January 1st, 2012

1C cloudy
Well last night was just right, just the two of us, a couple of glasses of wine, a romantic comedy on Netflix and in bed at 10 pm. I did hear some fireworks in the neighborhood at midnight.
I finished the Fort Nelson story but will take 2 or 3 days of posting here.

We started the patrol by swinging out over the area to the north east past Clarke Lake we were out about seventy miles or so when John called from the office base radio saying that an aircraft had just reported a heavy volume of smoke coming out of the Tuchodi.

I told Bob, the pilot, to swing about and we would go have a look.

The patrol plane was a supercub on balloon tires so our top cruising speed was around eighty miles an hour but we had a bit of a tail wind so in about an hour we crossed over the confluence of the Tuchodi and the Muskawa. The fire was about twenty miles up the valley. For the most part it was on the lower slopes held back by snow at the upper elevations but some fingers had run down into the spruce that had reestablished near the river.

I plotted it out and made an estimate that it was about twenty-five hundred acres. It had obviously been burning for at least a couple of days.

There was no doubt in my mind how it had started so after a couple of turns we headed back down the valley to where the hunting base camp was. On a bench that ran parallel to a straight stretch of the river they had cleared and leveled a short landing strip, the camp was at one end.

Bob circled the strip twice, acknowledged that he could land and so I just indicated to do just that.

When the plane rolled to a stop I got out and walked over to where the small cluster of tents and one log cabin were. One man came out of the cabin and watched me approach. He showed no expression.

When I got close I said, “Hello. Are you the boss here?”

He looked me over then replied, “He ain’t here. Why?”

I took out my wallet and showed him my badge. “You guys have a bit of a fire going back there,” I waved back over my shoulder. “I would like to talk to him about it.”

“We ain’t got no fire going, and y’know that’s a private air strip you just landed on.”

I looked at him for a second. “Well if you’re not the boss, then I’m talking to the wrong guy. But I will tell you that that airstrip isn’t private, as a matter of fact it’s on crown land and so is this cabin.”

He glared at me then glanced over my shoulder, I instinctively glanced back then swung around. Standing about four feet behind me was one large individual! He didn’t say anything, he just stood there. He was in his sock feet which explained why I hadn’t heard him come up.

I turned my body slightly so that I could watch them both when I heard Bob call, “Rider coming, John!”

For want of something to say I asked, “That the boss?”

The first one simply said, “Yep.”

“So I guess I’ll just sit and wait for him then.” I turned and walked over to a chopping block and sat down.

My two ‘friends’ didn’t seem to know what to do now, the first one sat down in the door way and the other moved away and stared out to where we all could see a rider coming.

The third man, somewhere in his forty’s arrived in about ten minutes and slid off his horse.

He sort of took in the whole scene then looking at me said, “Who’re you?”

I was a bit less tense so decided to play things out calmly.