The Forest Monitor

It is simply bitter cold. The temperature has been below 0 Degrees Fahrenheit five days in a row, and I am over it. “Where is global warming when you really want it?” I thought to myself as I huddled in my tiny dome room. Today is one of those days I truly regret my decision to become a forest monitor. Most of the time I love the solitude of being a forest monitor, however the winters are absolutely brutal here.

Most forest monitors just leave once the snow starts each winter to stay with family until the spring thaw. I have chosen to leave during the winter before, however this year I decided I would write a book. I thought it would be fun to stay where no one can bother me for at least three months and spend all the time writing. I was an idiot! Most days it is too cold to go outside even with a fur coat. My dome room does not have a window, not that I would see anything other than snow, so I do not have an awesome view to inspire me. Mountains are not impressive up close during the winter.

Being a forest monitor is not a bad gig and jobs are always available. A single person, like me, is provided one living dome room, a monthly shipment of food and supplies, and a reasonable stipend. A second storage dome room is also provided for tools and food storage, so the animals are not able to raid our supplies and we have room to move around in our living dome room. Because I decided to stay for the winter, I had four months’ worth of food supplies delivered after the first snowstorm in September and my little storage dome room is still quite full even in January. I did receive the monthly delivery in October because the supply runners could still get through, but I am not expecting another delivery until March or April.

Depending in which forest/mountain range you are located, a forest monitor’s required months to stay on site differ. I am located in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado so most of the forest monitors in this area are required to be on site from May through October. Forest monitors in areas of Arizona and California where there are more wildland fires in the summer months and less snow during the winter have longer required on-site seasons. For the most part, being a forest monitor is an amazing job and I usually love it… in the summer.

Forest monitors are a part of the Forest Service which is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Our jobs were created to combat the continually increasing number of wildland fires due to global warming. After five straight years of record setting acres of forest being destroyed by wildland fires, people were fleeing most of the western United States of America starting with Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The Forest Service acknowledged they could not adequately prevent or control the wildland fires for 193 million acres of land, without drastic measures. Hence, the forest monitors.

The primary job of the forest monitors is to clear underbrush in an attempt to starve wildland fires once they start to prevent the giant wildland fires previously ravaging the West. An individual person is given a nine square mile section of forest to maintain. A couple or small family is giving a 25 square mile section of forest to maintain. Starting the third year of operations, the number of burned acres each year has been slowly dropping. A forest monitor is given two years to finish the “back breaking” clearing as it is commonly referred to. If a particular section is deemed extremely difficult to clear by the Forest Service, a third year will be given. However, if a forest monitor fails to do the initial clearing within the allotted time, they are relieved of their position. Some people are lucky enough to get an assigned area which has been either partially cleared or completely cleared by someone who has decided they no longer want to be a forest monitor.

The Forest Service provides forest monitors a detailed satellite map of their assigned area with possible transportation paths because forest monitors are also provided with a small, electric all-terrain vehicle and a wagon to transport underbrush and cleared small trees back to the dome room site for controlled burning in a pit. During five years of operation, no forest monitor has set a wildland fire while doing controlled burns. I have been a forest monitor for four years and managed to finish my initial clearing approximately halfway through my second clearing season. The past two years have been mostly raking pine needles, cutting up the occasional broken tree branch, and avoiding bears and other wild animals.

Even though it is so cold outside, I do not think I will be able to write another word if I do not get out of this dome room soon. I have a small pond approximately 100 yards from the dome room area on which I built an ice fishing hut since I would be staying here this winter. I saved some logs from fallen tree branches starting last year and kept plenty of pine needles to mix with mud to fill in the cracks. I built the fishing hut on stilts near the end of the summer so I would not need to build it once the snowstorms started and the pond froze. I will change into my fur and take my saw out to cut the holes. If I catch fish today, the fresh meat will do me good. Perhaps the fresh fish will help remove the writer’s block out of my head. My localized weather report is predicting subzero degree weather for three more days, so it is time to take a walk not only to stretch my legs but to stretch my brain.