On his way out to his first location, Doug decided to swing by another spot near his route. There was a patchwork of old homesteads and mine sites still in the forest. Most had reverted to federal control, but a few still remained the possession of the families that predated the park.
One of these was a small cabin next to a stream up a small side canyon along the route to the landing zone cabin. He wasn’t sure if Zed would be there, but he felt he had to check.
The homestead people didn’t have to check in through the front office to go to their property. It was a holdover rule for these few places. The homesteads couldn’t be sold, only passed down within the family. Soon, Zed’s would revert to the parks control. His son wanted nothing to do with it, Zed was getting older and his wife died in the spring. Zed’s wife Marta was a good friend of his mother’s and Doug knew they would soon be sharing coffee and bread like the old days soon, if not already.
Doug’s father told him last night he thought his mother was very close to passing now. She was drugged enough to be comfortable, but her body was well on the way to shutting down. She had fought cancer back three times in the past twenty-five years, but she didn’t have enough fight for this last time. She was home in hospice care, his father doing what he could and spending as much time as possible with her here at the end. That was one of the ‘crowbars’ he had used with his ex-wife to get Angelique out here to help her grandfather.
All of this, this early in the morning, blurred his eyes with tears. He sat in his truck for a few minutes at the turnoff until he could see well enough again to make out the narrow double track path at the turn. As he crept up the lane, barely wide enough for his full size truck, he could smell wood smoke. This prompted him to keep going up the trail.
The canyon widened out a bit after a tight spot and a turn. Sitting halfway up a rock shelf was a small log cabin. A small structure itself, what looked like a tiny clone sat next to it, with smoke rolling out a small chimney. A white battered late sixties or early seventies Toyota station wagon sat near the cabin. On the porch in rocking chairs sat two men.
One he recognized as Zed, but the other one wasn’t as familiar. It took a few moments to place him. Finally when he stood up to greet him with Zed, he could see it was Mr Barnhart. Mr Barnhart used to work at the park doing communications and mechanical repair back when Doug’s father was still one of the senior Rangers.
“Morning Zed, Morning Mr Barnhart,” Doug called as he got out of the truck.
Zed was the first to speak of the two older men.
“Hey, kid! What brings you up this way? I thought this was Helga the one legged pirate’s territory?”
Between the laughter of Doug and Mr Barnhart, Doug was able to spit out a few words.
“Zed, that’s not nice. Tracy is good people and you know it! You two pick on each other so much, you would think this was elementary school.”
“I know, Doug, but with her last name almost fifteen letters long after hyphenating, and barely a consonant among it, I told her she needed a more Germanic first name. Where’s she slacking off this week?”
“She tweaked her knee again. I think it’s bad enough this time and so much cartilage is gone, I think they will have to finally replace it. How are you doing Mr Barnhart? I wish you were still on the payroll here. That newfangled radio rig I told you they contracted out and had built to replace the ‘antiquated’ system you had? Well it’s in half a dozen pieces and crushed when the quake toppled the tower.”
Mr Barnhart was just shaking his head. “I told them, again and again, stick with the three small towers and the bone simple repeaters and all would be fine. The new guy wanted to consolidate stuff so he didn’t have to go too many places and be able to control it all from his computer at the main station. That’s what happens when you have a computer guy trying to be the radio guy instead of hiring a radio guy and an IT guy.”
Zed started speaking again before Barnhart got too far down his radio tangent.
“So you out doing her rounds as well as your own?”
“Actually, I’m out checking all the stations and the roads. Garret is down in San Diego. His mother is having surgery, and between that and some excess leave he had to burn, he wasn’t supposed to be back to the park for a couple weeks. With the quake yesterday, the boss has me checking things and looking for a couple groups of hikers still registered for the backcountry.”
Mr Barnhart chimed in. “With the earthquake and tsunami all down the coast, he will be lucky to ever make it back here period. Everything is trashed all up and down the coast. Baja Mexico to the Canadian border got flattened and flooded.”
Doug turned to him. “Wow, how did you find this out?”
“Son, I did communications for Uncle Sam long before I did it for the Park Service. With the right stuff, you can hear things and get signals from all over, even use the moon to bounce signals. I got friends who I have been talking to. The coast is hammered.”
Doug was silent for a few, then Zed stared talking. “Yeah, we were just discussing this up on the porch when you drove up. Care to join us for breakfast?”
“I don’t know, I still have the other two stations to check and the campers to find.”
“Tell you what, Doug. You come on up and have some breakfast. Jess and I” he nodded to Mr Barnhart, “we can go over and check the other two stations for you, close them up for the winter and bring the stuff back here for safe keeping while you go find the campers. Besides, you still need to tell me what that cantankerous old ruskie father of yours has been up to these days.”
Doug thought about it for a moment or two, then figured he would be stupid to turn down the help.
“Sure, sounds good.”