Two years ago my dad and I rented out a fire watchtower in the wilderness of Montana. It was located on the top of a medium-sized mountain and was one room that was about 30 feet off the ground. This building brings back good, but also terrible memories. We had to hike up the mountain with about 15lb’s of gear, a spotting scope to watch for wildlife with, and food/drink. I am an avid outdoorsman, but this particular hike had me a little sketched out. We kept seeing grizzly and cougar tracks, so by the time we were almost to the top I was extremely paranoid that we were going to get attacked. When we reached the tower, I had a sudden sensation of not being able to breathe, the altitude was getting to me. This induced a panic attack from the lack of oxygen and the overwhelming feeling of a bear attack potentially happening.

The panic attack soon went away but I was left with a hangover, for lack of a better word. We got up into the watch tower and started using our spotting scope to look for animals. We ended up seeing a grizzly on a peak across from us. Around this time we saw humans coming our way. They came up to our watchtower and told us that they had rented it and that we had to leave. We assured them that we rented it as well, we even had a key. It was dark at this time, so they could not just hike back down so we agreed to all stay in the one room together. We had to sleep with complete strangers at 9,000 feet. As you can imagine this was extremely uncomfortable. To make matters worse (or better) it was my birthday. When I think back to this building, I love the idea of it, but hate the reality of it.