Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Rae-Edzo (Aug10/01) - Alex Washie is only partially glad to be home. He's a tower man and he feels most peaceful on his perch.

Washie, 48, lives in a field station with green siding on top of a pink granite hill where eagles fly.

He has spent 12 summers looking out for fires and conducting weather reports for Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, at one of three stations around the North Slave region.

This year, he was stationed at Marion Tower, overlooking Marion Lake and James Lake, 15 minutes by helicopter and about 30 kilometers north of Rae-Edzo.

In every direction is a magnificent view of spruce pine forest, water and muskeg.

For two months, he rarely saw anyone, other than the helicopter pilot who would refuel him, drop off his groceries and fill his water tank every 10 days. His partner, Nena Walker, a Web page designer, came up twice for 10 days at a time, to keep him company. But otherwise, he was alone.

The helicopter was there Aug. 5, to pick him up for the season and Washie was a little reluctant to leave.

"I love everything about being out here," he says. "I love working on the land like this. Being out here in this beautiful country. It's so beautiful out here. Like last night, there was a full moon and I looked up and there was Northern Lights.

"Sometimes, I wake up and the sun's shining, the birds are singing and sometimes I see moose. I got eagles, Peregrine falcons, too, sometimes that fly over here. They take the air currents and it's beautiful to watch them. I get robins, I get chickadees and whiskey jacks. On a real good day, I can hear the squirrels down below. In other towers, sometimes I've seen wolverine and bears."

Despite being on his own most of the time, he says he never gets bored.

"I always find myself something to do. You improvise to keep yourself busy," he says. "I take a lot of pictures, I do sightseeing. I do a little bit of writing too. I got a bunch of books, mysteries, detectives, mostly westerns. I do maintenance around here -- if there's something to do, I try not to finish it in one day. I save some for the next day so it will keep me busy.

"I do a lot of hiking. When I go on my hikings, I try to find the old places like old campgrounds from the years of my ancestors. I haven't found any yet, but I always keep my eyes open for it. Sometimes I go hiking and I don't come back until about 2 a.m.

But that's after hours," he emphasizes. "Not during my working hours."

Working hours are seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and longer if there's a red alert, like when there's hot dry weather with lighting, or if there's a fire in the area.

He takes weather readings and sends a weather report three times a day to Yellowknife by satellite phone, and he sits on top of his shower shed with a pair of binoculars, keeping watch for smoke.

This season was wet and therefore quiet, with only one fire sighting at his station. But in a dry year, it can be more like 100 to 150 sightings.

In the winters, he stays in Yellowknife, but travels around doing construction surveying for various companies in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. But he prefers living in his secluded field stations to living in town.

"It's good to be home for a while, but after a while being with civilization, you just want to go out again. I'm always looking forward to coming back every summer.