very beautiful up here and I enjoy observing the surroundings. There are many lakes and trees to look upon, as well as a large osprey nest on the old lookout tower, about 400m away from me. 

It’s time for me to do my observation so I will leave it at this for now. I will try and do this every week or so as it’s a good way for me to share my experiences without having to individually talk to everyone. My end date is August 19, so I’m sure there will be quite a lot that happens between now and then. I am basically in self-isolation for the next 3 months, with food and water deliveries happening every 3 weeks by helicopter. It is still pretty surreal to me, but I imagine things will get easier and more natural as the days pass. 

There is a quote on the inside wall of the tower:

“Writing is the practice of asserting yourself” - Natalie Goldberg