Tag Archives: summer

Creating Defensible Space

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Fire season is serious business in the west.

Every fire season seems to get a little worse in the west — particularly in the Pacific Northwest where I now live. For the past four summers, we’ve had widespread wildfires, most of which were started by lightning strikes. Fires have been particularly threatening, if not downright damaging, near my new home:

  • In September 2012, lightning strikes started over 100 wildfires from Blewett Pass to Lake Chelan. Visibility dropped down to less than 1/2 mile in smoke and mandatory evacuations affected the Wenatchee Heights area that was my temporary home not long after I left for Arizona.

  • August Fire
    I was at a party at the airport on the evening of August 10 while Jumpoff Ridge was burning.

    In August 2013, lightning strikes started a handful of fires on Jumpoff Ridge, the cliffs that tower behind my current home. Although I’d just purchased the land and didn’t have anything on it, I was as alarmed as my neighbors when my road was put on mandatory evacuation, mostly because firefighters feared that burning debris would tumble down the cliffs and start new fires on our level. (Fortunately, that didn’t happen.)

  • In July 2014, more than 300 homes were destroyed when a fire hit the community of Pateros, about 45 miles upriver from Wenatchee. Other fires up the Methow River near there destroyed forests, orchards, and a few more homes.

  • Sleepy Hollow Fire at Night
    I shot this photo of the Sleepy Hollow Fire on the night of June 28, 2015 from my deck using a 300 mm lens. It isn’t cropped. Although the fire was more than 8 miles from my home, I found it terrifying and could not sleep that night. A pair of heavy rainstorms the next day put the fire out — and started the Wolverine Fire up near Lake Chelan that’s still burning today.

    In June 2015, the Sleepy Hollow fire destroyed more than 20 homes in a Wenatchee subdivision overlooking the town. Burning embers from the fire traveled on the wind and touched off fires a half mile away, destroying 3 warehouses and fruit packing and storage facilities.

As I write this, there are dozens of fires all over Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. These fires are growing at alarming rates. The Okanogan Complex Fire, for example, started on Saturday, August 15 — that’s just 8 days ago — and has already grown to 227,206 acres. That’s 355 square miles — larger than the entire city of New York (all five boroughs).

Can you imagine all of New York City burning in a week?

And that’s just one of the monster fires. Chelan Complex has burned 87,412 acres in the Chelan area, North Star has burned 132,000 acres on the Colville Indian Reservation, and Grizzly Bear Complex has burned 59,150 acres in the Umatilla National Forest. The Interagency Inciweb website is currently tracking 26 fires in Washington State alone. The President has declared Washington a disaster area. This is some serious shit.

Although the closest fire is at least 20 miles from here, a wind shift has brought smoke into the valley. Visibility is less than 3 miles — I can’t even see the airport from my home. The smell of smoke is in the air. I spent much of yesterday outdoors doing light work and wound up with a sore throat from breathing smoke.

Visibility.jpg
On Friday, the air was very clear, although I could see the smoke cloud coming our way. This morning, the air is thick with smoke. I can barely see the buildings at the airport just 3 miles away.

The scariest part of fire season for those of us who live on the outskirts of town, surrounded by natural vegetation, is the fact that it doesn’t take much to start one of these crazy fires. Lightning is the most common cause, but fires have also been started by cigarette ash, sparks from chainsaws or mowers or ATVs, and even cars with hot engines parking on tall, dry grass. If Mother Nature doesn’t start a fire, some careless idiot might.

As you might imagine, the idea of “defensible space” is on many people’s minds. In theory, it means keeping enough clear area around your home so that firefighters can defend it from wildfire. That usually means cutting down trees and bushes and trimming long grass, surrounding your home with heavily irrigated vegetation such as green lawns or orchard trees, and removing any firewood or scrap wood piles near your home. If your home does not have defensible space, not only is it more likely to burn in a wildfire, but firefighters may not even try to defend it because of the danger it could put them in.

I did much of this over a month ago when I used my string mower to cut back the tall, dry grass on the side and back of my home. I debated cutting a few of the small sagebrush in the area — they burn hot and fast when ignited — but left them. The other two sides of my house have concrete and gravel and a small lawn.

Of course, some of us take it the next step by installing sprinkler systems that can be turned on, when needed, to soak the area. I did that the other day. I drove two 6-foot T-posts into the ground, one at each corner on the road side of my home. Then I fixed 50-foot sprinkler heads to the top of each one. I ran hose from my shed — which has extremely high water pressure — to the first sprinkler and another hose from that one to the second one. When I turned them on, they provided coverage along the entire road-side of the building, as well as about 50 feet down the front and back.

Sprinklers
Here’s my sprinkler setup on the road side of my home. I do need to move some of the scrap wood there, or cover it with some of the metal panels I have.

I want to add a third sprinkler to the roof of my shed, which would protect the shed and chicken coop. A fourth sprinkler head can be mounted on my deck in the other back corner of the building to provide some protection there.

My friends have been asking me whether I have a generator for the water pump. They assume I have a well. I don’t. I have city water which should keep flowing as long as the water company keeps it coming. I guess I should hope that they have generators.

Yes, I know it isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

The good thing is, my building is made of metal. So flying embers landing on the roof or against a wall should not be able to start a fire. There are some exposed wood beams, however, and I’m not fooling myself into thinking the building is fireproof. As too many folks around here have learned over the past few years, even metal buildings can burn if they’re subjected to enough heat. My goal is to prevent that heat from getting close enough.

I’m not the only one thinking about fire. Kirk has moved his vehicles into his orchard, which is far less likely to catch fire if fires come through the canyon where he lives.

Anyone who lives in an area prone to wildfire damage who doesn’t create defensible space around their home is an idiot, plain and simple. As we’ve seen this year, even homes in subdivisions that are normally safe from wildfire danger can be completely and utterly destroyed. Why would anyone fail to take steps to protect their home before such protection was absolutely necessary?

When the fires come, you often don’t have time to act before evacuation. I feel a bit of comfort knowing that I can get my sprinklers going in a matter of minutes now because they’re already in place. This might mean the difference between keeping my home standing and losing everything I own.

Sunrise from Lookout Point

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When was the last time you sat quietly to watch a day being born?

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that about a year ago, I bought 10 acres of view property sitting on a shelf at the base of some basalt cliffs in Malaga, WA. I’m a view person and its the view that sold me on the land. From the spot where I had my building constructed this summer, I can see all of Malaga and most of East Wenatchee and Wenatchee, including the Columbia River which runs between them. There are grassy, sage-studded hills, small lakes, orchards, snow-covered peaks, and dramatic cliff faces, with a scattering of homes nearby and the more populated Wenatchee area in the distance.

My Bench at Lookout Point
Looking back at my future home from the bench at Lookout Point. See the tiny dog curled up on the right seat?

But a short walk a bit farther to the north, to the point just before my land drops down off a steep hill, takes me to what I’ve begun calling “Lookout Point.” It has a 270° (at least) view that also takes in Mission Ridge and the mouth of Lower Moses Coulee. When I bought a used shed last autumn and found a crude bench in it, the obvious place to put it was at Lookout Point. I fixed it up with a coat of paint and bought new cushions for it. I often sit out there in the evening with a glass of wine to watch the sun set.

The View from Lookout Point
There’s nothing special about the bench; it’s what’s in front of the bench that’s amazing.

I woke up this morning shortly before 5 AM. It was already light out — it gets light very early here in the summer — and rather than turn on the radio and have my coffee at my desk while listening to the news on NPR — as I too often do — I decided to have my coffee out at Lookout Point.

I think it was the sight of the pickers driving into the cherry orchard below me that triggered the idea. Two or three summers ago, when I lived at a friend’s building site in Wenatchee Heights, I used to sit out on his unfinished deck at dawn, watching the pickers getting to work in the orchard across the road. The deck was close enough to the orchard that I could hear the dull clunk of cherries hitting the bottom of the picking buckets as pickers started work.

Anyway, I took my coffee and headed out, leaving the door to my RV open behind me. Penny the Tiny Dog was still asleep on my bed, but I suspected that she’d follow me out if she sensed I was leaving. Sure enough, I was halfway down to the bench when I saw her following on the path behind me. When I sat down, she jumped up onto the seat beside mine, curled up, and went back to sleep.

The sky on the horizon to the northwest was pink; the sun was just touching the tops of distant snow-covered peaks. The valley was still in the shadows.

I sat quietly and listened. I could hear the whine of a sprayer in a nearby orchard. It was a sound you learn to live with here — during the growing season, they start as early as 4 AM and, depending on what they’re spraying and what the weather is like, they could continue all day long. Fortunately, none of the orchards are close enough that the sound becomes a nuisance.

Predawn from Lookout Point
The sun was just kissing the snow-covered peaks when I sat down at the bench.

Golden Basalt
I love the way first light and last light makes the cliffs behind my home glow with a golden light.

Sprayer in Orchard
You can easily see a sprayer from above — the cloud of chemicals is hard to miss. Sometimes, when I’m flying, I’ll see dozens of them at work in orchards all around me.

Sunrise
The sun broke over the horizon at exactly 5:30 AM.

Morning Light
I watched the golden morning light creep down the landscape. Can you see my shadow on the left?

Wenatchee Valley in Shadows
But while I was in full sun, the Wenatchee Valley was still in shadows. The sun wouldn’t hit them for another 30 minutes or so.

Off in the distance, I heard another familiar sound: a spray helicopter. I didn’t see it, but I suspect it was working out to the west, either on Stemilt Hill or Wenatchee Heights. I wondered what the people living in that area thought about helicopters doing extended spray operations near their homes at 5 AM.

Closer, I heard tools clanking where the pickers had gone. Maybe ladders being repositioned? Or bin trailers being hooked up to tractors?

Occasionally, a bird cannon fired. These propane-powered devices emit a sound a bit like a shotgun every few minutes to scare birds off the ripening cherries. Like the sprayers, bird cannons are a seasonal sound that lasts only as long as red cherries are on the trees. By July month-end, the orchards in my area will have been all picked and the bird cannons will be put away until next year.

Across the river, the sound of a motorcycle on route 28 drifted up on a breeze. And then a truck. I can sometimes hear trains on my side of the river, but none seemed to go by.

Birds — I heard them, too. Song birds greeting the day. Robins, magpies, quail.

One of my bees flew over to the bench and poked around. Maybe she thought my purple tank top was some sort of enormous flower that had blossomed overnight. Penny, bothered by the close buzzing, sat up. It wasn’t until she lunged at the bee that it flew away.

Meanwhile, the earth rotated toward the east and the sky got brighter and brighter. A golden light reached out and touched the basalt cliffs behind me. Then it began creeping down from the mountains and cliffs and hillsides, bathing everything it touched with a golden light.

The new day was born.

Bunch Grass in First Light
Bunch grass in first light.

It’s funny, but when some people watch a sunrise or sunset, they look at the sun. But that’s not where the show is. The show is in the opposite direction, where the changing light makes deep shadows and glowing highlights on the things we see every day.

I watched the light shine on everything around me. I especially liked the way it touched the tips of the bunch grass I’d left long around Lookout Point.

The light spread like a carpet over the earth. Shadows filled in with light. The magic of first light faded quickly at Lookout Point. Too quickly. I wished it could last all day.

Dawn in Malaga
A new day is born.

As I sat there with Penny, savoring the last few minutes of the sunrise, I thought back to sunrises I’d experienced years ago. Back when I was in my early 20s, I’d dated a man who liked sunrises as much as I do. I distinctly remember waking up very early one morning and driving through the darkness to Montauk Point out on Long Island in New York. We found a rock to sit on and sat close together, looking out toward the brightness of the eastern horizon while waves crashed gently on the shore. If I think hard enough, I can remember — or at least imagine — the way the sun’s first light felt warm on my skin and the way his body felt comfortably close to mine. Afterward, we lay back on that big, flat rock and I fell asleep in his arms.

I miss moments like that, long gone and likely forgotten by the man I shared them with. Over the years, he grew and changed. Like so many of us, he forgot about the simple beauty of a sunrise and the wonder of a day being born, caught up instead with chasing the almighty dollar and keeping up appearances for people who really don’t matter. His loss — but he probably doesn’t even realize it.

Are you guilty of that, too? Be honest with yourself. I think I was, at least for a while.

I think that moving here has helped me reconnect with the simple things in life — getting back in tune with nature, stopping to look and listen and experience my surroundings. Gone are the days when I spent too much time commuting between two homes and dealing with the noise and crowds of a city I never really wanted to live in. Last night, I enjoyed squash from my garden; this morning, I ate cherries I picked yesterday with yogurt I made the day before. My chickens will soon be laying eggs; I can’t wait to make my special pound cake with those rich fresh eggs and butter. I’ll fill the hummingbird feeder in a while and check my bee hives for capped honey frames. Maybe I’ll head down into town for lunch with some friends.

Life is what you make it and my life is good.

A New Year, A New Book

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A new project to get my year off to a good start.

2013 was the first year since 1991 that I did not publish a new book.

There are several of reasons for this, none of which I want to get into here. That would make interesting fodder for a future blog post. Don’t worry; I won’t leave you hanging for long.

But it isn’t as if I haven’t been writing — I have been. In addition to this blog, which I’ve tended to quite faithfully since I started it in October 2003, I’ve been working on another book project since late 2012, when I found myself with an outrageous personal story to tell. Unfortunately, I’ve had to put that project aside; I hope to finish it when I know the ending.

Papillon HelicopterToday, however, I started work on the book I’ve been thinking about for the past month or so. Tentatively titled Flying the Canyon: My Season as a Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour Pilot, this book will share my experiences from one of the most interesting summers of my life.

Here, I’ll let the book’s draft introduction tell you more:

In the summer of 2004, I realized one of my dreams: I became a helicopter tour pilot at the Grand Canyon.

I was 42 when I got the job and I worked with a bunch of young people — mostly men — some of whom were young enough to be my kids. I met the challenges of working in a sometimes difficult but usually breathtakingly beautiful flying environment, dealing with the personalities of co-workers and management, and trying to please passengers from all over the world. The work was rewarding, frustrating, and enlightening. The flying experience was something I think every helicopter pilot should have.

I also had a very odd experience on one of my flights — an experience that would leave the lingering scar of PTSD on me for many years to come.

I thoroughly enjoyed the work, but by the end of the summer, the novelty had worn off. Friction inside the company made the job less pleasant than it had been. I realized that I was a square peg in a round hole. My real work as a freelance writer was being neglected and my editors were beginning to lose their patience. I was sad to leave, but it was time.

This book is the story of my season at the Grand Canyon. It begins before the beginning by sharing the stories of when I decided I wanted to learn how to fly and the things that I did to gain the skills I’d need to be a tour pilot. It then goes on to tell about my experiences as a pilot at the Canyon — including the unusual occurrence on June 10, 2004 — and my direct interactions with fellow pilots, management, and passengers. Finally, it shares how my feelings about being a Canyon tour pilot changed as the summer came to a close and the events that affected my decision to leave.

Because I’d blogged many of my experiences soon after they happened, much of what I share in these pages is rich with details. But rather than just restate my blog posts, I’ve filled in the gaps between them with the behind-the-scenes stories that I couldn’t make public at the time.

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a helicopter tour pilot at the Grand Canyon? Here’s what it was like for me.

As I write, I’ll be pulling a lot of my blog posts about those days offline, probably for good. In a way, my blog has acted as a temporary archive for these stories. Once the book is complete and published, the book will be the permanent archive. I hope to do this with much of the contents of my blog.

Captain MariaToday, I churned out over 4,000 words, completing the introduction (which I just shared here), a Prologue, and Chapter 1, which briefly covers my experiences learning to fly and getting my commercial pilot rating. My goal is to have the entire book finished by month-end — a goal I know I can reach if I can stay focused on my work. (With little else do do this winter, it shouldn’t be much of a problem to find time!)

I’ve toyed with the idea of shopping it around to a mainstream publishing house but will likely self-publish under the Flying M Productions “Real-Life Flying” imprint. The book will be available in print and as an ebook in Kindle, Nook, and iBooks formats. I had quite a bit of success with one of my three self-publishing projects back in 2012, so I’m pretty confident I’ll meet or beat that success with this book.

Of course, since I need to work on the book each morning, that might cut into my blogging time. So expect to see fewer posts here over the next month or so as I write, edit, lay out, and publish this book. More information on where to buy it will be available before month-end.

Comments? You know where to put them!

Feeling Overwhelmed?

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Join the club.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. But it is bothersome — an uncomfortable feeling that makes me question everything about my life.

I’ve made some serious personal decisions recently that are likely to rock my world over the coming months. This is a stressful situation that’s not made any easier by the lack of support by friends and family members. I’m going it alone — as I so often do — and it’s weighing heavily on my mind.

But the feeling of being overwhelmed is primarily due to my workload. As a freelancer, I work when there’s work to do. When there isn’t work to do, I’m usually waiting for or looking for more work. Sometimes I need to make work. Other times, work appears unexpectedly — even when I don’t want it or have time for it. But I have to do it all — to turn down work is to possibly miss out on future work.

Such is the life of a freelancer.

Right now, I’m working on four content creation (writing, video, etc.) projects:

  • Book CoverFinishing up a special iBooks 2 interactive edition of my iBooks Author book. This requires me to record and edit dozens of screencast videos and completely re-layout the book in iBooks Author. The good news: I might be able to finish up today. That is, if Alex the Bird can keep quiet and the landscapers don’t spend much time blowing leaves outside my window. And the neighbor’s dog doesn’t bark nonstop for an hour. Again.
  • Lynda LogoPrepare scripts for a revision of my Twitter Essential Training course on Lynda.com. We’ll be recording this course soon and I want to be fully prepared before I fly out to Lynda to record. And my new producer, wants to see the scripts, too.
  • An aerial photography book. I began writing this last year and have put it aside repeatedly because I need artwork and photos that I can’t produce on my own. I suspect it’ll have to wait until this summer to finish up.
  • A book of helicopter pilot stories. I’m collecting these stories from other pilots and plan to compile them in a book for release later this spring. As I get more and more bogged down with other things, however, the self-imposed deadline keeps slipping. I suspect this will be finished up when I get to Washington, too.

Of course, with Mac OS X Mountain Lion announced, I know what I’ll be doing first when I get to Washington: Revising my Mac OS X Lion book for the new version of the OS. Oh, yeah — and then there’s the videos and Websites I’ve been asked to create for a handful of winemakers up there.

It’s not just writing work and the occasional helicopter flight that’s stacked up before me. It’s all the paperwork that goes with it.

I have two separate businesses, each with their own bank accounts and accounting records. I don’t have an accountant — hell, I am an accountant; my BBA is in accounting. To hire an accountant would be silly, since I could do that work myself and save a bunch of money. So I do. Or I try to. Often, it just stacks up, waiting for me to get to. I haven’t balanced a bank account in several months. And I’m only partially switched from Quicken (since it no longer works in the current version of Mac OS) to iBank (which I really don’t like). It’ll take days to sort out the accounting mess I face when I get around to it.

And then comes tax time. What a freaking nightmare that is.

And then my annual migration back to Washington. That’s a logistics issue. Find someone to fly up to Washington with me to help cover the flight costs. Do the flight. Catch a commercial flight back to Arizona. Pack the RV, get the truck ready. (Did I mention that I might have to buy a new truck this year, too? And take delivery before the end of April?) Make the 1200-mile drive to the Wenatchee area. Retrieve the helicopter from wherever I left it in Washington. Get my contracts set up for summer work.

Of course, that’s if there is summer work. My clients never want to sign up until after the last frost. There’s a chance I might get to Washington with the helicopter and a frost will wipe out the cherry crop. No need for my services then. Ready to fly but no clients. How do you think this possibility affects my stress levels?

On the flip side, there might be too much work for me to take on by myself. Then I have to scramble and find people who are willing to put their life on hold for 3-6 weeks and wait around for the rain in Washington. I’ve already started collecting possible candidate phone numbers. None of them are happy that they’ll have to wait until May to know whether there might be work for them.

Before I leave Arizona, however, I do have to pack up everything I own that’s in our Phoenix condo in case it’s rented or sold while I’m gone. That’s a whole office full of stuff, as well as clothes and other personal effects. Hell, I haven’t had enough time to unpack the boxes that brought some of this stuff here.

And I did mention that I have to travel to Lynda.com for a week to record a course, right?

And there is the possibility of a very big client needing to fly with me in late March or early April, before I go to Washington. Unfortunately, they can’t pin down a date. Once they do, if I’m not available, I’ll lose that job — and it’s not the kind of job I want to lose.

Along the way, I need to start seriously considering where I’m going to live and what I’m going to do when my work in Washington is done this year. I’ve been wanting to relocate for years. I’m sick of Wickenburg’s small-mindedness and the bullshit politics and greed that have ruined the town. Phoenix is no gem, either — except on February days like yesterday when the temperature hovers in the high 70s and there’s not a cloud in the sky. The personal decisions I’ve made recently give me a good opportunity to make the change. Unfortunately, I don’t know where I want to live. I’m leaning toward Oregon — perhaps in the Portland area — but who knows?

So with all this on my plate and on my mind is it any wonder that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed?

But this is typical in my life — and in the life of most hardworking freelancers and business owners. Things don’t get done by themselves. And if things aren’t done, I start feeling it in the bank account. I don’t know about you, but I like to pay my bills on time and eat.

Guess I’d better get back to work.

A Dinner with Friends

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Salmon, local wine, and home-made cherry pie with friends.

If you’ve been following this blog or my Twitter or Facebook accounts, you know that I’m in Washington State on the last of several cherry drying contracts. I’m not the only helicopter pilot doing this work. At the peak of the season, there were probably about 20 of us working in central Washington state for a handful of service providers. My company, Flying M Air, is probably the smallest of those service providers; this year I was able to add a second pilot for about half my season.

My friend, Jim, has been doing this work for about fifteen years. He starts the season in the Mattawa area and ends it in the Chelan area. He usually starts before me and finishes before me.

This year, I met Lisa, who was new to this work. She worked for the same service provider as Jim, starting down in Kennewick, moving up to Brewster for a while, and then ending the season in Malaga.

Unfortunately, I only met Lisa last week, on Thursday. I say “unfortunately,” because we really hit it off. She came up to my RV for dinner that evening and accompanied me to the Beaumont Cellars Dinner on the Crushpad event the following evening. We went wine tasting and had dinner together again on Sunday. By then, I felt as if I’d known her a long time.

The End is Here

On Friday, my contract in Wenatchee Heights was extended two weeks. It made sense; they’d barely started picking the 86 acres I was responsible for. Since this particular client picks by color, it would take at least two weeks to finish picking. Lisa was told she’d be needed until Wednesday. Jim, the last pilot left in Chelan, was waiting to get cut loose any day.

Moonset over Squilchuck

My view at dawn.

Weather moved in Sunday night. Asleep in my RV at the edge of a cliff over looking Squilchuck Valley, I was awakened by the wind at 3:30 AM. I looked out the window and realized I couldn’t see any stars. I fired up the Intellicast app on my iPad and was shocked to see the green blob indicating rain mostly to the south of my position. I dozed fitfully for an hour, expecting to hear rain on my roof at any moment. It may have been drizzling when I finally fell back to sleep.

At 7 AM, I woke to the sound of voices, trucks, and construction noise. The mostly blue sky was full of puffy clouds. Down in the lower part of the orchard, the pickers were already at work. There was no rain in the forecast at all.

Jim called at about 10 AM. I knew instinctively what he would say and beat him to the punchline: “You’re calling to tell me they cut you loose.”

“You’re a mind-reader,” he said. “Today’s my last day.”

We chatted for a while and then I remembered that Lisa had an opportunity to do a trip with a friend and would probably be open to letting Jim take over her contract for the next two days. He was also open to that, so I hung up and called Lisa. I told her what we were thinking.

“That’s great,” she said, “but today’s my last day, too. They’ll be done picking in about an hour.”

It was then that I realized that both of them would be gone by the next day.

Errands, Favors, and a Cherry Pie

The end of a cherry drying contract comes with logistical challenges.

Lisa’s challenge was easy. All she had to do was pack up, move out of her motel room, and drive the company pickup truck back to Spokane. Her employers would be sending some pilots in time-building mode out to Malaga to pick up the helicopter. She needed to send them the GPS coordinates for where the helicopter was parked so they could find it. She was toying with the idea of leaving that afternoon so she could spend some time with her family before her trip.

Jim’s challenge was a bit more…well, challenging. His helicopter was four hours from its 100-hour inspection, which needed to be done by his mechanic in Seattle. Flying to Seattle was usually a challenge in itself — the weather in the Cascade Mountains was typically miserable with low ceilings, making it a difficult, if not dangerous, flight. A weather window was required, but you never knew when that would be. After dropping his helicopter off in Seattle, he’d have to come back to Wenatchee to fetch his truck and drive it home to Coeur d’Alene. Of course, both his helicopter and truck were in Chelan, about 40 miles farther up the Columbia River. He needed to move his truck to Wenatchee to stage it there for his return from Seattle by airline. Then he needed to get back to Chelan so he could fly out with his helicopter the next day. He suggested a farewell dinner that evening and I promised to drive him back to Chelan.

I had a bunch of errands to run in Wenatchee and I got around to starting them that afternoon. While I was out and about, Lisa called. She’d decided not to leave that day; she’d leave first thing in the morning instead. What she really wanted to do was make a cherry pie. We’d already planned to do that before she left, but that was before she was cut loose early. I had an oven in my RV, so it made sense to do it at my place.

We decided to do it that afternoon. And instead of Jim and me going out to dinner in a restaurant, I’d pick up a piece of salmon and salad fixings and make dinner for all three of us. I was finishing up my errands and heading back to my RV when Jim called and I told him our revised plan. He was on board.

Lisa showed up around 5 PM. Since Jim was still a half hour out, we each took a bowl and headed into the orchard. Five minutes later, we had enough cherries for a pie — and then some.

Back in the RV, I gave the cherries my usual three-soaking bath in cold water to clean them thoroughly. Then Lisa went to work with my junky cherry pitter. It didn’t surprise me much when it broke when she was only half finished. She pitted the rest by hand. By the time Jim showed up, her hands were stained with cherry juice, making her look like a mass murderer.

Jim helped me put a filled propane tank back into its cabinet on my RV and hook it up. The strap that holds it in place bent and he was determined to fix it — which he did. If I wanted to be mean, I would have shown him the strap on the other tank which had similarly broken but had not been fixed. But instead, we went inside and kept Lisa company while she worked on the pie.

We also drank wine. Both Lisa and I had bottles that we’d opened recently but had never finished. We polished them off, one after the other over the course of the evening. I even opened another bottle to keep the wine flowing.

The Salmon Recipe

When the pie was safely in the oven, I got to work on dinner. That’s when Jim gave me a recipe that another one of the pilots had shared over the summer. Oddly, I happened to have all the ingredients. I reproduce it here because it was so excellent:

Ingredients:

  • Salmon filet
  • Mayonnaise
  • Onions, sliced thinly
  • Bacon, cut into pieces

Instructions:

  1. Place the salmon on a piece of aluminum foil.
  2. Spread mayonnaise on the fleshy side of the salmon.
  3. Sprinkle the onions and bacon pieces over the mayonnaise.
  4. Fold up the foil to make a packet.
  5. Place the packet on a preheated grill set to medium heat. If possible, cover the grill to keep the heat in.
  6. Cook until the salmon is done.

The Summer’s Best Dinner

I’d bought a beautiful 1-3/4 pound Coho salmon filet. It was too large to fit on my portable grill in one piece, so I cut it into three portions and made three packets. I absolutely lucked out with the timing. The fish was fully cooked, but still moist. The onions and bacon were cooked to perfection.

I served it with a salad of mixed greens, cucumber slices, vine-ripened tomato, bacon bits, goat cheese, and bottled balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

At one point, Jim said it was the best dinner he’d had all summer. I thought about it and had to agree.

It was the conversation that made it perfect. We talked about flying and about the surreal situation of a cherry drying contract. They seemed to think I had the best setup, living in my mobile mansion on a cliffside with a view, with 86 acres of cherries just steps away. I agreed that it would be tough to go home in September.

Jim was happy that his contracts had gone long enough to cover his annual insurance bill and the cost of his upcoming maintenance. He added up the hours he’d flown during the ten or so weeks he’d been in the area. It wasn’t a lot — cherry drying is not a time-building job — but it was more than usual.

Lisa said it was the best summer she’d ever had and that she’d do it again if she could. Her future holds bigger and better things, though: she’s starting officer school with the Coast Guard in January. She was already looking forward to the trip she’d be starting on Wednesday with a friend.

After dinner, Lisa sliced up the pie, which had been cooling on the stovetop. I produced some Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream from my freezer. The cherries were big and plump and tender — not the mush you usually find in a cherry pie. It was a perfect finish to a great dinner.

The Party’s Over — and So Is the Summer

The party broke up after 10 PM. Lisa left to drive back to her motel for one last night. Jim and I climbed into my truck and started the long drive to Chelan. We talked politics on the way. We don’t agree on all points, but we’re both too stubborn to give in to the other. We’re also too smart — and too close as friends — to let our disagreement hurt our friendship.

I dropped him off at the house he’s renting. In the morning, his boss would pick him up and drive him to the orchard where his helicopter is parked. Then, weather permitting, he’d make the one-hour flight to Seattle. I’d pick him up at Wenatchee Airport at 5:12 PM and bring him back to his truck. The plan set, I started on my way back.

I got back to my RV just after midnight. The moon was up by then, casting a gray-blue light over the valley spread out before my RV. I listened to the crickets and looked out over that valley for a while. I had 12 days left in my contract and there was a slight chance that it would be extended again.

Yet with my friends gone, I felt as if my summer was over, too.