Listen to me (author) read you the story here: audio
911 calls are both random and consistent. If the tones drop anytime between 0530 to 0800, you anticipate a long, slow, difficult call with little to do. It is the classic time for families to discover that Granny or Gump woke up dead. Nights and evenings: car wrecks. Wintertime: house fires. Springtime: chasing phantom barn fires while Vermonters boil sap.
When the tones drop from dispatch, I wake instantly. I need to pee, which I do whilst listening to dispatch. The next words are critical, though they will be said in uniformly professional tones with no particular emotion. All of this happens as I pee. Another adventure in my life that starts with, “No shit, there I was just minding my own business when...”
“Trowbridge Fire and Rescue, respond south of Nidoba Hill in Trowbridge for a report of a plane crash and possible wildland fire.”
Years from now, the squad will sit around a fire. Someone will say, “Remember the night when that plane crashed?” We’ll be slightly drunk, slightly stoned, and the story starts: “Remember…” Because we remember the unusual calls forever.
Things that don’t happen to a rescue squad covering forty square miles of forgotten mountains in Vermont include: bank robberies and planes falling from the sky. Things that do happen in Trowbridge include: excavators that roll over peoples’ legs, old people who die in bed, drunks who drive off of cliffs, houses that crush fingers, and the injuries and deaths associated with firearms.
Nidoba Hill is the hill that has been in Sam’s family since the Vermont Republic, and likely earlier.
Dispatch informs me that an airplane had just crashed on our land.
I wake Sam. It is her land, more than mine.
My mind explores the impact of a plane on our land and on our neighbors’. Jeez, shit, Marna’s house and barns would erupt in flames with the slightest spark.
“Stolen Mountain,” a novel that follows our Trowbridge crew through an adventure related to Vermont ski areas and bad guys doin’ bad things.
I begin my prep for a difficult night in the woods. First, I recognize that my normal routine of jumping into my truck and speeding off appears stupid. I am as close to the scene as possible. Second, without hopping into my truck, I don’t know what to do.
Our house sits on the shoulder of a hill. Below us is the village, with its church and church spire that stands about five degrees off from true vertical. Below us is a pasture that has hosted every critter from oxen to wild deer. To our west is the home field, more of a yard with gardens than pasture. The stone wall that holds the forest back sits about two hundred meters west of the office. You can easily see the foot trail that stretches from the gravel drive to the dark wall of trees (were it light out). The trailhead, marked by daffodils in the spring, opens like an archway. Our beloved landmarks such as the Douglas Tree, the Cellar Tree, and Lake Shore Drive interlace over Nidoba Hill.
Running on our property’s northern edge is an unpaved Trowbridge road.
We hop onto the side-by-side ATV, and then drive to the paved road. We wiggle south, easing off the crest of the hill. We can see the entire western aspect of Nidoba Hill.
“Dispatch 14RC5 establishing Trowbridge Command at Nidoba Hill.”
“Trowbridge Command established,” they answer me on the radio.
“Dispatch, Trowbridge,” I call out.
“Trowbridge, go.”
“Reporting nothing visual on the western and southern aspects of the terrain.”
Blessedly, the lands are brightening as the half-moon continues its ascent. We can see contours. We can see the outlines of northern white pines that stand proud of the forest’s canopy. We see no hints of smoke, of heat, of damage. Were the plane a Boeing, we’d see a rent torn across this landscape. Were the plane a small Cessna single engine, it would disappear into these forests with no visible scars.
“Command on two?”
“Command.”
“Hey, Brie,” I hear Al’s voice. “I am opposite you, south. I can see the backside of your hill. I can even see the lights of your house.” I can picture exactly where he sits in his truck. We occasionally see the flash of a headlight, especially in the winter after the trees drop their leaves.
“And?” I prompt him.
“Nothin.”
“Nothin-nothing?” I ask, doubting A-One.
“Nothin!”
“Want a dumb idea?”
“Sure,” Al answers.
“Stay there and watch from there. If something does break out, you are in a great spot.”
Sam mutters: “OP1.”
I question her with my eyes.
“OP1—observation post number 1.” Sam interjects standard military terms to my civilian rescue effort.
“Hey, A-One, you are designated OP1.”
“If you keep me here, I may run home to get some binos and a spotting scope.”
“Great.”
Sam is holding a lichen-encrusted lilac stick and has drawn lines and wavy circles deep into the driveway’s gravel. I recognize the conical shape of Nidoba Hill as if on a paper contour map. Straight lines represent our wiggly roads. She marks OP1 on the contour opposite us.
“14RC2 on tac 2 please.” I haven’t heard Harry on the radio yet. I know he is out there.
“2 on 2.”
“Harry, run to the top of Michelin Hill on the state highway. Take up a post looking south. Report from there.”
“Got it. I’ll stay on Tac 2.”
“Ok, you are OP2.”
That put a farmer on the tallest mountain over our mountain valley. His eyesight may not be what it was, but his eyes on that hill will safeguard us all.
Jay calls in from the east of us. “Brie, I got nothing.”
“Jay, do me this. Hold up at Hayes corner and set a perimeter there.”
I then ask Sam, “Why did I ask him to do that?”
“I don’t know, but it was perfect.” Sam marks her sand table with another X for Jay.
There is now a fire truck en route to our home. We hear the whine of the big diesel hit the bottom of the hill. I hear Thomas Reed shift down to first. I think about what to do with a truck loaded with a thousand gallons of water. I know that I am not qualified to organize a rescue or recovery mission following an airplane crash.
The moon climbs one finger of height for every fifteen minutes, or the fifteen-degree span of my hand stretched to the length of my arm each hour. It rises into the sky and shrinks in size, turning whiter and smaller.
“Hey, Chief, how about parking at the dry hydrant?”
Yap, we have a dry hydrant that includes a fire-truck-sized pull out. It also has a big pipe that connects the dry hydrant to our goose pond.
Alex arrives, stopping short of committing to our driveway. Instead, he pulls parallel to the stone wall, parking on our grass.
He looks down to Sam’s sand table. If the plane is not as big as a Boeing, then it is likely small, truck-sized, and the sort that can land on rural runways. You cannot readily find something as small as truck-sized in this forest without a lot of looking. There is a rusted 1930s pickup in a stream that has been found several times. There are rumors of Arthur’s Sword in a rock nearby that nobody has found. And as sad as the words sound, I hope a fire breaks out. Fire, heat, smoke would give us a location.
“Trowbridge Command.”
“Trowbridge answering,” I say after attempting to hand the mic to Alex. He may not be the fire chief, but he is the rescue chief.
“Status?”
“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command reports nothing found. We have established a visual and physical perimeter on the roads. We have at least a 270-degree view of Niboba Hill from observation posts at elevation.” I know that every firefighter and EMT who is awake is listening to my report across nearly one hundred towns in two, three states. They hang on my words.
“Do you have more information? Size of plane? Direction of travel? Any reports from the FAA or other callers?” I ask.
“Sorry, Trowbridge. A driver called from a mobile phone describing a massive orange glow that appeared suddenly at the crest of a hill in Trowbridge.”
“Do you have the lat/long? Did they say the name Nidoba Hill?” In a land of hills, who would know the specific name of that hill?
“Trowbridge, sorry. We used their phone’s reported position and located the car near the Musgrave property.” Do they know that I, as 14RC5, own that hill? Do they know that they are talking about a plane crash on our property? I cling to my professional objectivity and call them on my mobile instead.
“Hey, this is Brighid Doran Musgrave, 14RC5.”
“Hey, Brighid, what can we do for you?”
“Two things: first, can you play the 911 call for me? And second, can you tell me the time that the call came in? We live right here. This is our house and property. We heard nothing.”
“Call came in at 0023.” Meanwhile, I am waving hands and stomping feet to get Alex and Sam to join me on the phone.
“Huh, hold on. Let me put you on speaker.”
We three listen. The dispatcher plays the recording over the speakerphone: “I don’t know what I am looking at, but the trees at the crest of this hill just started glowing. It was really small at the start, then it grew. I’ve got to get home. I think either a plane crashed or there’s a really hot forest fire about to kick off. Sorry.” The call ended.
On the tactical frequency, I pass on the information. “Guys, the call came in at 23 past midnight. A driver reported a red-orange glow at the top of our hill here. Ask around. Did anyone else hear or see anything?”
I get a round-robin of guys keying mics and offering opinions from various hilltops, farm fields, and ridgeline roads.
Sam and Alex return to their map drawn in dirt. Drawing a map in soil or sand is a common military technique called forming a “sand table.” It is scaled to fit the width of the space between the grass and the gravel of the driveway. Sam drew it in the same orientation as the terrain, Harry’s OP looking south, A-One in his truck looking north.
I am listening to radios and thinking that except for being a landowner, I am the least qualified to be in command. I scan the fire truck to my north. I look through the night towards where Al is sitting in a truck. I look west toward the spine of the Appalachians. I turn slowly north again, thinking of Harry looking down over these hills.
Sam and Alex are standing on the northside of the sand table shoulder to shoulder over the map. Their arms raise in a slow point, each of them raising their separate index fingers towards the sky. They slowly point up, then drop their arms. They swap positions and execute the same dance-like maneuvers, tracing an arc in the sky with their hands.
“Hey, hon?” Sam calls to me.
“Yeah?”
“Come here a sec, will ya?”
I step away from my open truck door, the improv command post where I have electric power and multiple radios.
“Stand here.” Sam holds my shoulders, placing me. “There, that’s the road.” Sam points at the drawn road, then the real road. “That is Nidoba.” She points to the spot on the map. “You’re on the road here. Got it? It is twenty minutes past midnight, clear skies. Right?”
I am patient. I am on the path she’s laying out for me. I trust her.
“Look here.” She holds up Alex’s mobile phone. “According to the internet, the moon rose at 12:15 just here.” Alex had placed a round bit of white quartz on the ground, identifying the point where the moon appeared on an imaginary flat horizon. “Moonrise is measured from sea level, so it is a bit later up here. Where do you think the moon is at 12:20?”
I do exactly what they did. I point at the quartz pebble, then gradually raise my arm vertically while arcing southward.
“No shit?”
“A giant orange glow that is just past the halfway mark, as the moon glides through the lower atmosphere and hits the ridgeline.”
“It rose red orange, then as it climbed and marched southward, the color faded.” I see my finger pointing at a normal autumnal half-moon, small and white. There is enough light to give the land depth, but not enough spectrum to see colors except for blacks, blues, and purples.
“Really?” I ask of no one.
“This is tough to explain,” Sam says to me, “but I can see it happening. Give someone some edibles or whatever.”
“They’ll see what they see.”
I’ll call dispatch. At least I am not the one who reported it. I did spend an hour arranging rescue and recovery of a downed plane. The downed plan that wasn’t. Someone reported a fire-red moon rising over our home mountain.
Listen, you know-it-alls, we did the right things. We left a fire watch in place for another two hours. After dawn, we did all the possible search-and-rescue things with personal drones and a few ATVs. We spent the post-dawn morning searching our forest for evidence of a plane crash. We’re not complete idiots. We play the role of heroes. We are a rescue squad. And we rescue shit.
This should not be any more embarrassing than chasing barn fires during sugar season, except it will be. At some regional training center, someone will remember: “Trowbridge, eh? Weren’t you the squad that chased the moon and called it a plane crash?”
Ha-ha, asshole. What would you have done? Found it? You’re no different than me. Your squad is just like mine. But go ahead, laugh at Trowbridge. Oh, ha-ha, that was the night the moon crashed in Trowbridge, Vermont and every firefighter, medic, and EMT in the Connecticut River region knows it.