For 94 Days I Talked to Her Every Night on a Fire Lookout Radio. I Didn’t Know What She Looked Like. On the Last Day of the Season, She Said She Was Coming Up the Mountain

Her voice came on the radio at 9:02 p.m., the same as every night.

“Bald Mountain Lookout, this is Red Pine. Are you still alive up there, Abel?”

“Still alive, Red Pine. Still handsome.”

“I’ll take your word on the second one.”

It was our joke. Ninety-four nights, and it never got old.

I’m Abel Strand. I’m 50. For six summers now, I’ve worked as a fire lookout in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho. That means from June to October, I live alone in a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot glass cabin on top of a wooden tower at seven thousand feet, watching a million acres of forest for smoke.

My closest neighbor is a mountain goat.

My only connection to the world is a two-way radio.

My wife, Kate, died seven years ago. Pancreatic cancer. Four months from diagnosis to the end. After the funeral, I sold our house in Boise, quit my job as an engineer and took the loneliest job I could find.

I wanted quiet.

I got it.

Until Red Pine.

She was the lookout on the next mountain over. Thirty-one miles away as the raven flies. I’d never seen her. I didn’t know her last name. The Forest Service radio protocol says you use the lookout’s name, not yours.

But on the second night of the season, she’d said, “I’m Nora, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

I had been wondering.

For ninety-four nights, we talked. About fires. About stars. About books. About anything except why we were both alone on top of a mountain.

On the last night of the season, she said something new.

“Abel. Tomorrow’s my last day. I’m hiking down through your side.”

A long pause.

“Can I stop by?”