Continuing your favorite book:

It was June 21st - the first day of summer and my first day off in ten days. But, the day is only half over and they can still come find me. All of my work cloths are in the washing machine and with that I find security that I have a good excuse to get out of work if they to dome looking. There is a new and different gloom over camp this morning. There are furrowed brows on most faces for there is a darkness to the air which brings a tear to the eye and makes your nose run. This is new for me. It seems that every day there is something new for me in this place to which I have come. There is a fire - and fire is the one thing that all take very seriously here. There is talk at breakfast of the thunderstorm that came over the primrose last night. I had just made it in off the trail when the storm blew into camp and lightening lit up the storm-darkened sky. I paid not that much attention to it. My only thought were to finish dinner before the rain came. It is so strange for me to perceive the consequences of just a simple summer thunderstorm that rambled through last night at supper time. But all of the talk this morning is of the smoke that fills the air and blocks out the sun. There is talk of who will run the shuttle - the park service or us VTS drivers and when will they make a call for volunteers to help with the fire. Will they take our heavy equipment from here to build fire breaks or use our buses to evacuate people. I think to myself, but it was only a little thunderstorm. At home it would get very little talk around the counter by the old boys at the golf course. But where the woods are filled with years of dropped spruce needles and dried dead trees that have been waiting for decades to burn because they will not rot or decay - to burn is all that they have left to do to complete their cycle of life. Still people keep coming by and all ask the same question - "Is there a fire?" These are the night people who are just now crawling from their bunks because the smell of smoke is too strong for them to sleep through. It is strange how the whole morning has past and coffee and coffee has been drank but the talk is all the same. It is of fire - fires of '04 and '05 and of '06 which was the worst year and all of the old hands here have their own story to tell of what they did and where they were when the last fire broke. The story telling goes round the table like the lazy susan of the 50's on taco night so supper could be finished in time to watch Gunsmoke or the Jackie Gleason Show and on they go. We talk through breakfast and into lunch. The table talkers have come and gone but I have stayed through all for I am new and need to hear more. Then the first ranger we have seen comes to the table. Everyone is alert to what he has to say. We have all moved just a little closer to the front of our chairs and our coffee cups have been moved just a little closer to the center of the table. We are all like 4th graders at Christmas, sitting in school waiting for the teacher to tell us that Santa has been seen in the halls and we all need to go to the gym. Then, at last, he finishes his first long sip of coffee and looks up at all of our faces and he knows what is expected of him.......so he does his duty. "Three fires," he says, "one big one and two small ones in Euracks Creek but the park road is still open at the east for. The mountain was not out. Not many riders today. The two small ones should be no problem but we'll have to wait and see about the other. All total we now have 52 separate fires burning in Alaska today. There's one big fire at Homer down on the Key Nine Peninsula but it is far from us. The smoke is unreal. It has my nose running like a faucet and my eyes too. The last wave of lunch eaters are in off the road. All veterans of many years say it will burn for a month - 'till fair time - then rain. Just like the Coles County Fair I think to myself. I need to find a wildflower key book and get some more studying done so I have decided to let nature take its coarse and let the veterans at the lunch table fire campaign fight on - for I have learned all I can over this breakfast and lunch debate - oh how with this dose of table talk I can relate back to the great deal of time spent around many a breakfast and lunch table speculating on the moving of the Blue Bird Diner. . . .