Sowing on the Mountain

≈ 5 ≈

The landlord, a retired prof, said she could leave her furniture and things in the attic over the summer— it got too hot up there for comfort. Mary offered partial rent, but she said no need, as long as you'll be back for school. They sat at a table out back, a light breeze rearranging the shade of leaves, Mary sipping iced tea while Dr. Torrence nursed a dewy glass of chardonnay.

She was a handsome woman, with sharpcut features and a steel and silver mane. She came from a coal-mining clan of Italians in Rock Springs, which was a bond with Mary. Her husband had died early on, leaving her with two daughters to support. While teaching school, she'd managed to earn a master's and later a Ph.D. that led to a long career at the U., where she ended up as Dean of the College of Education. Her daughters, Tina and Jane, were beautiful and adventurous, the former setting up clinics for women and children in Zimbabwe while the latter ran a trekking service in Kathmandu. They'd returned for Christmas and Mary had been overwhelmed by their confidence and high spirits.

If I'd had a decent mother, she thought, I might have turned out like them. How would it be? After a holiday dinner, she'd crept up the stairs to bury her face in Gris' fur and weep. It had been two years since she'd heard from her Mom.

"So you're off tomorrow?"

"Early, I hope. A week at the yurt then I'll start rangering in the back of beyond."

"That's an amazing place. We used to ride horseback up to the Big Sandy Opening and stay at Mitchell's fishing camp."

"He's the one who wrote the guidebook."

The first couple days in Pinedale were discouraging. There was an orientation where they passed out maps and photocopied stuff, and the office people stood up, one-by-one and told them all they stuff they absolutely couldn't do, and then passed out lists of regs and ten codes for the radio. The afternoon was spent watching films and slides shows on the proud tradition of the Forest Service and that sort of thing.

The housing was sketchy. Some of the guard stations were still snowed-in, so they told the temps to find a spot at the cabin by the warehouse or the trailer in the upper yard, first come first served, which led to a mad scramble as soon as the training session was done. Mary snagged a lower bunk in the cabin for the first few nights.

The next day, they all trooped off to clean up campgrounds near town and get them ready to open. Snowmobilers and ice fishermen had left heaps of trash during the winter, layered in the snowpack, that melted out as a sludgy muck with beer cans mixed in, heavy shoveling.

She met the other wilderness ranger for the south end, Susan Swann, but didn't spend any time with her. There was a tight clique of temps who'd worked previous years and they all took off for lunch together. There was a party after training, at a house in town, but she parked outside and listened to the music—fucking Creedence—and the yelling, and then drove off. Why am I in such a crappy mood? she thought. I should be looking forward to this wilderness gig.

Pushing the Senior Saab up the steep, rockstrewn grades to Dutch Joe, she was thinking she'd jumped on the job too quickly: she ought to have a Forest Service truck for this. But since wilderness rangers were supposed to spend their hitches on the trail, the idea was that a truck would just sit idle at the trailhead for eight days at a stretch. She was supposed to turn in her mileage and get paid a pittance. But if her car crapped out, the FS wouldn't pay to fix it.

The Head Bitch, excuse me— Support Services Supervisor— in Pinedale made the one in Jackson seem like the Peach Princess. She had one of those rodeo queen belt buckles and a face that could split firewood, and had taken one look at Mary and grimaced, like she had a mouthful of underripe lemons. Hate at first sight.