Love Letter to the Fire Tower
FAREWELL TO SEVEN YEARS as a lookout observer
Seven seasons. Never thought I would stay and watch for as long as I did. The fire tower was more than a place of work: it was a home, a refuge, a holy place, a grounding and expanding, a nest in the woods that I migrated back to year when the sun licked the snow away.
It was more than a job. It was a new way to be in the world: with all of my senses wide open, without the distraction of societal choice. Up, or down? Mother Nature decided for me. My body became a barometer. I didn’t only observe the weather with my eyes and ears, I learned to feel it. The pressure in the skies, building. The boreal forest, an ecosystem designed to burn anew, crying out to be lit. I came to the tower afraid of fire, but left transformed by it.
The Chuckegg Creek Fire, May 2019. (Photo: Trina Moyles).
I was not unlike the boreal in my first season: I wanted to be struck by lightning, lashed by rain, pummelled by hail. I came wanting to test myself. Was I psychologically and physically strong enough to endure four months alone in the bush? Who would I be at the end of the season?
Who would I be after seven seasons alone?
One hundred rungs up. (Photo: Trina Moyles).
While I never planned to stay for so long, I fell in love with the lifestyle as a Lookout Observer. I felt the swell of pride of being the first to see a wildfire, usually just a soft tug of smoke along the horizon line, so slight that if you hadn’t memorized the landscape, the way lookouts do, you wouldn’t see at all.
I sensed there was more to learn, every season, in the ecosystem of myself and those beyond me. So I built my life around the tower, as if the fire tower was a lover I returned to.
And I was not truly alone, as I learned in my first season, I’d climbed up into a community of voices of other lookouts, some within fifty kilometres, others half a province apart. Fellow artists, musicians, poets, novelists, naturalists, makers and dreamers and storytellers of different stripes. I met beautiful people at the fire tower, rarely face to face, but what did it matter when we faced the forest, the grind of the climb, and what it meant to play witness to climate change in the boreal forest together?
The fire tower forged friendships that will last a lifetime.
“I met beautiful people at the fire tower, rarely face to face, but what did it matter when we faced the forest, the grind of the climb, and what it meant to play witness to climate change in the boreal forest together?”
Self-portrait at 100 feet. Didn’t know it would be my last season. (Photo: Trina Moyles).
I found company in the wild beings who lived around the fire tower. I saw spiders and insects that I would’ve only imagined existed in the Amazon rainforest. Their names fluttered on my tongue: hummingbird moth. I felt the charge of living closely with Ursus americanus and was offered an intimate glimpse into their world. I watched a bear cub with two white crescent moons on her chest be weaned into the world and grow fat on berries and eventually raise a cub of her own. I came to feel kinship with the bears and native bees and the moose who wandered by my tower. These face-to-face encounters taught me to put down my fear, de-centre human experience on the land, and learn to share space in meaningful ways.
The fire tower pulled me into close proximity with the wild, to both interact with and witness how biodiversity can exist and thrive with minimal human disturbance. The teachings from my non-human neighbours have taught me about respect and reciprocity and love.
Osa, a four-year-old bear whom I lived next to and watched grow from a yearling cub. (Photo: Trina Moyles).
I owe everything to the last seven years at the fire tower. I am not the same fearful person that I was in that first season, shakily climbing the ladder, afraid to look down, afraid of the wild, afraid of lightning and wildfires and bears, and mostly, being alone.
With the help of my friends and colleagues, I learned to manage my fears at the fire tower. I am the woman I am today because I had the privilege of many seasons at the fire tower, looking within, looking beyond, and contemplating love, loss, death, and uncertainty. I am so grateful for the individuals — human and non-human, alike — whom shaped my experiences working in the boreal forest, climbing a 100-foot tower, and watching the seasons pass by.
I weathered news from the outside. My niece was born on a full moon in July. My brother departed this world for another. I processed feelings of elation and grief.
I memorized the forest and landscape around me knowing that change is inevitable.
That Nature is forever in flux.
How can you miss a place you haven’t even left yet? I remember writing in late August at the end of a season alone in the bush. I always struggled to reconcile with this feeling of deep nostalgia and longing for the fire tower even before I left, maybe, because I knew that I wouldn’t stay forever. That there would come a spring when I wouldn’t fly back to my nest in the sky.
It’s the first time in the past eight years that I’m not packing up my blue bins, organizing my grocery list, and preparing to “go in” to the tower. While I feel that inevitable longing — that haunting — for the tower, I also feel a sense of relief.
In February, I participated in a virtual book club, and a reader asked me: “Has your relationship with solitude changed over the years?” I thought about this question long after the event wrapped up. And the truest answer that I think of is, yes, it’s changed in the way that I no longer need it, at least in extremity, the way I once did.
The fire tower taught me to value my time alone to be in nature, think, heal, rest, play, wander, wonder, and make art. But I’m ready to experience the pain and beauty of the world in greater balance with the people whom I love and care about. I’m ready to share the view.
TO READ MY MEMOIR, LOOKOUT: LOVE, SOLITUDE, AND SEARCHING FOR WILDFIRE IN THE BOREAL FOREST (PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 2021) — CLICK HERE