I've done seasonal work before, firewatch gigs, backcountry surveying, property sits.

I like the quiet.

The isolation never bothered me, and I've always found the desert to be kind of peaceful

in a way most people don't understand.

You either feel alive out here, or you feel like the place is trying to erase you.

There's not a lot of in-between.

Last October I took a temp job watching over an old ranger outpost in southern Utah.

Just a week, maybe two, easy money.

My handler Clint told me the place used to be an active fire lookout post until a

lightning strike took out half the tower frame and buckled the concrete footings. They rebuilt part

of it lower down the ridge and used it now and then for off-season monitoring. Clint was this gruff

ex-jumper with a limp and a voice like gravel in a blender. He picked me up in

a dust-cake Silverado and drove me three hours east of Canab, off pavement the last 20 miles. No cell

service, just miles of sagebrush, wind-shaped rock, and that dead silence that sets in the further

you get from anything human. The outpost sat atop horsehead ridge.

No joke.

It looked like a spine of rock ending in a crooked horse-like crag.

From the front porch, you could see everything.

The wash below.

The red rock bluffs to the west.

And on a clear day, maybe even the edge of the Arizona

strip. The building itself? Two rooms, one barely more than a closet, with a busted antenna,

...