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"The Hoariest Night On Diablo" by ManyMoose

This is a short story based on a personal experience on a fire lookout in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, when I was eighteen and on my first full time summer job. This is a second version benefiting from a kind reviewer.

Category: Short Story

Tags: True tale of youth, fire lookout, fear, full moon, forest fires, hoary marmot, humiliation, wilderness, Diablo Mountain Lookout, Elk Summit Guard Station

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The Hoariest Night On Diablo


Big Daddy brought me up with sixty days' ration of grub and dropped it on the granite boulder outside my glassy new home.  "Cut your firewood from those snags," he said, indicating some scrawny dead trees down below yards and yards of nothing but bear grass.  Then he turned his mules around and left me.

Alone.

After three weeks Big Daddy came back up with one mule and a bait of grub to shore up my dwindling supplies.  Big Daddy was my boss.  He brooked no monkey business from a teenage boy like me, and he had known many.  He growled about my logbook.  "Too messy," he grumped.  The day after he left I dutifully recopied it as best I could in my undisciplined scrawl.

That was three weeks ago.

 It was the fifteenth of August, 1962.  Not yet three months out of high school, I had already been at 7500 feet above sea level for six weeks. 

Alone.

 Alone.  I was just another lookout-fireman on Diablo Mountain in a duty roster that went back nearly forty years, and I had spent those six weeks searching in vain for a tell-tale gray wisp that would shout “Fire on the mountain!”

 There was no smoke because there was no fire. 

 Frustrated, I secretly prayed for lightning or a careless campfire that would make me a hero and justify my existence on the lonely granite monolith called Diablo.  Day after day I searched my seen-area, memorizing every ridge, every stream, every lake, every mountain, and every named point through the walls center of my glassy cabin. 

 I tested myself on the Osborne Fire Finder, pretending that a boulder over on the faraway Bitterroot Divide was a smoke. 

  Peering through the sights at the boulder, I consulted the azimuth reading on the scale around the circular map.  That gave me the exact direction in degrees from my location, indicated on the map by a tiny pin at the very center of the fire finder, to the pretend fire at the boulder.

 That was the easy part. 

 The hard part was estimating the distance from Diablo Mountain to the boulder.   My map had been lightly shaded to indicate the seen area, the terrain visible in my line of sight.  The far side of ridges and peaks was outside of my seen area.   I could not see slopes that were closer than slopes I could see, and in some directions the seen area was striped like a zebra.  It was different in every direction, because of the lay of the land.

The storied Bitterroot Divide was the limit of my seen area to the east, and though the State of Montana was just on the other side, I could see none of it.  Still, I knew the country like my own and I could imagine the unseen terrain.

Big Daddy would be proud if he could see me now.  No teenage kid, this.  I am a lookout fireman, and I'm good at it.  I'd show him every drainage, every peak, every valley, and every lightning strike I recorded in my neatened logbook.  If he would only come back once more.

 Still there was no smoke because there was no fire. 

 Alone again. 

 Twilight in the mountains is a leisurely affair, totally unlike the quick darkness that falls to mariners and lovers walking on western beaches.  For the fire lookout, night comes slowly like the sleep of a contented man. 

 Long before the sun went down on my abode at the top of Diablo Mountain, sunlight poured through the western window wall, revealing every smudge, every fingerprint, every streak on every pane of glass that I had just spent days scrubbing with Kimwipes and Windex getting ready for Big Daddy’s final inspection, the one that would make or break my dream to spend my life in the woods as a forester. 

Blinded by the sun in the west, I spent the evening watching alpenglow flood the mountains to the east. 

 Mesmerized by the lovely reddish glow on the granitic peaks that formed the Bitteroot Divide, I checked my watch.  Seven pm.  I posted the following entry in my logbook:  “1900 hours, 10-7 for the night.  Alpenglow on the Bitterroots.”  I loved the radio codes; 10-7 meant I was at the end of my work day and turning off my two way radio.

 I stepped outside for a last look-around when the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up.  This would be a strange night, of that I was sure.  The feeling I had was like the sensation one gets while walking down a dark alley alone at night, or crossing a graveyard in the moonlight.  Like someone was watching.  I could almost feel hot breath on my neck.  The hot breath of a wildfire racing through my brain.

 At 1930 or so, the sun started to slip behind Graves Peak, and I knew by 2030 it would be dark.  I could not shake the feeling of dread that was coming with nightfall, but I scanned the horizon once more and turned back east to the Bitterroot Divide.

 FIRE!

 Had my prayers been answered?  Had that lightning strike over in Montana a week ago broken loose?  Could I be seeing my first fire?  And it was a big one.  A crown fire, most likely, running fast.  I could see my reputation now in the annals of lookout history:  “The devastating Bitterroot Divide Fire of 1962 was discovered and reported by Diablo Mountain Lookout.”

 I turned on my radio.  “Diablo, 10-8,” I said.  That code meant I was back on the air. 

 The longer I looked, the more alarmed I became.  The blazing ridgeline grew brighter and brighter.  Is that a fire?  It must be!  What else could it be?!  I took azimuth readings on my Osborne Firefinder, but the blaze was way off the edge of my map, over in Montana.  Perhaps someone has already reported it. 

 Now is my only chance.  I picked up the mike.  “Powell, Diablo.”  I was about to utter the four code that would alert everyone listening in that I was about to report a wildfire. 

 One last look:  The skyline was fully ablaze now, almost like a nuclear fireball.  I took a deep breath and …

 “Powell, Diablo, 10-7.”

 I had saved myself by the narrowest of margins from reporting the full moon rising over the Bitterroots on the night of August 15th, 1962 at 2001 hours.

 Exhausted, I flopped on my bunk.  My heart thumped and all the adrenalin that had flooded my system had nowhere to go.  My humiliation would be complete when Big Daddy found out.  If he found out. 

 I lay on my bunk as the moon rose every more brightly through my eastern window wall.  Fighting private humiliation turning to fear of public humiliation, my discontented mind refused sleep.   Eyes wide open.  Staring at the ceiling, staring at my fire finder, staring at the moon well on its heavenly arc over Diablo.  Staring at the ghostly shapes of moon shadows thrown by wind-tortured subalpine fir trees just under the rim of my mountain sanctuary. 

 Just outside my western window wall, inches away, the precipitous cliff that distinguished Diablo Mountain from lesser hills fell away more than five hundred feet. 

 I heard a rock roll on the cliff.  Another. 

 The hair on the back of my neck stood up still.  The hot breath of humiliation had turned to the cold breath of dread.  A cold stinking breath, like that escaping the lips of a corpse. 

 A few more rocks rolled over the cliff, and I could hear rustling sounds, spooky sounds that terrorized my already panic-stricken mind.  Scratching sounds, like that of someone buried alive trying to escape the coffin.

I shuddered.  I rustled around in my pack for the pistol I had stashed there, never to be seen by Big Daddy.  I was proud of my pistol.  I had earned it on snowshoes trapping pine marten in the winter.  Now it might be my salvation.  I took it in my hand. 

 Suddenly there was a terrific clatter right outside my window.  CLUNK!  Clunk!  Clunk, clunk, clinkclinkclinkclink. 

 Then silence.

 I pulled my sleeping bag up over my head and prayed that the monster would leave me be, pistol or no pistol.  In due time, sleep came.

 The morning sun flooded through my eastern window wall, and I rose to go outside to the customary boulder where I could whiz off last night’s coffee.  I opened the door, idly noticing that my washtub was missing.  After whizzing, I peered over the cliff on my western side.  There the washtub lay smashed on a boulder a hundred feet below. 

 I started a fire in my little wood stove with wood culled from the scrawny dead trees down below all that bear grass, and filled the coffee pot with cold water from my five gallon can. I stuffed my pistol deep back in my pack, away from Big Daddy's eyes.

 I turned on the radio.  “Diablo, 10-8.”  I was back on the air, my integrity intact, my nerves restored by sleep.

 “Diablo, this is Powell.”

 “Powell, Diablo.  Go ahead.”

 “Big Daddy wants to know if you saw that hoary marmot last night.  He says it comes out and wanders around the lookout when the moon is full like it was last night.”

 That's the end of the story.  It's all true.  Big Daddy.  The marmot.  And the moon.  Consult, if you wish, the Naval Observatory for August 15th, 1962:

 Sunset                     7:47 p.m.                         End civil twilight         8:20 p.m.               Moonrise                   8:01 p.m.                        Moonset                    6:27 a.m. on following day  

 Oh yes, it was a hoary night on Diablo.  Hoarier, even, than the marmot:

–adjective, hoarier, hoariest.

1. gray or white with age: an old dog with a hoary muzzle.

2. ancient or venerable: hoary myths.

3. tedious from familiarity; stale: Please don't tell that hoary joke at dinner again tonight.







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Category Name: My Thoughts

I did not enjoy this story. I am not even sure what problem the protagonist faced. This story was okay. The story would have been better if the author had introduced the problem differently and made it feel more pressing. I really enjoyed this story. The author did a good job pulling me into the story by introducing an immediate and important problem for the protagonist.

This section is for overall comments and general ideas. The score should reflect how much you enjoyed the story.

Category Name: Character Development

The characters were not dynamic, credible, interesting, memorable or unique. I don’t care about or understand the characters because they were poorly developed. The characters were somewhat dynamic, credible, interesting, memorable and unique. I partially understood the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters. I somewhat connected with and care about the characters. The characters were very dynamic, credible, interesting, memorable and unique. I thoroughly understood their thoughts, feelings and actions. I felt connected with and cared about the characters.

This is act of bringing a character to life on the page. It is a combination of the author’s description of the character and the character’s dialog, action, and thoughts. Though all characters should be believable, the protagonist and antagonist are usually the most developed characters.

Category Name: Plot

I finished reading the story so the plot must have unfolded, but I am not sure what the plot was. The characters did not achieve or grow by solving the problems they faced in this story. There were definite wrinkles in the way the plot unfolded leading to the final conflict. The plot was loosely tied to the achievement and growth of the characters. The way the protagonist overcame some of the problems flowed unnaturally with the story. I could see the plot unfolding through a series of escalating problems that lead to the final conflict. The plot helped me understand the achievements and growth of the characters. The way the protagonist overcame the problems flowed naturally with the st

In fiction a plot is all the events in a story, particularly rendered towards the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect. In other words it's what mostly happened in the story. The plot draws the reader into the character's lives and helps the reader understand the choices that the characters make.

Category Name: Dialog

The dialog seemed like cold words on paper. I had a hard time following it. I didn’t learn very much about the characters through the dialog. Through the dialog I could sometimes see the characters learn and grow while occasionally discovering new facets of their personalities. The dialog was generally consistent with the character. Through the dialog I could see the characters learn and grow while simultaneously discovering new facets of their personalities. The dialog was true to the character and it helped me understand the characters emotions.

Category Name: Setting

The setting created a haze in my mind that detracted from the story. I am lost in time and space because I don’t know when or where this story takes place. The setting was described adequately, but not well enough to bring it to life in my mind. The setting did not add to or detract from the story. I am pretty sure I know when and where the story takes place. The author engaged all of my senses while vividly describing the setting. The setting helped me better understand the setting and plot. I know when and where this story takes place.

The setting is where a story takes place. The choice of setting and its description helps the story come alive in the mind of the reader. Appropriate setting contributes to the plot and mood of the story.

Category Name: Mechanics

The story contained so many mechanical errors that it was hard to follow the plot or understand certain sentences or paragraphs. Occasional mechanical errors were distracting, but these errors did not inhibit me from being able to understand the plot or connect with characters in the story. I rarely if ever noticed mechanical errors. As far as I could tell, the writing was clear and correct.

Mechanics includes sentence structure, verb agreement, grammar, spelling, voice, punctuation and aspects of basic style.

Note: The purpose of ReviewFuse reviews is NOT to provide comprehensive copy editing, but rather to "ignite creativity." Reviewers should not feel obliged to point out every grammar or spelling error (though they certainly can if they wish), but should focus on this area only to the degree that errors make a story hard to follow or understand.

Inline comments are the most helpful and important aspects of your review.

Click on a paragraph or highlight text from the paragraph to provide inline comments. While detailed grammar correction is welcome, the purpose of inline commenting is to spark the author's creativity. This is best done by expressing feelings, questions, and concerns you have about the story while you are reading.

1. The Hoariest Night On Diablo

2.

3. Big Daddy brought me up with sixty days' ration of grub and dropped it on the granite boulder outside my glassy new home.  "Cut your firewood from those snags," he said, indicating some scrawny dead trees down below yards and yards of nothing but bear grass.  Then he turned his mules around and left me.

4. Alone.

5. After three weeks Big Daddy came back up with one mule and a bait of grub to shore up my dwindling supplies.  Big Daddy was my boss.  He brooked no monkey business from a teenage boy like me, and he had known many.  He growled about my logbook.  "Too messy," he grumped.  The day after he left I dutifully recopied it as best I could in my undisciplined scrawl.

6. That was three weeks ago.

7.  It was the fifteenth of August, 1962.  Not yet three months out of high school, I had already been at 7500 feet above sea level for six weeks. 

8. Alone.

9.  Alone.  I was just another lookout-fireman on Diablo Mountain in a duty roster that went back nearly forty years, and I had spent those six weeks searching in vain for a tell-tale gray wisp that would shout “Fire on the mountain!”

10.  There was no smoke because there was no fire. 

11.  Frustrated, I secretly prayed for lightning or a careless campfire that would make me a hero and justify my existence on the lonely granite monolith called Diablo.  Day after day I searched my seen-area, memorizing every ridge, every stream, every lake, every mountain, and every named point through the walls center of my glassy cabin. 

12.  I tested myself on the Osborne Fire Finder, pretending that a boulder over on the faraway Bitterroot Divide was a smoke. 

13.   Peering through the sights at the boulder, I consulted the azimuth reading on the scale around the circular map.  That gave me the exact direction in degrees from my location, indicated on the map by a tiny pin at the very center of the fire finder, to the pretend fire at the boulder.

14.  That was the easy part. 

15.  The hard part was estimating the distance from Diablo Mountain to the boulder.   My map had been lightly shaded to indicate the seen area, the terrain visible in my line of sight.  The far side of ridges and peaks was outside of my seen area.   I could not see slopes that were closer than slopes I could see, and in some directions the seen area was striped like a zebra.  It was different in every direction, because of the lay of the land.

16. The storied Bitterroot Divide was the limit of my seen area to the east, and though the State of Montana was just on the other side, I could see none of it.  Still, I knew the country like my own and I could imagine the unseen terrain.

17. Big Daddy would be proud if he could see me now.  No teenage kid, this.  I am a lookout fireman, and I'm good at it.  I'd show him every drainage, every peak, every valley, and every lightning strike I recorded in my neatened logbook.  If he would only come back once more.

18.  Still there was no smoke because there was no fire. 

19.  Alone again. 

20.  Twilight in the mountains is a leisurely affair, totally unlike the quick darkness that falls to mariners and lovers walking on western beaches.  For the fire lookout, night comes slowly like the sleep of a contented man. 

21.  Long before the sun went down on my abode at the top of Diablo Mountain, sunlight poured through the western window wall, revealing every smudge, every fingerprint, every streak on every pane of glass that I had just spent days scrubbing with Kimwipes and Windex getting ready for Big Daddy’s final inspection, the one that would make or break my dream to spend my life in the woods as a forester. 

22. Blinded by the sun in the west, I spent the evening watching alpenglow flood the mountains to the east. 

23.  Mesmerized by the lovely reddish glow on the granitic peaks that formed the Bitteroot Divide, I checked my watch.  Seven pm.  I posted the following entry in my logbook:  “1900 hours, 10-7 for the night.  Alpenglow on the Bitterroots.”  I loved the radio codes; 10-7 meant I was at the end of my work day and turning off my two way radio.

24.  I stepped outside for a last look-around when the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up.  This would be a strange night, of that I was sure.  The feeling I had was like the sensation one gets while walking down a dark alley alone at night, or crossing a graveyard in the moonlight.  Like someone was watching.  I could almost feel hot breath on my neck.  The hot breath of a wildfire racing through my brain.

25.  At 1930 or so, the sun started to slip behind Graves Peak, and I knew by 2030 it would be dark.  I could not shake the feeling of dread that was coming with nightfall, but I scanned the horizon once more and turned back east to the Bitterroot Divide.

26.  FIRE!

27.  Had my prayers been answered?  Had that lightning strike over in Montana a week ago broken loose?  Could I be seeing my first fire?  And it was a big one.  A crown fire, most likely, running fast.  I could see my reputation now in the annals of lookout history:  “The devastating Bitterroot Divide Fire of 1962 was discovered and reported by Diablo Mountain Lookout.”

28.  I turned on my radio.  “Diablo, 10-8,” I said.  That code meant I was back on the air. 

29.  The longer I looked, the more alarmed I became.  The blazing ridgeline grew brighter and brighter.  Is that a fire?  It must be!  What else could it be?!  I took azimuth readings on my Osborne Firefinder, but the blaze was way off the edge of my map, over in Montana.  Perhaps someone has already reported it. 

30.  Now is my only chance.  I picked up the mike.  “Powell, Diablo.”  I was about to utter the four code that would alert everyone listening in that I was about to report a wildfire. 

31.  One last look:  The skyline was fully ablaze now, almost like a nuclear fireball.  I took a deep breath and …

32.  “Powell, Diablo, 10-7.”

33.  I had saved myself by the narrowest of margins from reporting the full moon rising over the Bitterroots on the night of August 15th, 1962 at 2001 hours.

34.  Exhausted, I flopped on my bunk.  My heart thumped and all the adrenalin that had flooded my system had nowhere to go.  My humiliation would be complete when Big Daddy found out.  If he found out. 

35.  I lay on my bunk as the moon rose every more brightly through my eastern window wall.  Fighting private humiliation turning to fear of public humiliation, my discontented mind refused sleep.   Eyes wide open.  Staring at the ceiling, staring at my fire finder, staring at the moon well on its heavenly arc over Diablo.  Staring at the ghostly shapes of moon shadows thrown by wind-tortured subalpine fir trees just under the rim of my mountain sanctuary. 

36.  Just outside my western window wall, inches away, the precipitous cliff that distinguished Diablo Mountain from lesser hills fell away more than five hundred feet. 

37.  I heard a rock roll on the cliff.  Another. 

38.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up still.  The hot breath of humiliation had turned to the cold breath of dread.  A cold stinking breath, like that escaping the lips of a corpse. 

39.  A few more rocks rolled over the cliff, and I could hear rustling sounds, spooky sounds that terrorized my already panic-stricken mind.  Scratching sounds, like that of someone buried alive trying to escape the coffin.

40. I shuddered.  I rustled around in my pack for the pistol I had stashed there, never to be seen by Big Daddy.  I was proud of my pistol.  I had earned it on snowshoes trapping pine marten in the winter.  Now it might be my salvation.  I took it in my hand. 

41.  Suddenly there was a terrific clatter right outside my window.  CLUNK!  Clunk!  Clunk, clunk, clinkclinkclinkclink. 

42.  Then silence.

43.  I pulled my sleeping bag up over my head and prayed that the monster would leave me be, pistol or no pistol.  In due time, sleep came.

44.  The morning sun flooded through my eastern window wall, and I rose to go outside to the customary boulder where I could whiz off last night’s coffee.  I opened the door, idly noticing that my washtub was missing.  After whizzing, I peered over the cliff on my western side.  There the washtub lay smashed on a boulder a hundred feet below. 

45.  I started a fire in my little wood stove with wood culled from the scrawny dead trees down below all that bear grass, and filled the coffee pot with cold water from my five gallon can. I stuffed my pistol deep back in my pack, away from Big Daddy's eyes.

46.  I turned on the radio.  “Diablo, 10-8.”  I was back on the air, my integrity intact, my nerves restored by sleep.

47.  “Diablo, this is Powell.”

48.  “Powell, Diablo.  Go ahead.”

49.  “Big Daddy wants to know if you saw that hoary marmot last night.  He says it comes out and wanders around the lookout when the moon is full like it was last night.”

50.  That's the end of the story.  It's all true.  Big Daddy.  The marmot.  And the moon.  Consult, if you wish, the Naval Observatory for August 15th, 1962:

51.  Sunset                     7:47 p.m.                         End civil twilight         8:20 p.m.               Moonrise                   8:01 p.m.                        Moonset                    6:27 a.m. on following day  

52.  Oh yes, it was a hoary night on Diablo.  Hoarier, even, than the marmot:

53. –adjective, hoarier, hoariest.

54. 1. gray or white with age: an old dog with a hoary muzzle.

55. 2. ancient or venerable: hoary myths.

56. 3. tedious from familiarity; stale: Please don't tell that hoary joke at dinner again tonight.

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