Here’s the next romance story:

Fire Season: Love in the Time of Climate Change

Francis Ralph Graham

Controlled Burns (Fall 2023)

The video call shattered into blocks for the third time in ten minutes. Sam’s face froze mid-sentence, his eyelids locked at half-blink as he described that morning’s precipitation gauges in Sector Nine. The screech of digital static crackled through Mia’s headphones. She shifted her laptop on the gray laminate table in the graduate lounge. Around her, other students hunched over laptops: one pecked desperately at her keyboard, another leaned on a stack of textbooks, muttering under his breath as he wrestled with code.

Sam’s image finally snapped back into focus, he wore a frayed flannel shirt and rubbed his eyes with a forearm dusted in chalky white from fieldwork. Behind him sat a pile of battered field notebooks, pages riffled from coffee spills and other insults. Above the notebooks hung a whiteboard scribbled in tidy rows of differential equations, though Mia couldn’t parse more than the occasional Greek letter.

“—sorry, you cut out after ‘soil moisture content,’” she said, nodding at the stack of data sheets pinned to his board.

Sam sighed, sliding a hand through his hair. “Those numbers from sector seven still don’t make sense,” he said, shifting to bring a printed graph closer to the camera. The colored lines clashed sharply, red and burnt orange dominating where tender greens should have peaked. “Post-fire recovery ought to show at least some native grass establishment by now. Instead it’s cheatgrass in a solid blanket, with Russian thistle poking up like little skeleton fingers. It’s as if the native seed bank got wiped out overnight.”

Mia flicked open her research binder. The rings protested with a metallic creak as she flipped to a page of August photographs—sun-bleached plots lined with wooden stakes, each one tagged with faded neon tape. “That’s what I’m seeing in the overgrazed pastures,” she said. “Those perennial bunchgrasses that usually punch back after fire? They’re flatlined. My advisor’s been breathing down my neck about sampling methods—says my transects might be biased.”

Above Mia, the lounge’s fluorescent lights sputtered—two flickers shy of a blackout. The hum of printers and the occasional groan from someone stuck on a stubborn equation created an atmosphere dense with academic tension.

“Dr. Martinez has scheduled my thesis defense for December fifteenth,” Sam said, leaning back in his creaky office chair. The back squeaking in protest. “I’m rewriting my conclusions for the third time. How can I defend data that flies in the face of years of recovery models?”

Mia watched Sam’s hand slide over his hair—a gesture she’d come to recognize over six weeks of nightly calls since they’d parted for grad school. Despite the three-hour drive between campuses and the pixilation that made his expressions flicker, these conversations had become an addiction.

“Mrs. Chen said the BLM office called again yesterday,” Mia added. “Diana wants updates on timelines because they’re setting next year’s grazing rotations. They want to add our preliminary data to their monitoring results to plan resource allocations.”

Sam’s features shifted, a frown giving way to a heavier weight. He exhaled slowly. “Morrison emailed me this morning: twelve major fires since we left the field in August. Twelve. The season was supposed to taper off by now, but they’re running full suppression orders day and night.”

Mia leaned forward, her chair creaking. “I actually… miss being out there,” she said softly. “All that stress, the long days, but it felt… essential.”

“I dream about the dispatch radio at night,” Sam confessed, gaze drifting past his camera into a dim corner of his apartment. “I wake up half-convinced I need to assign air tankers or log weather bulletins.”

Their old routine—late nights, shared worry, colliding research—felt almost tangible in the empty lounge. Mia recognized the ebb and flow of academic life: spurts of calm followed by crushing deadlines.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, shifting in her chair. “Do you ever wonder if we’re training for careers that might not exist when we graduate?”

Sam was silent for a long beat. Behind him, a roommate passed, careful not to disturb the fragile bubble of concentration. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I think about that every day. Range management, fire suppression—they all assume stable conditions, predictable seasons, and decent funding. But after what we saw this summer…” He trailed off, recalling nights spent reorganizing project plans around sudden monsoon storms or surprise heatwaves.

Mia exhaled, leaning back against the cool edge of the table. “Dr. Hoffman brought up adaptive management in our methods class. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to learn—not just follow textbooks, but invent solutions as conditions change.”

A wheezy clank sounded as the building’s furnace kicked on, rattling the ductwork above them.

“I’ve been thinking about your livestock research,” Sam said, leaning forward until his chin nearly touched his desk. “The permit modifications you analyzed—what if rest-rotation systems aren’t enough? Maybe we need entirely new grazing strategies. Cattle behavior changes on stressed landscapes; maybe we should factor that in.”

Mia felt that familiar spark of discovery swarm through her. “Right. Traditional stocking rates assume normal precipitation patterns, but those patterns aren’t normal anymore. Ranchers are already destocking. If we push rest periods further, they won’t survive.”

Her laptop battery icon blinked an ominous yellow. The charger was buried in her backpack. She glanced at Sam, torn between keeping their connection alive and recharging for tonight’s own data crunch.

“I should let you go soon,” Sam said, noticing her tense glance. “But would you want to meet halfway this weekend? Cedar Flats has a coffee barn with decent Wi-Fi. We could spread our binders out on a real table for once.”

Mia’s heart lifted. “Yes. I’d love that.”

Saturday morning found them in a converted storage barn filled with mismatched armchairs and local landscape paintings. The air smelled of pine smoke and sage as they unloaded binders, maps, and laptops from their packs. Sam claimed a broad table by a dusty bay window, and Mia unzipped an old leather portfolio to reveal a stack of color photographs tagged with sticky notes in neon pink.

“I brought the aerial shots Morrison sent,” Sam said, arranging them next to her grazing transect images. “See how your overgrazed parcels look from above?”

Their coffee arrived in heavy ceramic mugs. Outside, a crisp breeze sent golden leaves drifting across the gravel parking lot.

Mia sorted her photos in chronological order: May’s emerald shoots, July’s thinning clumps, September’s dusty bare earth. Sam leaned over, running a fingertip along each stake flag in the image. “Fine fuel loads must be skyrocketing as invasive annuals fill the void, laying down a tinder-dry blanket.”

She pointed at a graph on her laptop: monthly precipitation bars overlaying temperature curves. “Total rainfall was only fifteen percent below average, but look at the distribution—June and July barely registered a drop. Most of it came before the summer heat peaked.”

“Timing trumps totals,” Sam said. “The earlier rain helps the invasives.”

The coffee shop owner, a paint-spattered woman with silver hair tucked under a bandana, refilled their mugs. “You folks mapping the drought?” she asked, peering at their spread of charts and photos.

“We’re studying vegetation responses,” Mia replied, voice bright. “Do you have the corn fields up the valley—any chance you’d share planting records?”

The woman nodded. “He’s been grumbling that the old calendar’s useless—earlier springs, false frosts, rain out of sync. Here’s our phone number.”

After she moved on, Sam met Mia’s eyes. “We should interview them and other farmers. Their schedules would show how adaptation actually happens on the ground.”

Mia tapped her pen against a timeline they were sketching. “And that’s exactly the gap the BLM needs to fill—collaborative, adaptive strategies that account for drought, grazing, fire risk… the cascade of stress factors.”

They spent the next two hours weaving their separate findings into a joint narrative: how invaders fuel greater fire danger, how shifting precipitation undermines rest-rotation systems, and how local planting and grazing shifts are true adaptive management.

Brunch crowds filed in—weekend cyclists, couples sipping lattes, elderly couples thumbing through the menu. Through the window, October’s palette gleamed: maples aflame with early color, frost-shriveled marigolds clinging to stubborn life.

As they packed up, Sam’s voice softened. “These calls, this… collaboration—talking with you is the best part of my day. You help turn my raw data into meaning.”

Mia felt warmth bloom. “Mine too. Even when I’m drowning in papers, I know we’ll figure it out together.”

They lingered on the porch, reluctant to reenter their solitary thesis grind. Sam’s expression grew serious. “What if we propose a joint BLM project next summer? Integrate our findings and test new grazing-and-fire management models on the ground.”

Mia’s breath caught. “You mean go back out there, side by side?”

Sam nodded. “Professional partnership. And…” He hesitated, then met her gaze firmly. “Something more.”

She smiled. “Something more.”

The drive back threaded through cattle-peppered pastures and hills scarred by recent burns—subjects of their research and the source of the uncertainty they both felt. That evening, back at her desk under the flickering lounge lights, Mia spread out her materials again. Everything was the same—and utterly transformed.

Her phone buzzed. “Made it back safe. Missing our call already.” –Sam

She tapped back, “Me too. Let’s meet tonight?”

At nine, Sam’s face reappeared on her screen, the glow from his apartment lamps softening his features. “Tell me about that cascade model,” he said with a grin that made her heart quicken, “and then… let’s talk next steps.” Outside, frost glazed the lounge windows, but inside, armed with shared data, shared purpose, and something more, Mia felt ready for whatever came next.