Lookouts

1. My First Steps

Of all the things that he had found himself scared of, Grizzlies sat near enough at the top of his list. A bear was not only twice the size of your average person, but also stood to be stronger in very conceivable way. The very thought of even seeing something that resembled a  broad and prominent snout twitching in the cold morning air shook him to his core. Taking two steps from his rust bucket of a Volkswagen Beetle was brave enough for him. Afterall, this was the closest he'd ever realistically been to a forest.

From the staging ground alone, he knew he had a day-long trek to his newly found lookout post. One would imagine them to have direct roads to them, but that counted as "wildlife endangerment", or whatever the forest ranger had muttered down the phone speaker days before he drove all the way out into the heart of Canada's southern-most reaches that found themselves marked and named part of the Boreal Forest. He'd done some digging, actually. Being 1.2 billion acres in size, this was the largest untouched ecosystem on Earth. As he trudged from the parking lot and into the city of black spruce, balsam fir, and tamarack that seemed to sprawl endlessly throughout the valleys, gulches and basins that made up the evergreen wilderness.

As his journey began, he took the directed trail, finding himself content with its lack of winding causeways. He watched as it mirrored the movements of a nearby creek bed, slithering alongside and down through ground that was made too acidic for grass to grow - the taiga did that to the landscape. Although, it did mean that moss and various ferns were able to flourish in the absence of the green stalk's grace.

Sunlight soon began to beam through the trees, the cold morning fog sweltering before drifting back into the shadows as sweat began to slide down his forehead, droplet rolling down to the tip of his nose and from his temple to his jaw. He grunted, sliding his jacket off and tying it around his waist whilst he trudged further down into the wilderness, muggy temperament clinging to his skin. Whilst he was aware, admittedly, that it would be this warm, he never thought it would bother him this much. Bugs were bound to be his number one enemy in the coming season, alongside grizzly bears, of course. Surely all this time in the outdoors would help him build muscle; maybe not enough muscle to fistfight a ball of flesh and fur eight foot in height, but enough muscle to help him fend off raccoons at most, he supposed. It was better than nothing, admittedly.

Up and over the creek, winding through a nearby meadow, He continued up the path, following a lake's shoreline which seemingly sat calm and steadfast, Sunlight shining off of the water, the lake seeming as if filled with liquid platinum. He sighed, taking a moment to look out over the body of water, deep breaths before he then kept trekking onwards.

Alas, as he turned left and up through an aspen-coated hill, he stepped up to one of the four legs of a tower; his tower. His new home was white in colour so far, the stilts extending upwards through the brush. He grunted and made his way around, taking his first steps up the stairway that wrapped neatly around until he reached the top. He opened the door to his tower and stepped inside.