Page 33 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

We talk about yesterday for a while. Nolan's redemption jump. The volleyball game. Whether Dani's scoring system for the rope swing has any actual logic behind it or whether she just makes it up as she goes.

“She's making it up,” Ivy says. “But don't tell Nolan. He thinks there's a system.”

“There's no system?”

“There was never a system.”

We keep walking. A little farther up, Ivy slows.

There's a patch of flowers growing up through the burned ground, tall stalks of pink and purple, thick enough they've turned a whole section of hillside a different color than everything around it.

“Fireweed,” she says, before I ask.

I look at the flowers, then at the blackened trunks standing around them. The name makes sense as soon as she says it.

“It's one of the first things that comes back after a burn,” she says. “The seeds need bare, disturbed ground and full sun to really take off, which is what a fire leaves behind. So while everything else is still figuring out what happened, this shows up and takes over for a while.”

“Until the trees catch up.”

“Until the trees catch up. Then it fades back and waits for the next disturbance.”

Her interest in it makes me want to keep asking questions just to keep her talking.

We walk on for a while, the fireweed thinning out behind us, the trail climbing into a stretch of trees that haven't burned at all.

“Where did you grow up?” she asks eventually, once we've moved past the flowers. “I feel like I've never asked you that.”

“Depends what year you're asking about.”

She glances over, amused. “That's not an answer.”

“My dad was Air Force. Career. I was born in Colorado, but we moved every couple years.”

“Like where?”

“Everywhere. Germany for a few years when I was a kid. Alaska after that. A couple bases stateside I barely remember. My parents ended up back in Colorado after my dad retired, so that's the closest thing to a hometown I've got.”

“Germany,” she repeats, like she's trying it out. “What was that like?”

“Good. We were near Ramstein. I picked up some German, mostly from other kids on base. My dad took us all over on weekends, when he could. I ate more schnitzel than any nine-year-old from Colorado had any business eating. Alaska after Germany. That one I remember even better. Middle school, mostly. My dad was stationed near Fairbanks. That's where I learned to ski, chasing kids down hills that had no business being that steep for a bunch of twelve-year-olds.”

“That explains a few things.”

“Ski patrol didn't come out of nowhere.”

That gets a laugh out of her. “Did you like it? Moving around that much?”

I think about it, because it's a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer.

“Yeah,” I say. “I did. You get good at making friends fast, because you don't have the luxury of taking your time. You learn not to get too attached to a house, because you know it's not permanent. New place always meant something exciting was about to happen. I never really minded when the orders came. It's just how things worked.”

It's more than I usually say about any of it. I'm not sure why this trail, this conversation, made it come out so easy. “What about you?” I ask. “I know your parents live about twenty minutes from here. Is that where you’re originally from?”

“Yep. I lived in Larkspur my whole life until I went to college in Missoula. Boring, compared to Germany.”

We keep walking. Somewhere in the next stretch of trail she tells me about how she started doing seasonal work here, first summer right out of high school, and how it turned into something bigger than a summer job somewhere along the way. Wildlife biology. Grad school. A thesis she's finishing up this year.

“What's it on?” I ask.