So we are now full swing into fire season and up at the fire tower, people are taking selfies.
It's a thing for some, a compulsion for many. Climb a mountain and it must be documented, at best livestreamed or at least facetimed.Two years ago, the thing was to get naked and take a selfie at the top of a mountain. It was an Insta moment apparently and no I'm not sharing. Thankfully for me, this craze has slowed down, since I spend most of summer at the top of a mountain. I felt like a creep every time I picked up my binoculars to look for smoke.
Today in the tower I could see the Stirling Ranges, which meant I could see clearly for about 150 kilometres. I called in a smoke 60 kilometres away. 'Plus or minus' I said on the radio. 'Maybe dust.' I was calling in dust because a fire that far away ...it could be someone working a paddock, sending plumes of dust into the air. And it turns out that it was just that, a farmer, not a bushfire. The spotter pilot went overhead, let me know and I went back to the tourists taking selfies and my weather recordings.
We get a log of dust from the farms here in summer. City folk think it's fires.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's an easy mistake to make. Particles in the air, whether it be dust particles, smoke or steam, all behave in the same way depending on wind and updrafts etc. Tractor fires send up the same plume as black dust, so it can be quite confusing!
DeleteChrist. You go all the way up there to be confronted with that? Maybe I don't want your job after all.
ReplyDeleteI meet lots of lovely people up there and maybe it's a bit cruel to body shame an enthusiastic mountaineer! But the naked selfies were a bit too much. My fellow tower buddy said 'You can delete that from your phone Sarah but never from your mind.' He mentioned the three young French guys who'd climbed that day and told me I was on the wrong shift.
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