As a young woman, I fell in love with Luke’s fire-tower prose and I made up my mind about two things: I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to attempt the lookout experience. So why am I here? It started back when I was a teenager and my father gave me a copy of Burning Ground (Perennial Canada, 2000), a novel written by Pearl Luke, a former lookout turned author. I imagine a caricature of myself picnicking in the wet muskeg, blackflies swarming my face, bird-sized mosquitoes sucking my blood, lightning bolts striking metres from my feet, all while I use a cast-iron frying pan to fend off a hungry black bear. “It’s not a picnic out here,” my neighbour to the northwest often grumbles. It’s also a question that, after surviving my first season on the fire watch last year, I know I’ll ask myself a lot over the next four months, whether sitting on a frigid outhouse seat during a freak late-May snowstorm or after spending 11 hours up in the cupola on a sweltering mid-summer day, feeling my brain frying like ground beef. What on earth am I doing here? It’s a question I get asked a lot. Article content The morning commute involves clipping into a safety harness for the long climb to the cupola Photo by Trina Moyles / Swerve Once arrived, the lookout enjoys a million-dollar view, but also finds an isolation that can be taxing. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
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