About Fire on the Mountain
Written by PD Singer
105 pages / 51500 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-762-6, 1-60370-762-X
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub, Sony-optimized pdf
When Jake signs up for a season as a forest ranger in the high country of Colorado, it seems like a great way to take a break before continuing his education. The mountains are beautiful, he gets to live in a cabin near a small lake where he can fish, and his partner Kurt is coaching him in archery. It’s heaven, with the occasional forest fire.
Kurt’s a good partner -- confident, competent, experienced, just what a rookie like Jake needs. He’s also good looking, not modest, and always around. Jake’s living in the closet, not just in the great outdoors, but is Kurt trying to get him to come sniff the fresh air? Jake can’t tell, but when a small fire whips out of control, things could really heat up!
Review
Alexa Snow, author of Clear Cut and Back Cut, writes:
Jake and Kurt are a recently formed team of forest rangers who work together for the Colorado Forest Service. They work under isolated conditions, often not seeing other people for days at a time and living in very close quarters. Jake has been lusting after Kirk from day one, doing his best to hide his feelings for the man who has rapidly become his close friend and who can't possibly share the kind of interest Jake has in other men. Together, they fight fires, counsel campers, and stave off bears. They're one impressive team... but could they be even more?This story has a charming sense of humor; angst, while not entirely absent, is dealt with a refreshingly light hand. Told in first person from Jake's point of view, the story draws the reader in immediately, leaving few mysteries about what Jake might be thinking or feeling and instead focusing the interest on Kurt. A fair amount of action, lots of great character interaction, and some fantastic erotica create an overall story that's rich and satisfying. A quality read!
Sample
“Damn it! I didn’t think the tree was going to burn!” Kurt looked up from his shoveling to examine the lodgepole pine at the edge of the woods. It had been smoking, but now flames danced on the dead branches low on the trunk.
“Stand back, I’ll get it.” I took hard swings at the tree’s trunk with my long-handled axe, hacking away at the side farthest from the small blaze we’d spent the last few hours putting out. The chips flew with each bite of my blade -- Kurt kept a careful eye on my progress as he threw more dirt on the smoldering remains of the fire. “Better back off. I think it’s ready to come down.” I wasn’t bothering to take the tree down neatly. Time was the bigger concern.
“Push!”
Kurt and I braced our heavy gloves against the bark, cracking the unchopped part of the trunk, toppling the thirty-foot high pine to the ground, away from the other trees. It would not take its companions with it to a fiery end.
The tree fell onto ground already scorched and disturbed. We’d shoveled dirt onto burning mountain mahogany and grasses for the last couple of hours, trying to contain the fire before it went from heat and smoke to an open blaze. Between digging a fire break and trying to deal with the burning material, it had been a busy few hours. The tree was the last thing still on fire -- putting it out would mean the end of the hardest of the labor. A few minutes of brisk whacking took the crown of the tree off, letting us pull unburned wood away from the danger zone.
“So, rookie, what would you rather put out: a lightning fire or a human-caused fire?” Kurt retreated to the shade of the remaining pines to catch his breath.
“Whichever smolders more and burns less.” I pulled off my helmet to wipe my forehead. The canteen at my side flapped loosely -- I unscrewed the stopper and tipped it to my mouth anyway for the last few drops of water. There was more drinking water back in the truck, but I’d have to hike for it. Kurt took a long swig from his canteen and offered me the rest. The warm, tinny water was delicious.
We had left the medium-duty tanker on the one-lane service road that was the only sort of road through most of the Uncomphagre National Forest, because we couldn’t get it through the trees to the burn area. Half the forest was miles from roads and had to be patrolled from horseback. The truck got left behind a lot anyway. We had to take what we needed from the equipment bins on the sides and do without the water if we had to hike too far back.
“Yeah, lucky you, that’s lightning fires usually, and they outnumber human fires by a wide margin around here.” Kurt waved me to follow him to some branches that were emitting puffs of smoke. “What do you think the score is?”
“Don’t know.” I threw shovelfuls of dirt at the felled tree alongside him. “The other five teams all had one or two fires each when we went into town last, and we haven’t been called to respond to one of their blazes.” I stomped a smoking branch with the heavy sole of my boot.
“And we haven’t had to call anyone in for one of ours. Might be a tie, or we might be winning with three.” He stepped back from the burn and unfastened his jacket. “The wind is down. Let’s squirt a hundred gallons at it -- it’s out and it can damn well stay out.” We gathered up the shovels and axes and dragged them back to the tanker. More often than not, we’d starve a fire into submission rather than extinguishing it with water in the dry, windy Rocky Mountains.
We’d caught this fire early, still in the “thinking about being a forest fire” stage. It was far enough from the road that trying to put it out with just the water we carried with us in the tank on the back of the truck was hopeless -- until the wind dropped, we couldn’t have shot it without losing three quarters of the spray. The loss wouldn’t have mattered that much if we’d been close enough to a pond or stream to stick the intake nozzle in. Then we could have sucked the stream up and put it to good use without using up water we might need later that day. But no, the fire was far enough from the road and through the trees that we were lucky to have seen it at all, so we fought it the old fashioned way: with dirt, muscle, and cuss words.