The

The When I'm about to tell you. When I'm about to tell you is something I still go to therapy over. It happened back during the summer of 2008. I started going to therapy around the start of 2009 and I've been going ever since. It wasn't my idea. It was my parents. And in a way,

the only reason I still go is to keep them from worrying themselves sick over me. Not that I don't

derive some small benefit from it, but what I tell my parents, my therapist and I talk about,

and what we actually talk about, are two very different things.

Around the start of the holiday season back in 2007, I was a sophomore, Earth Sciences student at

UC Davis. The university offers some summer placements to students who want to gain a little

work experience, and although they're mostly dreary research

assignments, I happened across one that piqued my interests in a way the others didn't.

In short, I had the opportunity to spend the summer working as a fire lookout in the Trinity

National Forest.

It was a three-month-long placement, but I'd be paid for my time, and completing a piece

of long-term field research would look very good on my resume. I applied, I was accepted,

then several months later I was told that I'd be posted to the Tom Head Mountain Lookout,

which was about 30 miles west of the city of Red Bluff, and about 130 miles north

of Sacramento. Seeing as I didn't own a car back then, I had to catch a bus all the way up to Red Bluff.

From there, I hitchhiked along the 36, and then hiked up into the hills until I reached

the flat-top peak of Tomhead Mountain, where the old

fire lookout tower stood. The first thing that struck me was that the 20-foot-tall lookout

tower was made of wood. I figured a fire lookout tower would have been built with less flammable

materials, but since it had been constructed back in the 30s, I guess wood was all they

had at hand or something. It didn't make for the best first impression. After all, that tower was

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