Making Observations.
Two weeks at the tower. 75 climbs up and down the ladder. 18 millimeters of rain. 100 seeds planted. Twice daily weather reports over the radio. Countless hours of watching clouds and squinting at distant smudges, trying to distinguish smoke from road dust, gas flares, snow patches, or cutblock, when the sun hits them at just the right angle to deceive weary eyes into seeing rising smoke.
Slowly, I've been adjusting to the new pace of my everyday life in my new role as a lookout observer in Alberta. As part of the fixed wildfire detection system, it's my responsibility to keep a vigilant watch over the 40 km radius that surrounds my tower, reporting smoke within five minutes of detection, and catching fires before they exceed 0.1 hectares. To do this, I spend every day climbing up a 60-foot ladder to a tiny octagonal cupola in the sky and keep a careful watch on the landscape in its surrounding area. On low hazard days, when the weather conditions are less conducive for ignition and fire spread, I meander up occasionally, giving my weather reports at 8AM and 1PM, but otherwise only climbing up for a 360 scan, or observation, every couple of hours. On extreme hazard days I sit in the tower for 11 hours, making continuous observations from 9am until 8pm. Between these, there are low-moderate, moderate, and high hazard days, each dictating a different threshold of fire danger and a different amount of time and intensity I need to invest in observing the surrounding land and sky.
It's the observing that drew me to this job. Captivated me, really. Six months ago, I defended my thesis on the effects of fire severity and climate warming on tundra vegetation. For two summers, I made observations on vegetation recovery, soil conditions, and landscape characteristics in different tundra communities - some with shrubs that grew taller than me, more like alder and willow forests than treeless tundra, others were a field of endless tussocks, bunch-forming sedges, that felt like I had been transported back to the grasslands of Southern Saskatchewan rather than being somewhere north of the 60th parallel. I was contented just to experience these landscapes, to exist in them, feel the blistering Arctic heat, from a sun that never sets, touch the frozen soil, that exists a merely 30 cm below the mossy surface of the tundra floor, and witness the recovery and resilience of plant communities that had been removed by fire but resolved to return once again.
But there was more than just observation. In western scientific research, it is not enough to observe anymore. Before I saw my first cottongrass, before I could touch the soil, I had to hypothesize. And after I observed, I had to analyze. I needed to do more than document what I saw. I had to quantify my observations, and then perform calculations, using regression models, mixed effects models, and Random Forests models. Everything I saw -the fireweed that seemingly appeared from nowhere, the charred branches of dwarf birch shrubs on hillslopes, the patchwork of exposed mineral soils where tussocks had once been- became numbers, slopes of lines, and points on charts. With each iteration of chapter drafts, presentations and figure edits, the story that I saw unfold on the landscape became more and more watered down. Less descriptive. More "empirical". Objective. Scientific.
Some of my friends and family are confused why, after spending so much time specializing my education, I would want to take a job where the formal requirements are really only a high school education and a capacity to work alone. Sitting by myself above the trees, looking out into the forest of aspen, spruce, and pine, I feel the calm I have been seeking. My responsibility is to observe. And it is enough.
