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THE CABIN:
Wesley stares at the television, but it might as well be off. After the call from Jamie last night, he knows the incident at the campground is a warning things could get much worse. He hears a beep from his computer and walks to his desk as the printer shoves out four large colored photographs of his mountain. He smiles and grabs them from the tray. “Thanks, Alex.”
He spreads them out on the desktop, matching two sides on each to form one large image of his mountain. Someone has circled two large orange areas, indicating significant heat. “Oh, crap!”
He grabs his personal map of the mountain and matches the locations of the heat blooms in the photographs. He’s familiar with one area and knows he can use his modified Humvee to get there without disturbing the ecological system. The eighteen-inch-wide tires are gentle on the vegetation, and the high-rise suspension allows him to travel over small trees with little damage to the foliage.
He grabs his map and the photographs, goes into the kitchen to put on his hiking boots, then walks out the door and climbs into his Hummer. The engine roars to life, and he backs up to the front of the workshop and climbs out. He opens the padlock between the two large doors and shoves one side open, then enters, and goes over to the metal shelving attached to the wall.
He worked for the Hughes Corporation as an electronic engineer, designing specialized seismic sensors for twenty years, and just happened to acquire a few test models before retiring. Each custom made sensor is twenty-inches square by eight-inches thick, with a flip up antenna on the side. Each unit is capable of sensing motion and temperature and transmitting the information to his receivers in the workshop.
He hefts a pair of the thirty-pound devices, carries the units over to the Hummer, and sets them in back behind the rear seats. After closing the workshop door, he climbs into the cab and drives away, following an old logging road behind his cabin up the side of Mount Baker.
Twenty minutes later, he follows another abandoned dirt logging road for another half hour before turning off and continuing through virgin forest. He recognizes the exposed thirty-foot area of flat granite protruding from the ground, but something is wrong. Wisps of yellow vapor swirl across the gray granite surface before vanishing into the air.
He shuts off the engine and climbs down from the Hummer, walking over for a closer look. A yellow liquid substance is boiling up through a fresh fracture in the rock and he knows it’s a new fumarole. A place where magma is close to the surface. “Oh, crap.”
He pulls a pocketknife from his front pocket and kneels beside the fracture, and the stench of rotten eggs assaults his nostrils. He scrapes the thick yellow sulfur from the granite and sees it has not begun to harden, which means the fracture is only a day old.
He stands and looks around for more fumaroles, but the rest of the area is clear. He walks to the Hummer, grabs one of the sensors, and returns to the fracture. He places it on a level area of bare granite and flips up the antenna. When he turns it on, a small flashing red light indicates it’s working. “One down.”
He returns to the Hummer and studies the photograph and his map. The next location will be too steep for his Hummer and he will have to carry the other sensor for nearly three-miles through steep terrain. He tossed the maps inside and climbs in, then drives onto the bare granite to turn around before taking a different route back to the dirt road. Even in extreme circumstances, he’s careful not to disturb the natural vegetation any more than necessary, and he’s not about to change his old habits.
***
MOUNT BAKER STATE PARK:
Jamie recognizes the little boy standing outside the restrooms as she drives into Marmot Campground to complete the morning inspections. She parks the SUV and climbs out, and the boy runs up to her, tears streaming down his cheeks.
She kneels in front of him. “What’s wrong?”
“The water burnt my sister.”
Jamie stands, grabs the boy’s hand, and leads him into the woman’s side of the building. The little girl is sitting on the beige changing table, and the woman is wrapping wet paper towels around her little feet. “What happened, ma’am?”
The woman spins around. “This is your fault! You people should not have put a campground so close to that hot spring! She went to the pond this morning, and I heard her scream. When I got there, the water was steaming, and she was lying on the ground, screaming in pain. What’s wrong with you people.”
Jamie feels terrible about what happened, but knows trying to explain it’s not the Park’s fault will not comfort the woman. “I’m very sorry for what happened, ma’am. The water seemed fine yesterday. I’ll block off the area so no one else gets hurt.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry I yelled at you. It’s just that I’m hiding from my ex-husband, and now this happens.”
“I have some medical training. Mind if I look at her feet?” The woman indicates she can.
Jamie steps in front of the little girl and smiles, but the trails of tears down the girl’s dirt smudged cheeks and the sad frown break her heart. She carefully unwraps the wet paper towels from her tiny feet. “They’re not blistered, so that’s a good sign. They might be painful for a little while, but she should be all right. I’ll get my first aid kit and wrap them for you, but you should see a doctor as soon as you get a chance. Would you like me to help you move to a different campsite?”
“Thanks, but I’ll be more careful.”
“I’ll be right back. I just need to get my first aid kit.”
Jamie returns and wraps the tiny pink feet in gauze, then grabs a small spiral note-pad from her shirt pocket and writes her phone number, which she tears lose and holds out to the woman. “Call me if you need anything.”
The little girl grabs the paper, and the woman picks her up, nods her thanks, and leaves the restroom.
Jamie leaves the building, goes to the back of her SUV, and digs through a large green plastic storage container until she finds a new bundle of yellow nylon rope. She walks through the campground and into the forest until she’s standing next to the hot spring. Steam is rising from the surface, and she realizes there is more going on in the park than is obvious. She strings the yellow rope around the trees to make a temporary barricade and makes a mental note to call Patterson after she tells her boss what happened. They might need to shut down the park before anything else goes wrong.
***
MOUNT BAKER:
“Oh, crap.” Wesley mumbles and sets the sensor on a bed of pine needles next to a large gray boulder. He pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket to wipe his brow, then plops down on the boulder, frustrated he’ll have to carry the sensor back down the mountain. The banks of a small stream have washed away, allowing the water to flood a large area of the small valley, too deep to cross. Out of curiosity, he leans forward and puts his hand in the water, then yanks it back to blow on his fingertips. “Oh, crap!”
His worst fears are coming true. The glaciers are melting fast, and the runoff water is flowing deep underground through fractures in the rock until super-heated by magma and forced back to the surface. That accounts for the hot spring. He decides to check the glaciers and find out how fast they are melting. If it’s slow and steady, the water will flood the streams and not rush down the mountain like a lahar.
He stands, hoists the sensor onto one shoulder, then hikes back down the mountain.